As an actor, Paddy Considine, 37, has blessed a range of downbeat British films with his lugubrious, sometimes volatile presence, among them his friend Shane Meadows’s A Room for Romeo Brass (99) and Dead Man’s Shoes (04), Pavel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort (00) and My Summer of Love (04), Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People (02), Stoned (05), and Red Riding: 1980 (09). He has also made the odd foray into Hollywood for Cinderella Man (05) and The Bourne Ultimatum (07).

As a writer-director, Considine cranks up the volatility with his outstanding feature debut, Tyrannosaur, which he took a dry run at with his 2007 short, Dog Altogether. Peter Mullan, who also starred in the short, plays an enraged widower, Joseph, who, at the outset, kicks his dog to death. Lurching into a Christian charity shop managed by a devout middle-class woman, Hannah (Olivia Colman), he initially curses her for slumming in his impoverished neighborhood in the Northern city where they live. But when he realizes she’s being terrorized by her husband (Eddie Marsan), he befriends her; it’s a redemption quest with a shocking twist. Considine talked to me about Tyrannosaur when he brought it to New York for New Directors/New Films in the spring.

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