What to look for in a film that features in the Interrogate! social justice conference? A movie set in LA which focuses the Hispanic community and echoes the Neo-realist classic The Bicycle Thieves, perhaps? Well that’s just what they’ve got in the form of A Better World.
Directed by Chris Weiz, who negotiated swooning Vampires and Werewolves in Twilight: New Moon, in A Better Life the essential vehicle that gets nabbed is transformed from a bike to a pickup truck (used for gardening work), and the boy in now a surly teenager.
Philip French in the Observer called it ‘small, convincing, tightly constructed’, which avoids sentimentality in favour of the thorny story.
Catch A Better Life at the Interrogate! Festival at Dartington’s Barn Cinema.
Here’s the trailer:
