A NEW film chronicling an 18-year-old Dubliner's experience of life inside an Irish prison has been earning rave reviews online.
Michael Inside stars Dafhyd Flynn stars as Michael McCrea, a troubled teen living with his grandfather in the Irish capital while his dad serves out a prison sentence.
Already on probation after being caught joy-riding, Michael makes a grave error in judgement after agreeing to "move" a bag of drugs for some criminal acquaintances.
When the deal goes awry, the young man is sentenced to three months behind bars.
Suddenly forced to fend for himself, Michael Inside chronicles his journey from ordinary teen to full-time prisoner, taking us through the courts, past the warders, and into the cells.
While locked up, Michael ends up befriending an older drug deal (Moe Dunford) and soon becomes immersed in the violence and intimidation of the criminal underworld.
Directed by Irish filmmaker Frank Berry, the film is a gritty, authentic portrait of prison life.
Made back in 2017 but only just released in the UK, Michael Inside has been earning rave reviews across the board and currently hold a 100% rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.
"It's a prison film and a social-realist picture of the Loachian school: fierce, unsentimental, engrossing," The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw wrote.
"Good research must have helped Berry attain his 20/20 peripheral vision. No minutia or refraction-of-a-minutia seems false," Nigel Andrews, over at the Financial Times, said.
"It's moving, emotionally gripping and every scene has the ring of truth," Paul Whitington at the Irish Independent added.
Michael Inside is in cinemas now and sounds like essential viewing.
