When we last heard from writer-director Andrea Arnold—Academy Award winner, three-time Jury Prize awardee at Cannes, and one of the most celebrated auteurs in the world—she was taking a detour to document the life cycle of a cow in cinéma vérité style. Bird marks her triumphant return to narrative feature film and synthesizes a number of points from across her two-decade career. Starring two of the hottest indie darlings of the moment—Franz Rogowski (Passages, Transit) and Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, Saltburn)—Arnold returns to her childhood stomping grounds of Kent to tell the story of 12 year old Bailey, who lives with her brother Hunter and her scammer father Bug in a rundown squat. Continuing her exploration of disenfranchised young women struggling through family dysfunction and squalid settings tinged with violence, Arnold tells coming-of-age stories like no one else—rough-hewn, impressionistic, gritty, and disarmingly sensitive. A worthy continuation of Arnold’s dirtbag-chic opus American Honey, Bird is both beautiful and unflinching. ~OO