Farming

Farming (2018) — watch online on iFILM. This British-French-American drama was written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, drawing directly from his own childhood. Demson Idris plays the lead, with Kate Beckinsale and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in supporting roles.

The story follows a young Nigerian boy handed off by his parents to a white family in Essex, England — a practice known as "farming," where immigrant parents placed children with host families in the hope of a better start. What followed for Akinnuoye-Agbaje was displacement, identity fracture, and eventually absorption into a white skinhead gang that he eventually led. The film moves from bewildered child to dangerous teenager without flinching at any of it.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje made something unusual here: an autobiography that refuses easy redemption or explanatory neat bows. It asks how a person loses himself entirely when belonging is never actually on offer. Stream Farming (2018) online on iFILM.