I Was Here

It begins at the end. And from the opening images, there’s no doubt as to where 17-year-old Russ’s story is heading. His voiceover, as he writes his experiences from prison, narrates his unwinding fate – from a life of petty crime in an Estonian suburb, with half-hearted dreams of medical school, he becomes tangled up in drug peddling. It’s not long before his life snowballs out of control. Russ’s redemptive qualities, and his sympathy for those around him, are balanced with a fickle disaffection that makes the character difficult to sympathise with. But it’s an engaging and well-constructed film – slick and fast paced, contrasting modern, stylised split-screen editing with a grim backdrop of misspent adolescence.