#391 Michael Kiwanuka – You’ve Got Nothing to Lose

As we watch her prepare to attend her son’s birthday party, flashes of a transgender mother’s dingy home and dingier lifestyle are interspersed with the technicolor gathering she hopes to attend.

Director James Cathcart imbues the father-to-son message of Micahel Kiwanuka’s ‘You’ve Got Nothing to Lose’ with melancholy texture, deliberately challenging traditional ideas of fatherhood and family.

Cathcart says:

“Michael’s song has this air about it – of a father figure imparting wisdom. So I looked for an unexpected context to apply that to. It’s about misleading perceptions – not just in terms of the character’s gender, but also from what we expect of the people she encounters.”