Fresh

A stylish, affecting, ingeniously plotted first feature in which a 12-year-old black kid, beset by drug-dealers, a junkie sister, and his clean-living aunt, struggles to put his life in order by means of lessons he's learned from his chess-playing dad. Yakin never settles for the easy, last-minute moralising and macho posturing that has afflicted much of the otherwise intriguing new black cinema; here, story and character take priority, helped no end by Nelson's quiet, riveting central performance.