The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
Stephen Archibald
Jamie
Hughie Restorick
Tommy
Jean Taylor Smith
Grandmother
Karl Fieseler
Helmuth
Bernard McKenna
Tommy's father
Paul Kermack
Jamie's father
Helena Gloag
Father's mother
Ann Smith
Jamie's mother
