Rocks: contexts and key sequences

Rocks (Sarah Gavron, 2019): teenager Shola, known as Rocks, is left to look after her younger brother Emmanuel when their mother leaves; she hides the situation from school and social services, and her friends try to help.
Directed by Sarah Gavron and written with Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson, developed in workshops with a young, mostly non-professional cast.
Multicultural East London, and the care system.
Key sequences to know in detail: the opening with the friends, the start of school, and the dance scene.
Cinematography and mise-en-scène: loose, documentary-style camerawork, phone footage in vertical format, natural light, and two- and three-shots of the friends.
Editing and sound: quick straight cuts, overlapping dialogue, and mostly diegetic music.
The few short lines of dialogue that matter most in these sequences, a few words each.
Short answers of the kind the first parts of the Section C question ask for: naming and describing a costume, setting or visually distinctive scene, and explaining how it creates meaning.
How to answer each part: the marks, and what the short identify and explain parts need as well as the extended answer, since naming a technique instead of a specific example from the film loses marks there. Practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
Quote only short lines of dialogue you're sure of, a few words at a time, and base every point on what happens in the finished film.

What you need to know