‘Young people involved in crime still have hearts’

A film from the micro-budget scheme behind Plan B’s Ill Manors shows there is heart even in the most marginalised of London’s youth, its star said today.

Theo Barklem-Biggs, 23, said many films demonise young people who get into trouble, without examining the reasons why. But Borrowed Time explores how they are pushed to society’s fringes, and suggests they are not irredeemable. “There are lots of kids involved in crime but it doesn’t mean they haven’t got a heart,” he said. Shot for under £120,000 in 18 days in east London with the Olympic Park as a backdrop, the bittersweet comedy is about a hapless burglar, Kevin, played by Barklem-Biggs, and Philip, a pensioner played by Phil Davis of Vera Drake fame. Philip finds Kevin breaking in and holds him at gupoint, and an unlikely friendship develops.

Barklem-Biggs — best known as Richard in The Inbetweeners movie — said he grew up in Soho, went to nursery with people now in jail and was “quite a disturbance” at school until he won a place at the Brit School for the Performing Arts. “I got to turn over a new leaf. I knew what I wanted to do,” he said.

The movie was made by London Film School graduates Jules Bishop and Olivier Kaempfer, backed by Film London under the Microwave scheme that supported ill Manors by Ben Drew, also known as the rapper Plan B.