If you had a modest little cry while watching Belfast, Northern Irish parenting tearjerker Nowhere Special might totally destroy you.
Now playing in select cinemas around Australia, Nowhere Special is the tale of a terminally-ill single dad trying to find the perfect family to care for his four-year-old once he dies. See, my eyes are kinda stinging already from the mere plot description.
“What’s adopt, daddy?” adorable kid Michael (Daniel Lamont) asks in the trailer below. John (James Norton, who you might recognise from his BAFTA-winning role in Happy Valley) tries to explain it delicately to his son: “when a child cannot be looked after by his daddy, so he can live with two nice new parents.”
That’s easier said than done, though, as window-cleaner John has only a few months left to live and can’t bring himself to tell Michael the truth about his unfair destiny. The help of a kind social worker will be instrumental in helping the unsupported father to make the biggest decision of his life—and death.
Nowhere Special premiered at the Venice Film Festival two years ago and has already deeply moved audiences around the world, racking up a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Director Umberto Pasolini has previously produced great stories of the UK’s working class with The Full Monty, and he directed another Venice hit Still Life back in 2013. This newer film’s time-pressured journey to find the perfect family certainly stands alongside those other uplifting titles, and will cause more runny noses and post-screening sob seshes than the both of ’em combined.
