Baby Brother

Adam and his way too benevolent little brother Liam have grown up on the see-
dy side of Liverpool, in a dysfunctional family – if “dysfunctional« wasn’t way
too charitable and “family« also a bad fit for a cokehead mother and her violent
boyfriend. The brothers make do, but then something happens and Adam has
to leave. Five years later, Adam returns to his childhood home, but he is now
the person he never wanted to be – not his brother’s keeper, but more like the
people he tried to shield him from.
»Baby Brother« is a harsh film about how easily one’s course in life can fall
apart in just one moment – and the consequences it will have for many others.
Told in the span of two days that are five years apart, we witness an inferno in
the making – skillfully told in intermixed scenes from past and present.
This might be the most emotionally brutal film you’ll see all year, but director
Michael J. Long manages to intersperse his powerful tale of brotherly love lost
to circumstance with snippets of pure joy in his unassuming, but powerful fea-
ture debut about lives already doomed at the moment of birth. An inconvenient,
uncomfortable, unforgettable masterpiece.