Before Trainspotting, there was this—heroin, AIDS, and a city that looked away.
Needle paints a harrowing picture of a Liverpool overrun by drugs, charting a young man's nightmarish descent into intravenous heroin use and AIDS and a police and political leadership incapable of the imagination or courage necessary to respond to the drug problem.
Acting
Sean McKee's physical deterioration is devastatingly real.
Direction
MacKinnon refuses to aestheticize suffering—no relief, no beauty.
Writing
The bureaucratic scenes are satirical and enraging in equal measure.
Director
Gillies MacKinnon
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shot during the actual Liverpool drug crisis; locations were real needle exchanges and derelict housing estates scheduled for demolition.
Director MacKinnon smuggled the rushes out of the BBC after they tried to bury it for being 'too depressing' for television.
GB
