Urchin (2025)

A slice from the life of an addict living in the UK.

I came across Urchin by chance and decided to watch it because of the title. It made me think of the spiky animal that lives at the bottom of the ocean, and the old Dickensian novels, where an urchin was an orphaned, homeless child in shaggy and dirty clothes. Following my instinct was the right choice, because this gentle character-focused directorial debut from Harris Dickinson has moved me in ways I wasn’t really expecting.

Dressed in shaggy clothes, his head adorned with spiky hair, the main character in Urchin is a young homeless addict called Mike. Like the urchin at the bottom of the ocean, he lets the currents of life pull him back and forth, back and forth.