X+Y

X+Y (2014) is a British drama you can watch online on iFILM. Nathan is a teenager on the autism spectrum who finds numbers far easier to read than people. Maths comes to him without effort. Everything else barely comes at all.

Asa Butterfield plays him as he earns a place on Britain's team for the International Mathematics Olympiad. A training camp takes the squad to Taiwan, where, for the first time, someone other than equations gets through to him — Zhang Mei, a girl from the Chinese team. Running alongside is his mother (Sally Hawkins), who loves her son but can't find the door into his world, and his eccentric tutor (Rafe Spall), himself living with multiple sclerosis. The film is honest about how hard ordinary closeness becomes when you process the world differently.

Director Morgan Matthews came from documentaries — he'd filmed real Olympiad teenagers first, and this story grew out of that. It's why the movie underplays where another would tug at tears: it moves you without begging for pity. Quiet cinema for anyone who warms to characters who don't quite fit. Stream X+Y (2014) online on iFILM.