This week's podcast gets down with the kids, talking to the newcomers behind British coming-of-age story The Scouting Book for Boys and the director of Sons of Cuba, a hard-hitting documentary following three young boxing hopefuls in Havana.
Written by Jack Thorne of Skins and Shameless fame, The Scouting Book for Boys is the feature debut from director Tom Harper. Starring Thomas Turgoose and Holly Grainger as two kids who hatch a plot to stay together, this is an English coastal caravan caper with a dark edge. Thorne and Harper tell Jason Solomons about how they came to work together, how they got indie folkies Noah and the Whale to soundtrack the film and how work is progressing on their miniseries spin-off of Shane Meadows's This Is England.
Sons of Cuba director Andrew Lang then reveals the lengths he had to go to to shoot his documentary in the Havana Boxing Academy, the crucible of Cuba's long line of Olympic-sweeping pugilists. He also shares how it felt to unveil his film at the Havana film festival, where it won best film by a non-Latin American film-maker.
And finally, Xan Brooks and Jason Solomons get together to review the week's key releases: the very creditable The Scouting Book for Boys; the tub-thumbing eco-doc Dirty Oil, about tar sands extraction in Canada; and the comedy I Love You Phillip Morris, which has Jim Carrey as a flamboyant con man who falls in love with his cellmate, played by Ewan McGregor.
