LOLLIPOP
Writer-Director: Daisy-May Hudson
Production Company: Parkville Pictures, BBC Film, BFI
Cast: Posy Sterling, Idil Ahmed
Status: Completed
World Premiere: Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024
Synopsis:
Molly’s a dreamer and a fighter. All heart, fire and passion. She’s made more mistakes than she can count, had her heart broken, and now risks losing the ones she loves. Sometimes she doesn’t think she has the strength to be a woman. But she rolls with the punches and keeps getting up off the floor. And what drives her – always onwards, never looking back – is to give her two kids, Ava and Leo, a better life than she ever had. And she can’t understand why that’s not enough: in the face of a social care system that’s doing everything to keep her from them. Confused, scared, angry and boxed in by an uncaring bureaucracy, Molly’s soon homeless, can’t find work and her kids are swallowed into social care. She can’t breathe.
​
It’s a chance encounter with her old friend Amina, a refugee alone with her child, herself living on the edge, that reignites Molly’s fire. “You don't get a book for this. No one tells you what to do. You just try and figure it out.” She refuses to be a victim, to have her spirit crushed. Together with Amina, and her own mother Sylvie – a broken relationship she must first fix – Molly finds the courage and resolve to keep putting one foot in front of the other, driven by simple, everyday human connection; laughter, joy, tears and the support of the women around her. It hurts more to hold onto the pain. ‘Lollipop’ is the optimistic nickname Sylvie gave her, all those years ago before her dreams faded. But now Molly has a chance, just a chance, to break that downward spiral: to go on her own heroic journey and give her kids the love and hope no one gave her.
From breakout debut filmmaker Daisy-May Hudson, Lollipop is a film about having the will to go on when you think there’s nothing left, and the power of our love and the strength of others, to withstand anything. Lollipop will break your heart and then put it back together, stronger than ever.