This is Shane Meadows
£34.99
This boxset includes the following films:
This is England
Dead Man’s Shoes
TwentyFourSeven
A Room for Romeo Brass

THIS IS ENGLAND (2007)

Marking the fifth feature film from award-winning writer/director Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, A Room for Romeo Brass, Twentyfourseven), This is England tells the story of Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), an 11 year old kid growing up in the north of England. Set during the summer holidays of 1983, it follows his rites of passage from a shaggy haired ruffian grieving the loss of his father into a shaven headed thug whose anger and pain are embraced by the local skinhead fraternity. This Is England won Best British Independent Film and Thomas Turgoose he Most Promising Newcomer Award at the British Independent Film Awards as well as awards at the London and Rome Film Festivals.

The ensemble cast includes newcomer Thomas Turgoose playing the role of Shaun, Stephen Graham (Gangs of New York), Jo Hartley (Dead Man’s Shoes), Joe Gilgun (‘Emmerdale’), Andrew Shim (A Room for Romeo Brass, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands) and Vicky McClure (A Room for Romeo Brass).

DEAD MAN’S SHOES (2005)

The fourth feature from one of Britain’s best-loved and audacious directors is a gritty tale of personal vengeance and gangland retribution.

Two brothers return to the hometown they left eight years earlier, to find it still run by the same gang of small-time drug dealers and petty thugs. Their purpose, it soon becomes clear, is not reunion, but revenge - a quest of particular significance for ex-para Richard (Paddy Considine, Last Resort), the tortured leader of the two, whose obsessive desire to even the score will lead the siblings into dangerous new territory.

Brilliantly constructed to unfold via a series of flashbacks, Dead Man’s Shoes earned Meadows a Directors Guild award for Outstanding Achievement in a British Film. Co-writer Considine is outstanding, as is the carefully selected soundtrack of works by Will Oldham, Calexico and Smog.

A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS (1999)

A contemporary rites of passage tale as funny as it is frightening this cemented Meadows’ reputation as one of the finest voices of his generation.

Youngsters Romeo (Andrew Shim) and Gavin (Ben Marshall) are best mates with a shared sense of humour that helps them survive in a landscape of broken dreams. But their friendship is put to the test by a chance encounter. After a stranger (Considine) saves them from a beating, the boys are only too happy to help their new hero in his quest to date Romeo's sister (Vicky McClure). Little do they know they are being drawn into a world of dangerous obsession and violence; a world that threatens to tear the two friends apart.

Making exemplary use of working-class Nottingham locations, Meadows’ expertly steers a course between whimsy and darker urban terrain. With his explosions of unforeseen rage Considine excels, but the younger performances are to be equally admired.

TWENTYFOURSEVEN (1997)

Meadows’ directorial debut, this low-budget tale eloquently denounces Margaret Thatcher's 1980s social legacy and its uncaring repercussions on England's suburbs.

Alan Darcy (Bob Hoskins, The Long Good Friday) is a burnt out soccer coach who becomes a self-appointed social worker when he opens up a dormant boxing club with the financial assistance of a shady businessman (Frank Harper). Darcy hopes to train a team of local teenage no-hopers and guide them away from a life of twenty-four seven drugs and despair. After a group bonding session in the Welsh mountains they return for a climatic boxing match against a rival club, but Darcy’s dormant capacity for self-destruction threatens to explode.

Beautifully shot in black and white, TwentyFourSeven more than confirmed that promise of Meadows’ earlier shorts and heralded the arrival of a major new voice in British cinema. Awarded the FIPRESCI prize at Venice, this is raw, compassionate cinema at its finest.



Born in Uttoexeter, writer/director Shane Meadows grew up in Nottingham and the city’s estates and suburbs have provided the themes, locations and settings for all his work to date. His career in film-making began at a local film centre in Nottingham where he borrowed a camcorder at weekends and developed a technique of filmmaking using his friends and actors, producing a short film every month for a year. In 1995 he was approached to direct the TV documentary The Gypsy’s Tale and the following year, he produced, directed, edited and co-starred in the 60-minute film Small Time, winner of the Michael Powell award at the 1996 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Shane then went on to write and direct his ‘Midlands’ Trilogy’ consisting of Twentyfourseven starring Bob Hoskins and winner of the FIPRESCI award at the 1998 Venice Film Festival; A Room for Romeo Brass; and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, his comedic homage to the Spaghetti Western genre, which was selected for Directors’ Fortnight at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. In 2003 Shane directed the revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes, co-written by and starring Paddy Considine, who won several awards for his performance including the 2005 Evening Standard British Film Award and the Empire Award for Best Actor. April 2007 saw the release of his most successful film yet: This is England, brilliantly evoking the tensions of 1983 Britain through the tale of Shaun, a lonely 11 year-old growing up in a Northern town who is adopted by a group of local skinheads.

Shane Meadows is perhaps the most important filmmaker of his generation and one of the brightest talents in British cinema.