Marco and Timmy (Micheal Ward and Stephen Odubola) are best friends at school in South London, but are driven apart by a brutal postcode-based gang war, in this semi-autobiographical story by first time writer/director Rapman (AKA Andrew Onwubolu).

I saw this film as part of a screening of the LDN Filmmakers project which gave 40 young Londoners the opportunity to try their hand at filmmaking. The screening featured seven shorts with thematic overlap with Blue Story, all of which displayed impressive creativity and technical accomplishment from the new filmmakers.

Rapman, himself a victim of knife crime, spoke at the event, and his passion for helping others avoid the same mistakes comes through in the film itself, as he appears at various points to narrate through verse, repairing some of the damage caused to the in situ rapping genre by R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.

The film was shot on a shoestring budget around South London, with filming completed in just three weeks. In its 90 minute run time it packs in a lot, showing how brutal cycles of violence begin, and how well-intentioned people can be drawn in, chipping away at the hardened stereotypes often shown in the media to show the people behind the violence. This creates an intense and pacy slice of social realism which draws attention to serious issues from a truly authentic perspective.