Director Statement I Home

HOME is an uplifting film that fizzles with energy, colour, music, movement. 

It combines the vitality and heart of Netflix global hit One Piece, and awards winning Slumdog Millionaire and Billy Elliot with the immediacy of the street (Bafta winning American Honey, Fish Tank)

NOAH, MINNIE, and FIZZ are three young people who meet on the streets of Bristol. They’re there because the streets offer refuge from the difficulties of family life. They can’t escape the reasons for being there, but they can find comfort in each other and a shared search for a place to call “home”.  Rhythm, rhyme, music, and movement fuel the story, arising naturally out of the action, reflecting the music of the three generations in the story.

Most films about inner city young people point the camera at the dark side to their lives.  Rarely do they include their warmth, vibrancy, cheekiness, and humour.  HOME deliberately turns the camera in that direction - never denying the difficulties in the young people’s lives, but equally not letting them define them.  Beatbox, rhyme, music, and movement fuel the film, arising naturally out of the action, finding rhythm in the everyday, and music from the three generations in the story.  

HOME arose from a conversation I had when working with at risk young people in the SW of England.  A 17-year-old man sat next to me. He had RIP freshly tattooed on his hand. I asked him why.  He stood up and spontaneously started to rhyme how his best friend had been stabbed and killed that weekend.  Then he began to move - almost dance - physically expressing his emotions.  It was powerful, raw, full of heart.  

I was blown away.  I wondered why we rarely see this passion and lyricism from young people on our screens?  Why do habitually point the camera to the knife crime, to the gangs, the grit? 

The young people explained that they often use rap, rhyme, and movement to distance themselves from the often-overwhelming emotions that arise when describing their lives. 

HOME brings this to the screen.  Powerful emotion. Creative energy. Humour. Resilience.

The people I worked with asked that I make a film about their lives that their mum and grandma would go and see.  I love that – it has become the film’s guiding intention. 

Together we wrote HOME:  stories based on real people, brimming with emotion, authenticity, humour, resilience...and playfulness.

I have worked in theatre for many years, as well as directing some of the world’s biggest actions shows (One Piece, The Witcher, Marvel’s Daredevil, Luke Cage, The Punisher etc). Action, song, movement must always stay connected to the narrative of a film and progress story or character.  My approach to the movement and rhyme in this film will be the same as my approach to shooting action sequences: they must arise naturally out of the drama in seamless transitions, and they must focus on character and story to avoid the sense they are just set-piece interruptions to the narrative.

Noah, Minnie and Fizzy’s search for HOME is a universal story: everyone needs a safe place to grow and become who we want to be.   As with the recent Netflix series ONE PIECE I directed, HOME is tonally layered:  revealing, honest, mischievous, cheeky, and full of hope. 

© Marc Jobst