The past couple of years have seen an influx of women filmmakers bringing timely, working-class stories to the big screen with lived reverence and fresh talent, from Rocks to Scrapper to Bird. The latest addition to this new social realist niche is Lollipop, a gut-punching debut from writer-director Daisy-May Hudson. The film follows Molly (Posy Sterling), a young mother released from jail but placed in a different prison when she tries to reunite with her children, who are being held in foster care. She finds herself in a hellish Catch-22: she can’t gain custody of her children without a roof over her head, but she can’t get a house via state assistance because her kids don’t live with her.

Hudson’s sharp film, inspired by her own experiences, passionately takes aim at the pitfalls and paradoxes of the social care system. After painfully short supervised visits with her children and missing out on key moments of their growth, Molly reaches a breaking point. Hudson isolates Molly when her conscientious smile cracks as, off-screen, the voices of social workers dictate that her children will remain in foster care until she has sorted herself out. Cinematographer Jaime Ackroyd frames Molly through the worker’s legs, like the bars of a cell. Sterling’s restrained performance transforms into something explosive; anger crumbles into devastation as the system repeatedly and harshly fails her. “You need to do more for me,” she begs, only to be met with: “There’s nothing more I can do.”

Though some of the film’s most devastating moments occur inside the council office, it’s also where Molly reunites with her greatest supporter, college friend Amina (Idil Ahmed), who is living in a hostel for homeless families. Both women are soldiers fighting with a fierce love for their children. Their sisterhood interrupts the solemn tone as they find pockets of joy amid the devastation, gossiping in bed and dancing to UK garage music.

These moments highlight the distinct absence of men in Lollipop, bar Molly’s 5-year-old son Leo (Luke Howitt). The companionship of other women is the foundation of Molly’s life, underscored by the challenging relationships with the all-women care workers or her overbearing but inattentive mother, Sylvie (TerriAnn Cousins).

The impressive nature of the performers is thanks to casting director Lucy Pardee, who recognised Sterling’s powerhouse leading potential but also discovered the brilliance of Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads. The latter, who plays Molly’s 11-year-old daughter Ava, takes centre stage when she tearfully pleads with her mother to obey the rules to avoid getting in more trouble. But Molly is desperate. The mother-daughter back-and-forths are sensitively penned and downright heart-wrenching to witness. It’s a stark reminder of the pain caused by a system that slashes welfare spending and demands a person to jump through hoops with their legs tied. Hudson’s film makes room to acknowledge that this is a family affair. Molly is at the epicentre, but the reverberations impact everyone around her.

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The out­skirts of Lagos, 1993: a har­ried father, Fola (Sope Dirisu), return­ing to his tum­ble­down home, makes the snap deci­sion to scoop up his two bored, pre-teen sons and take them on a road trip into cen­tral Lagos to col­lect wages owed to him. He has an ulte­ri­or motive: so they may all be at ground zero when the results of a nation­al elec­tion are announced and, all being well, M. K. O. Abi­o­la will tri­umph over the rul­ing mil­i­tary jun­ta and bring democ­ra­cy and order back to Nigeria. 

He pro­ceeds with an ele­ment of cau­tion, know­ing that he has for too long been an absent father, earn­ing mon­ey from a far-flung fac­to­ry job (so he tells the boys) but has actu­al­ly been moon­light­ing as a polit­i­cal lob­by­ist for Abi­o­la. His duty of care extends to mak­ing sure that his sons have a bet­ter future, and in many ways this affect­ing and beau­ti­ful­ly-judged first fea­ture from Aki­no­la Davies Jr is about a father want­i­ng his kids to see first hand the fruits of his (often dan­ger­ous) labours and under­stand that he has been there for them on a nation­al lev­el, even if he hasn’t on a pri­vate one.

This entire review could be ded­i­cat­ed to the immense cen­tral per­for­mance by Sope Dirisu who, as the eter­nal­ly con­flict­ed father, is with­hold­ing a lot of infor­ma­tion from his fam­i­ly for their safe­ty. He also seems to have to alter per­sonas with every new per­son he encoun­ters. Ini­tial­ly, he’s a stern father who wants his boys (incred­i­bly nat­ur­al and fun­ny per­for­mances by Chibuike Mar­velous Egbo and God­win Egbo) to under­stand a bit more about the coun­try they’re liv­ing in, but per­haps not too much.

Soon he becomes the des­per­ate grafter who urgent­ly needs wages for upkeep; then he’s the shady polit­i­cal oper­a­tive who peo­ple refer to as ​“Kapo” as he tucks a few notes in their pock­et for sur­vival. One thing’s for cer­tain: he’s a piv­otal, well-liked pres­ence in the cap­i­tal, empha­sised by the fact that rov­ing mil­i­tary police can’t stop star­ing at him as if they recog­nise him from somewhere

The first half of the film com­pris­es a sur­vey of Lagos in the 1990s, and through a land­scape of severe socioe­co­nom­ic con­trasts he is able to give his sons a sense of the uphill bat­tle that they face. They begin to see signs of the life he lives in the city, and some­times the sur­vival tac­tics he uses cut through his self-paint­ed image as a right­eous fam­i­ly man. 

At the cen­tre of a film is a dia­logue scene on a beach in which the father leaves him­self open for ques­tion­ing and is able to impart both his wis­dom and attempt to furtive­ly cul­ti­vate a sense of nation­al pride in his inquis­i­tive off­spring. Dirisu chan­nels ten­der­ness, but his indig­na­tion con­stant­ly bub­bles beneath the sur­face. Yet their con­ver­sa­tion is cut short by a gang of maraud­ers sud­den­ly hack­ing chunks off of a beached whale, and the film con­stant­ly leans on the inter­play between the pro­tag­o­nists and the strange things occur­ring in the backdrop.

The direc­tion by Davies Jr is absolute­ly top-notch, not just how he is able to cap­ture the fine nuances of the actors on cam­era, but also how they are immersed into the chaot­ic melée of Lagos at this pow­derkeg moment. The plot ends up hing­ing on some strange coin­ci­dences in its final stretch, and the end­ing per­haps with­holds a lit­tle too much detail for it’s on good, but oth­er­wise this is a very fine pic­ture on a for­mal and emo­tion­al level. 

The film played as part of the Un Cer­tain Regard strand at the 2025 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and could’ve very much held its own in the main competition.

To keep cel­e­brat­ing the craft of film, we have to rely on the sup­port of our mem­bers. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.