The Choir

Les always longed to be one of the "hard guys," but no sooner has he started at his new school, than the real hard guys select him as a target - were his parents expecting a daughter, or why else would they give him a girls' name?

Then Les gets an invite to join the school choir. Not for him, he thinks - the last thing he wants is to be seen with the other nerds. But membership has its unexpected privileges...

Angela Murray's The Choir is an accomplished, unpretentious short. The writer/director knows exactly what she wants to say and how to express it on film.

She neatly sidesteps the usual akwardnesses of school set tales - the kids don't swear or behave like the real thing - by emphasising the artificiality of the piece, presenting the titular choir as a benevolent Mafia style outfit, complete with a hidden base and the most unlikely of Godfather figures.