Andrea Arnold

Arnold films girls on English estates and in squats, with a handheld camera kept very close. In Fish Tank, fifteen-year-old Mia has been thrown out of school and lives on an Essex estate with her mother and little sister. Bird follows twelve-year-old Bailey, living in a north Kent squat with her father. In Cow she gives the same close attention to a dairy cow.

Signature

• Working-class girls on the edge of adulthood.
• Handheld camera close to the body, often in a nearly square frame.
• Animals filmed as intently as people: horses, birds, cows.
• Leads found through street casting.