Brace Yourself for Peter Day’s Feature Off the Rails

New Zealander Peter Day’s “bracingly kinetic snapshot of contemporary British urban youth”, Off the Rails recently premiered at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. The film is reviewed by Screen Daily’s Neil Young.

“Graduating from parkour and free-running in their native sleepy Guildford to more ambitious stunts in major European capitals, these thrill-seekers escape the numbing, high-unemployment realities of suburban England into hazardous, potentially fatal realms of global internet quasi-celebrity,” Young writes.

“The fact that Day is in his early sixties may come as a surprise to viewers of Off the Rails, given its loose-limbed approach and its ease of engagement with young men in their late teens and early 20s, who still often behave like fifteen-year-olds.

“Off the Rails is thus at heart a humanistic, empathetic film which celebrates the feats and personal qualities of its participants but neither condones nor condemns their wilder exploits.”

Day, who lives in London, has made many European co-productions for ARTE, TV2 Denmark, YLE Finland, WDR Germany, and HBO amongst others.

Original article by Neil Young, Screen Daily, March 16, 2022.