Ish

Twelve-year-old best friends Ish and Maram spend their days cruising around on their bikes, building makeshift forts in the nearby woods, and hanging out with their mates at the pool. Ish, who has recently lost his mother, is younger, smaller, and less assertive, while Maram, who is under his father’s thumb at home, has a bit more swagger. As they lean into the end of boyhood, the pair can rely on each other—until a police stop-and-search deeply shakes their bond.

With fine nuance and a lived-in sense of place, musician and artist Imran Perretta paints a deeply felt portrait that explores young male friendship at a precarious moment. The boys’ slang-heavy conversations are affectionately peppered with teasing insults and terms of endearment. News reports of the war in Gaza and of crackdowns on protests are ever present, providing an unsettling backdrop to the daily lives of the Muslim and South Asian communities the boys call home. As an increasingly ubiquitous police presence—in the form of street patrols and the deployment of facial recognition technology—ratchets up tensions, Ish breathes empathy and understanding into its depiction of the uneasy path to manhood.