Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist (NLY) is not an easy film to watch. Brett Gregory’s debut feature follows the life of protagonist Jack, from a tough childhood under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to adulthood as an unemployed teacher isolated throughout Boris Johnson’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Set in the North of England “in a land that God forgot,” NLY’s overtly antiestablishment tone is delivered through a thousand cuts. The opening scene showcases monarchical iconography amid derelict public spaces and expensive high-rises looming over aging council housing. The message is subtle but clear: this is a film about poverty amid plenty.

In this sense, NLY is a film of the moment. The UK is currently experiencing the biggest cost-of-living crisis in a generation: typical household incomes will fall by their largest amount in half a century this year and, with the rich getting richer, income inequality is set to reach a record high. In Greater Manchester, where the film is almost entirely shot, 42 percent of children are living in poverty. It is in this context — unspoken but clear from the voiceover and set — that NLY opens, with an elderly Jack confined to his room in early 2020. Yet while NLY highlights the impact and isolation of those early pandemic days, the film is a much wider critique of the current economic and social order.