Top up your watchlist... 21 films about working-class Britain

Director: Clio Barnard

Clio Barnard’s film about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar mixes reconstruction, interviews (performed by actors) and scenes from the plays.

Director: Bill Douglas

Bill Douglas’s poetic and profoundly stirring autobiographical trilogy about Jamie growing up in a Scottish mining village in 1945, ending up in a children’s home, later conscripted in the RAF and finally feeling at home.

Director: John Schlesinger

Tom Courtenay is the clerk whose overactive fantasies compensate for a dull provincial life, in this classic film from the British New Wave.

Director: Barney Platts-Mills

A fascinating record of 1960s suedehead youth culture, largely improvised by a non-professional cast of teenagers from east London.

Director: Saul Dibb

Ashley Walters impresses in this hard-hitting Hackney drama that’s still one of the best of Britain’s black urban crime films.

Director: Menelik Shabazz

Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher’s London.

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

A darkly comic and compelling coming-of-age story set during a time of social change.

Directors: Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq

A bizarre study of obsession focusing on a teenage boy who is torn between the charms of a fleshly female prostitute and the sadism of an older man.

Director: Antonia Bird

Robert Carlyle and Ray Winstone are members of a criminal gang that tears itself apart after a heist goes wrong, in Antonia Bird’s stylish thriller.

Director: Val Guest

Punchy crime thriller with a realist streak as Stanley Baker pursues a fugitive through the streets of Manchester.

Director: Robert Hamer

Austerity noir? Ealing’s downbeat but compelling East End thriller.

Director: James Hill

Shirley Anne Field stars in this stylish, highly enjoyable story of simmering tensions and sexual conflict in the work place.

Director: Joseph Despins

The Moon over the Alley is a bizarre and compelling musical exploring the problems of multicultural Notting Hill residents in the early 1970s.

Director: Sally El Hosaini

Sally El Hosaini’s feature debut tells of the love and disenchantment of two British-Egyptian brothers. Gangs, drugs and sexuality come between them.

Director: Horace Ové

Hailed as Britain’s first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted black youths in 1970s London.

Director: Stephen Frears

A celebration of outrageous British playwright Joe Orton’s irreverent and charismatic talent, starring Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina.

Director: Andrea Arnold

Andrea Arnold’s highly acclaimed film, winner of top prizes at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival, is a haunting drama about a woman confronting past demons.

Director: Terence Davies

Terence Davies’ Liverpool-set trilogy explores the development of Robert Tucker’s life from victimised schoolboy, through middle age to death.

Director: Bill Forsyth

Before Gregory’s Girl, Bill Forsyth mate this equally hilarious caper about a group of unemployed teenagers who hatch a plan to steal a job lot of stainless steel sinks.

Director: Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson’s fantastic first feature masterfully dissects the brutal life struggles of a rough-edged rugby footballer on and off the field.

Director: Carine Adler

Carine Adler’s sexy and dark debut, starring Samantha Morton in her first major feature film role.