James Baron

Two down on their luck Liverpool cabbies, Tommy and Gerry, strike an unusual deal with a local gangster to take their sons on a trip of a lifetime, to watch their beloved football team play in the European Cup Final in Istanbul. Hoping to use the trip as a chance to bond with their sons, big trouble awaits them in the form of a sexy hotel chambermaid, two ruthless crooks on a mission and a bag of counterfeit cash. It is 3-0 down at half time and things could not be more desperate both on and off the pitch. Stevie G and the boys in red are trying to launch the most amazing football comeback in history, and Tommy is in deep water, being held hostage. With the clock ticking and time running out, a miracle is needed fast. In the end a bit of faith, and Gerry’s lucky underpants may be the only thing that can get them and the cup back home in one piece.

In 2007, Gillian Wearing placed an advert – in newspapers, online, in job centers, and elsewhere. It read: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” Of the hundreds of people who replied, seven – chosen through an extended process of auditions, interviews, and workshops – ended up appearing in Self Made. Of those seven, five in particular use the acting technique known as Method to delve into their memories, impulses, anxieties, fears, fantasies, and inner resources to create a series of individual performance vignettes, their personal ‘end scenes’, that reveal with particular intensity and clarity who they really are deep down – or who, in another version of their lives, they might easily have been.