Ratcatcher

Lynne Ramsay’s brilliant career was launched with this, her debut feature, a raw yet lyrical meditation on childhood set in 1970s Glasgow. After his friend is accidentally drowned during some boyish roughhousing, poor young James (William Eadie) comes to terms with his guilt over the death and struggles to make sense of the abject squalor and cruelty of his environment. An unsentimental, surprising, and richly evocative work suffused with haunting imagery and unvarnished performances, Ratcatcher is one of the signature cinematic debuts of the late 1990s, a film that scours the urban decay of working-class Glasgow to unearth the hopes and dreams of its marginalized residents, however bleak their current circumstances. A Janus Films release. An NYFF59 selection. New 4K digital restoration undertaken by The Criterion Collection and supervised by director Lynne Ramsay and cinematographer Alwin Küchler.