Dir: Imran Perretta UK 2026
Reviewed by Peter Herbert
Ish abbreviates the name of a boy in a film that looks with affection at what it feels like for a child entering adult worlds. Imran Perretta’s debut wisely keeps itself grounded through the eyes and behaviour of a boy and in doing so invites comparison with a small group of rare films.
The film opens with two boys having fun on a bike although a prolonged image of the same discarded bike on an empty road intimates trouble ahead. The unusual graphic looking setting of Ish has the feel of a working-class community although precise detail is irrelevant as to whether the setting could be Ireland or Northern England. The rich tonal range of Jermaine Canute Edwards’ monochrome camerawork turns the North London town of Luton into a no-man’s-land enhanced by an original soundscape mix of music and noise created by Perretta. Both sound and visuals create a tactile cocoon like sense of memory for the fading nature of childhood.
This is intoxicating to watch as life is played out for the Southeast Asian Muslim born Ish (Farham Hasnat) while he looks for ways to subconsciously retain the world he knows. There is childlike passion and love for his slightly older British Palestinian friend Maram (Yahya Kitana) that is evident as bike rides take them into neglected woodlands. A makeshift castle made from discarded items provides a safe place within a world about to encroach as Maram is also bonding with other same-age older boys.
The intensity of the relationship is enhanced by the actors’ lifelong off-screen friendship feeding into the film’s authenticity. Subtle details in the film include clothing, the changing nature of the body and complex intergenerational family relationships. These anchor the film co-written by Perretta and Enda Walsh which has an ear for the language of contemporary youth dialects and reflects a sense of global boundaries created for everyone by the Gaza war. Ish also pivots around an unsettling and frightening stop and search incident that brings home to Ish how soon he will be forced to decide which side he is on before others decide for him.
Ish contains the social realism of early Ken Loach, particularly Kes, as well as the heart and soul of Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups and other great films of the genre by Philip Leacock, René Clément and Dorota Kędzierzawska. The abiding image however may well be the similar look of wonder found in beautiful close-ups of the eye of a boy at the centre of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali.
BFI release. UK Cinemas 31/7/26. Perretta’s 2019 video installation the destructors is on display at Tate Britain from 31/7/26.