Feature filmmaker Andrea Arnold (American Honey, and an Oscar winner for the short film Wasp) makes her spot directorial debut with “Youth Can Do It” for The Prince’s Trust, a charity which helps disadvantaged young people get their lives on track. Created by U.K. agency CHI&Partners, the TV ad features young people who themselves have overcome adversity.
Arnold, known for her scenes of gritty realism, chose to work with the charity–which helps young people aged 11 to 30 into jobs, education or training–because of her passion for youth empowerment and her belief in the determination that spurs children and adolescents on to succeed.
The script is a poem, “Bulletproof,” written and performed in the film by 16-year-old Maya Sourie–a winner of last year’s national youth poetry competition SLAMbassadors–who spent large parts of her own childhood in foster care.
A montage of scenes includes a child protecting a younger sibling from danger, a young mum looking after her baby, a young man packing his bags and moving out of a garage and into his first home, and an anxious young man securing his first job. Sourie’s poem spreads the message that “pain is nothing but fuel to reach my full potential”–speaking for all young people born into difficult circumstances.
In order to make the film as authentic as possible, Arnold cast young people whose lives and circumstances reflected those in the script, filming the scenes in their own homes and dressing them in items from their own wardrobes.
The soundtrack is a raw, uplifting, contemporary choral piece, performed by inner-city youth choir Inner Voices and composed specifically for the film by Simon Bass.
