Director: Moin Hussain

Stars: Faraz Ayub, Natalie Gavin, Claire Rushbrook, Steve Oram

British director Hussain’s feature debut is a moody and oblique study of identity and alienation. Adam (Ayub) is an unassuming young man working at a fast food restaurant in the Sky Peals Green motorway service station. Adam is mixed race: his mother (Rushbrook) is white, and his father was born in Pakistan. Not long ago, his father, who convinced himself that he was a literal alien from another planet, died in the service station car park. Avoiding telephone calls from his concerned mother, Adam obsessively searches the video footage of the last sighting of his dad, pondering if there may be something in his claims of extra-terrestrial provenance. The overarching sense of woozy gloom, along with the uncommunicative socially maladroit protagonist renders this a challenging watch, but Hussain’s pitching of the service station as a kind of eerie, neon-lit liminal space, visited by transitory lost souls is impressive.

David Willoughby

Follow David on @DWill_Crackfilm