The Protagonists

The rarely seen debut by acclaimed director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) is a bizarre drama-documentary recreating a motiveless London murder.

In 1994, two public schoolboys carried out the brutal and motiveless murder of a waiter in pre-regeneration Kings Cross, London. Luca Guadagnino's debut feature, shot in London using English and Italian actors, attempts to break the boundaries of conventional drama and documentary filmmaking in retelling this true-crime story. With Tilda Swinton as the on-screen narrator, The Protagonists revisits the crime with dramatic reconstructions of the murder, interviews with the police and the victim's family and friends, and dramatised episodes from the murderers' and the victims' past lives.

In places, The Protagonists is disturbing and difficult to watch; in others it has an impressive honesty and imagination. Whilst some of the effects it strives for in tackling such difficult subject matter do not entirely succeed, its bravery and imagination are laudable and it deserves to be better known, especially in light of the filmmaker's subsequent career.