Following her mother’s death, a resourceful 12-year-old girl, Georgie (Lola Campbell), continues to live alone in their London-outskirts flat. She makes money stealing bikes with her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun), and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. It works like a charm until Jason (Harris Dickinson) shows up. Apparently, he’s her father — so long estranged that she doesn’t recognize him. Sizing him up as a rubbish dad (absent, messy, can’t cook), Georgie wonders why he’s suddenly taking an interest; especially when she’s doing just fine on her own, thank you very much.

The spirit, humor, and formal inventiveness that ripples through Scrapper sets it apart from much of British working-class cinema. A music video director since her teen years, Charlotte Regan pulls flavors from the world she grew up in to fashion a vibrant, joyful, imaginative story — full of flourish, aesthetic energy, and even talking spiders. Dickinson and newcomer Campbell bring a magical quality to this father-daughter story of two emotionally tangled people: a grieving kid thrust into adulthood and a father in over his head.