It’s been a while coming, but as Shane Meadows’ work continues to mature, he is finally becoming the household name he has arguably deserved to be since his debut Twenty Four Seven in 1997. The critical and commercial success of This Is England, which won a raft of awards including the 2008 BAFTA for Best British Film, has stimulated new respect and affection for Meadows – and for that film’s impressive young star, Thomas Turgoose, a 2008 EIFF/Skillset Trailblazer. The two have reunited for the light but supremely satisfying Somers Town (p 32), which improbably started life as a short film project to promote the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, and grew into feature form. The film encapsulates many of Meadows’ strengths as a director. He is, for a start, one of the all-time great directors of young actors, who seem to relax in his presence into totally spontaneous behaviour and utterly authentic verbal fluency.

Meadows also boasts a stunning gift for weaving tragic threads into otherwise bouncy and boisterous material; by showing us the good side of baddies and the weaknesses of heroes, he and regular screenwriter Paul Fraser present us with snatches of life that have real emotional complexity, and conflicts that don’t suggest their own easy resolution. Moreover, since the stunning revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes, his films have developed greater stylistic dynamism, and show an increased attention to visual detail; comparisons to Scorsese’s early work are not mere hype.

Born in Uttoxeter in Staffordshire in 1972, Meadows dropped out of school before his GCSEs; upon moving to Nottingham at 20, he trained as an actor and began making short films with his friends, among them his best friend Paul Fraser, and the actor Paddy Considine. There must have been something in the air: any production bearing the names of that creative dream team would now have every film festival in the world clamouring to screen the premiere.