Currently out to own via Signature Entertainment, The Bike Thief tells a haunting tale of the plight of one immigrant delivery driver. The nameless character earns a living as a takeaway delivery driver in order to support his wife and two children. It’s not an easy job, and the long late hours mean that he and his family exist like ships that pass in the night. Disaster strikes when his scooter, the lifeline of his job, is stolen one night whilst he is working. In desperate need to recover it quickly, he sets about on an impossible mission to find it within the vastness of London. As the minutes edge ever closer to his next shift and potential lack of income, he finds himself confronted by some very questionable moral quandaries. Can he find a way out of this nightmarish dilemma that doesn’t involve succumbing to dark forces?
The BIke Thief is written and directed by Matt Chambers, stars God’s Own Country’s Alec Secareanu, and offers a different vantage point of London to what we usually see. The film digs into the day-in day-out existence that is very real for many immigrants. Taking cues from Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 classic, Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves), Chambers wanted to bring the story up-to-date and give it a more modern resonance. He has certainly achieved his goals as we were very impressed when we caught it at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Our review described it as being “a superb debut” and a film that was “stylish, though realistic, beautiful, gritty and at various points, subtly anxiety-inducing.”
With the film now out for all in the UK to see, we sat down and spoke with both Chambers and Secareanu to get more details about this very impressive debut feature.
The Bike Thief is out on Digital platforms now via Signature Entertainment.
