“In general, I don’t watch many of my projects after I’ve filmed them,” he says. “So it’s normally quite helpful to talk about it sooner rather than later. [But] strangely, I think this project sort of had an indelible quality on my memory, because it’s as if we filmed it yesterday, to be honest.”
Speaking to Armitage, it quickly becomes clear why I Am Urban might have crystallised in his consciousness more than most projects. Although relatively few people have seen the film between its completion in 2015 and now, it did have a couple of festival screenings shortly after it was finished – and one viewer who was especially moved by seeing it back then was Armitage’s late father John.
“My father’s roots [are in] Leeds and his experience growing up in… I wouldn’t say in poverty, but he was definitely at that sort of lower end of the working classes,” he says. “And actually, he came…
