40 Minutes

Independence, self-reliance, confidence. These are some of the qualities that the traditional single-sex English boarding school gives the children in its care. 40 Minutes follows some 8-year-old boys off to different boarding schools for the first time. Their parents and headmasters are confident that they are doing the right thing. But some ex-boarders are not so sure. These men feel that the experience of boarding at a young age was damaging.

This film looks at a theatre group who specialise in prison remedial work. By turning hardened criminals into actors, they challenge them to reveal human emotion from behind their masks of hardness.

The engaging lives and intimate stories of Squeegies - people who wash car windows at traffic lights for small change - in South London. Del, living with the effects of having grown up in care up that stunted his promising career as a musician, Tony, struggling with abandonment and alcoholism and Leah, the mother figure of the group, who is pregnant, bringing new life and hope into the tough circumstances they inhabit.