Rocks
Shola, or Rocks, as she's known, lives in a London council flat with her younger brother Emmanuel and their single mother. Mum is busy and stressed, leaving Rocks to spend all her free time with school friends. One day, she comes home to find her life radically altered: she is suddenly on her own with a child to take care of. Rocks is mercurial, impulsive, and deeply sensitive – not unusual for her age, she sometimes makes desperately poor decisions for what look to her like good reasons. When her closest friend Sumaya tries to help, Rocks doesn't know how to accept it, blinded by Sumaya's two-parent household and relative comfort. (Festival information, Zlín 2020)
The life of teenager Rocks and her younger brother Emmanuel is radically altered when their mother disappears. The girl is unable to find any help from her schoolmates and is afraid of separation from her brother.
The Ecumenical Jury gives a Commendation to the film realized in a documentary style, without an easy happy ending, showing the struggling of Rocks to save her family and to live her life with Emmanuel. In a multiethnic London society, a dialogue between generations and cultures becomes necessary to assure a better future of the less privileged.