Wasteman

Wasteman begins in the unmistakable aspect ratio of a mobile phone. In a tiny prison cell, men crowd and jeer, while dark threats are thrown about. “I’ve cut someone’s throat for less than that,” growls one. It’s clear we are watching a prison-made viral video: violence, commodified for the TikTok generation. This is a remarkable feature debut from director Cal McMau and writers Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran, which plays like a modern-day Scum, or a British answer to A Prophet: a film that follows in this country’s social-realist traditions, but brings with it something new and relevant to say. Like many prison movies before it, it casts a highly sceptical eye on the institution of incarceration, doubtful that these incubators for crime and violence actually lead to meaningful rehabilitation. What Wasteman does differently is speak to the current crisis in the British service — chronic overcrowding, underfunding and inadequate staffing — and how it is all being documented by prisoners themselves, with McMau drawing inspiration from real videos from inside. So we see flashes of feverish, bloody violence; lockdowns due to staff shortages; allusions to the successive games of political pass-the-buck; and, in the latest innovation to jailbird life, drones flying up to prison cells, dropping off packages of drugs like an illicit Deliveroo. There are regular phone-like portrait-mode cutaways of stuff like this, and McMau’s commitment to veracity is such that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish real footage from something staged. The filmmaker worked with the rehabilitation charity Switchback to ensure accuracy, and filled the supporting cast with real former inmates. This clear covenant with authenticity sets it apart.