I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

A group of long-term friends face a series of bruising blows, shock revelations and tragic setbacks as they reach the end of their twenties in Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, a classic British social-realist drama with a contemporary spin and an engagingly warm, buzzy energy. The setting is one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Birmingham, in the English Midlands, birthplace of heavy metal and Peaky Blinders. Indeed, Peaky Blinders veteran Joe Cole figures prominently in the excellent ensemble cast. The characters depicted here have been shaped by economic hardship, but the tone is not worthy or overly sombre, painting working-class life in refreshingly nuanced colours, with love and joy, humour and hedonism all part of the wider emotional spectrum.

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is the first feature in five years by Barnard (The Selfish Giant, Ali & Ava), whose recent career focus has mostly been on prestige TV drama, notably the BBC crime thriller Sherwood and the Apple+ gothic mystery miniseries The Essex Serpent. Adapted from Kieran Goddard’s 2024 novel of the same name, the screenplay is by prize-winning Irish playwright Enda Walsh, who is currently enjoying a fruitful run of acclaimed literary adaptations following Small Things Like These (2024) and Die, My Love (2025). Goddard is credited as executive producer on this BBC Films production, which has just premiered to warm reviews in Cannes, winning the Audience Award in the Directors’ Fortnight section, an early pointer to healthy interest at future festivals and beyond.

Cole pays Rian, a former high-school no-hoper who has used skill, guile and money inherited from his late father to make his fortune as a property developer. He has now climbed the social ladder and uprooted to a deluxe skyscraper apartment in London, with an upper-class girlfriend who clearly finds his proletarian rawness an alluring novelty. All the same, Rian remains firmly attached to his roots, returning to Birmingham regularly to party with his old drinking and clubbing buddies: Patrick (Anthony Boyle) and Shiv (Lola Petticrew), married with kids, builder Conor (Daryl McCormack), who is supervising an apartment block project for Rian and soon to become a father himself, and Oli (Jay Lycurgo), a small-time drug dealer struggling to go straight and find a legal job.

Artfully peppered with dramatic archive footage of Birmingham high-rise apartment blocks being demolished, and time-lapse CCTV imagery of Rian’s new property project as it takes shape, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is rooted in an underlying political argument about the ongoing housing crisis in Britain, which has steep rental prices and a chronic shortage of affordable social housing, partly thanks to profit-driven private developers dominating the market for decades. Average house prices in big cities like London and Birmingham are now between eight and 12 times the local median annual wage, their widest disparity in over 150 years. Unlike their parents, millions of young people can only dream of buying their own homes.

It is Patrick, a disillusioned but still-defiant socialist firebrand, who most clearly articulates this view in the film, waxing lyrical about a lost golden age when governments invested in community welfare, and housing was seen as a social good not a commodity. If some of his speeches feel a little didactic, they ring true to Patrick’s character as a self-taught working-class intellectual trapped in a precarious low-wage job, increasingly angry that the egalitarian future he was promised in his youth never arrived. Underscoring this theme, Barnard ends the film with a closing dedication lifted directly from Goddard’s novel: “To public luxury, which is the only luxury that matters.”

The plotting in I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning can feel a little schematic, with major developments hinging on shock confessions of infidelity, marriages collapsing overnight, cheerful stoics conveniently becoming suicidal depressives, and so on. An aura of high-end soap opera hangs heavy in places. But helping to keep melodrama to a minimum is the easy chemistry and strong performances of the core cast, all non-locals making an impressive job of the distinctive, ultra-deadpan Birmingham accent.

Barnard shot in locations recommended by Goddard’s family, using real locals as extras, lending the film an extra layer of naturalism. Alongside Harry Escott’s lyrical score, a lively soundtrack of pop and dance music also captures the boozy, druggy euphoria these young people use to reinforce their friendship bonds as they enter the stormy seas of adulthood, with pleasingly prominent nods to Birmingham artists including The Streets and UB40.

Director: Clio Barnard
Cast: Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack, Lola Petticrew
Screenplay: Enda Walsh, based on the novel by Keiran Goddard
Cinematography: Simon Tindall
Editing: Maya Maffioli
Music: Harry Escott
Producer: Tracy O’Riordan
Production company: Moonspun Films (UK)
World sales: Charades
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight)
In English
109 minutes