A BLACK youth on the verge of manhood struggles to escape his inner-city roots but is dragged back into the gang culture around him. It’s a tragic story that filmgoers are used to seeing set in South Central Los Angeles or the meaner streets of New York. But not Hackney, East London.

Yet this is the world of Bullet Boy, the resonant low-budget British feature from the debut writer-director Saul Dibb. Until recently a Hackney resident himself, Dibb is aware of the parallels between his film and such high-profile 1990s American releases as Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society and Juice, but claims they weren’t his main source of inspiration.

“I saw Boyz N the Hood when it came out, what, 13 years ago but I haven’t seen a lot of those other films,” he says. “Inevitably there’s going to be a kind of crossover given the kind of subject matter, but I definitely didn’t want to make a gangster film.

“Over here it’s not the Bloods and the Crips, it’s more some kid cycles across an estate on his mountain bike, knocks on somebody’s door and shoots him. I wanted to make a film about two brothers and their mum, so it became something between a family melodrama and a rite-of-passage.” With guns.

Indeed the Bullet Boy of the title could be either 19-year-old Ricky (Ashley Walters), fresh out of youth custody and plunged into street rivalries thanks to his loose-cannon friend Wisdom (Leon Black); or his brother, 12-year-old Curtis (Luke Fraser), who idolises Ricky and comes across the loaded weapon Ricky hides in their bedroom.

In the light of the rise of British urban gun crime, it’s striking that this is the first feature to deal with the issue. “It’s very topical for all the wrong reasons,” says Marc Boothe, the producer. “There is a gun crime committed every five hours. This June alone gun- related crimes were up 11 per cent according to Home Office statistics. In a year you have more than 10,000 gunrelated crimes.”

Bullet Boy takes place around the stretch of road in Hackney known as “Murder Mile” because of its concentration of gun-related casualties. Dibb spoke to many of the young people growing up in the area, and he was shocked to discover “quite how many kids had come into contact with a gun one way or another — friends or cousins or whatever. Quite a few had had guns pulled on them. Or knives. It was an accepted part of their environment.”

With a script developed with the writer and fellow Hackney native Catherine Johnson, the project evolved over a series of improvisations. “We made a key decision early on to involve the community,” Boothe says. “Local people were extras and in some cases even let us use their homes to film in.

“Hackney gave us an amazing palette to colour, shooting on certain estates, but also the marshes, the ice rink, places where ‘normal people’ go. We wanted them going about their daily business.”

The involvement of the lead actor, Ashley Walters (pictured), will undoubtedly be contentious. Although he has been an actor since he was young (including Grange Hill), Walters is perhaps better known as Asher D of So Solid Crew, the garage band with a reputation for violence at their gigs. In 2002 he was sentenced to 18 months for possession of a loaded gun. Ironically the young offenders institute that Ricky is shown leaving at the start of the film is the one in which Walters served time.

“It was weird,” Walters recalls of shooting that scene. “It brought back a lot of memories. But Saul was right to do it and I think he got the performance he wanted out of me. The film came along at a time when a lot of people wouldn’t give me the time of day, and it gave me confidence in what I was trying to do.”

Dibb recalls: “Casting Ashley was an easy choice. There are not many people his age who could carry off the role the way he did. As for the So Solid thing, I cast him as an actor. It wasn’t a marketing thing.”

Yet surely by highlighting the more negative crime statistics and sensationalist newspaper headlines you risk exploiting real-life tragedy as part of the film’s publicity campaign? “It’s a good point,” Boothe concedes, “but the answer is no. The temptation from the ABC school of marketing is that controversy sells. But you are always mindful of who’s going to see this, how this will look and trying to avoid using stereotypes. But it’s likely there will be more instances of gun violence between now and when this film is released. That’s the sad reality of what we’re dealing with.”

• Bullet Boy is on Fri at 9pm at the Ritzy, SW2, and Sat at 11.15pm at the Rio, E8

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