The immigrant melting pot of Paris provides the setting for Romain Goupil’s film; but it’s another strange and idiosyncratic culture, with its own language and rules that lie at the film’s heart: childhood. The film’s at its best when it deals with the child’s world and his young actors, particularly leads Linda Doudaeva and Jules Ritmanic, give wonderfully truthful performances far from the cringey, cloying movie-kids we’re used to.

Set in a colourful but run down Parisian suburb during a period of state crackdowns on immigrants, the film could have become a tub-thumping take on oppression and unfairness, but by using the child’s perspective Goupil has stripped away the complications of politics to tell a very human and touching tale. Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi plays Ritmanic’s radical mother who attempts to help the kids prevent the deportation of Doudaeva back to Chechnya and the divergence between the political and socially complex world of adults. There are failings here, noticeably the unnecessary codas and some heavy-handed moments, but overall Hands Up is an intelligent, heartfelt picture which manages to take a fresh, engaging but still passionate look at the most contentious issue of our time.