I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

The opening of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning comes at you like a pint of lager with a Jäger bomb chaser and a packet of crisps – strong, energising, salty and sharp, you feel the headiness and the kick. It's Oli's (Jay Lycurgo) 30th birthday and his long-time mates Rian (Joe Cole), Patrick (Anthony Boyle), Conor (Daryle McCormack) and Shiv (Lola Petticrew) know just how to celebrate, swigging down booze and dancing as they rattle off the words to The Streets’ Don't Mug Yourself with the precision acquired through shared practice on the dance floor. It's a euphoric moment, captured with fluidity by cinematographer Simon Tindall, his camera bobbing along on the energy, just another part of the party.

The feeling is one of belonging – being part of your tribe in the place you know best. A lived in, loved in place that goes beyond a geographic location and which the Germans might call ”heimat” – an idea that is also explored in fellow Cannes film Fatherland.

The quintet were raised in a working class neighbourhood in Birmingham where the razing of tower blocks when they were kids – the implosion of which we see in a recurring motif – promised the start of a new housing deal that has failed to materialise. Shards of broken trust poke up in unexpected places in this drama, just one of the ways writer Enda Walsh, adapting Keiran Goddard’s book, makes it feel like real life.

Childhood sweethearts Patrick and Shiv are married with two young daughters, the lack of opportunities indicated by the fact Patrick slaves from dawn till well after dusk as a low paid bike delivery worker despite his university education. Refreshingly, motherhood isn’t looked down upon, Shiv relishes raising her kids, even as she’s also looking after her ailing mum, and her perceptive and caring response to her family and the wider friend group is the glue that holds the film together.

Rian is the one who has “got out”, making a killing in stocks that had led him to London but his sterile high rise apartment is all mod cons without connection. He’s trying to give back by funding the lion’s share of a high rise that Conor, whose dad’s building firm he has inherited, is overseeing. These are strivers not just at work but at play, with Oli receiving a heart-rending wake-up call about the impacts of his drug dealing and low-level addiction issues. Again, Walsh keeps these things real. Tolls are taken by drugs and alcohol on this group, sometimes heavy ones, but he and director Clio Barnard resist any sense of melodramatics. Things become tough and melancholic but never maudlin.

Barnard – who deservedly won the audience People's Choice award in Cannes – elicits terrific performances from her ensemble cast and shows admirable balance between the multifaceted stories so that nobody is sidelined and nothing feels forced. There are rhythms at work visually, too, as the bringing down of those towers is mirrored by repeated stop-motion footage showing the building Conor is overseeing slowly going up. There’s one moment where the film drifts towards the didactic – as Patrick articulates the problems of capitalism and the housing market – but the characters are so well drawn by this point that you can believe it comes from the heart of bitter experience.

The observation that, “Sometimes it’s best to pretend something’s okay until it is okay,” could be a mantra for the movie – keeping on keeping on the best you can do sometimes and better than the only true alternative. When all is said and done, friendship is the house that they live in and even if it occasionally shows cracks or needs some renovation work, it keeps the worst of life’s heavy weather at bay.

Reviewed on: 27 May 2026