by Abhi Parasher

Working-class England, usually associated with dreary visuals and sombre storylines, has been completely reimagined through the lens of the uniquely refreshing debut feature of Charlotte Regan, Scrapper.

“Our producer was like ‘You can’t reference a supermarket commercial for your debut feature’, and we kept going back to him like, ‘Wait, but this supermarket commercial is an absolute banger’,” Regan laughs. “We always said that the film was from Georgie’s perspective, which gives you a lot of space to get really weird. When you go up to a 12-year-old kid and ask them what happened last summer, Jesus Christ, the epic story you get told is madness. They embellish everything and that is how we imagined the film, Georgie’s retelling of something that happened, and that allowed us to play with film form a little more.”

Georgie (newcomer Lola Campbell) is a 12-year-old living alone in her London flat after the death of her mother, when her estranged father, Jason (Harris Dickinson), shows up out of nowhere. Uninterested in a sudden new parental figure, she remains stubbornly resistant to his efforts. As they both adjust to their new circumstances, Georgie and Jason soon find that they still have a lot of growing up to do.

“I had started thinking about a feature during the Sundance Ignite program,” she says of the initiative that fosters emerging 18-25 year old filmmakers. “The mentors they gave us really opened our eyes to longer-form material. It started slowly from there. I’m a really slow writer, so sometimes I’d sit there for 8 hours and come up with one page that was complete shite. Luckily, my producer Theo (Barrowclough) is quite script savvy and knew how to help me get what I needed. I probably would have packed it in and gone back to shooting rap videos if it wasn’t for him pushing it along.”

Although Georgie’s story is completely fictional, much of Scrapper is influenced by Regan’s experience making No Ball Games for The Guardian, a documentary celebrating young children through their invented games.

“We were a few drafts in on Scrapper before we did the documentary and it ended up really changing the script, especially the dialogue,” shares Regan. “We all sort of semi-remember childhood, like small vignettes of it. But doing that documentary with children for weeks and weeks, I realised these lot talk about absolutely nothing for hours on end. Their friendship groups are so fraught with drama too. We’d go into a space, and they wouldn’t be talking to each other because one of them didn’t get the last Haribo. Even working-class kids, who I think are very mature for their age, because they have to shoulder so much, they’re still so capable of being kids and falling out for weeks over a Haribo. That energy then got put into the script.”

Scrapper has had an impressive run on the film festival circuit, notably winning the World Cinema – Dramatic prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Much of its success has been attributed to the performances of the lead cast.

“There was loads of improv. Lola in particular is an improv master,” says Regan. “I would kind of give them topics based on what the kids from the documentary would talk about, which were always quite strange. Otherwise, I’d just talk to them about the point of the scene and beyond that it was just ‘you do you’. We have reels and reels of Lola, who has quite a dark sense of humour, making up a story about a serial killer on the estate killing everyone. I had to tell her to keep that for her horror film debut.”

For Lola Campbell, Scrapper not only marked her debut feature film but also her first time acting. “She hadn’t ever acted before or even done anything like that,” Regan tells us. “Her and Harris really ran with it themselves. Harris, in particular, is such a caring and selfless person, and I don’t think there are many people who would have been able to support Lola the way he did. We had about a week and a half of rehearsals where I’d leave Harris and Lola in a playground with a scene to learn, and when I’d come back, they hadn’t learnt any of it, they just threw a ball in a hoop for ages. Building that chemistry was obviously a lot more important than learning the script, so it worked out for the best.

“Lola is a little suspicious of new people, which was a case of life imitating art. She was sort of warming to Harris as the shoot went on, the same way Georgie was warming to Jason in the film. I think Lola’s family were more excited to meet Harris than her, to be honest.”

Regan is currently working on her sophomore feature. However, competing for her attention is the upcoming NBA season.

“I’m slowly working on another feature that will be finished one day hopefully. I’m not thinking about it too much right now though, just sort of winging it. Mostly, I’m waiting for the NBA season to come back. I say it every time, but that is the centre of my life.”

Scrapper is in selected cinemas from September 14, 2023

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