Set at the time of the 1984 miners’ strike, ‘The Miner’s Son’ carefully explores the fractures in British society, told not only from the perspective of the miners themselves but also through the eyes of their children, who dream of lives beyond the colliery. As the strike looms, a community in Deal, Kent, faces the grim prospect of unpaid mortgages and mounting bills. Yet for many, the choice is clear: if called upon, they will support the strike in solidarity. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

The opening scene is filmed at the Big Pit in Blaenavon – where I once visited on a school trip – lending the story an authentic sense of place and history. The film is structured around three strands: the miners’ predicament, and the tensions that arise when one man refuses to support the strike and becomes a “scab”; the lives of the children, who form a band in the hope of making it big; and their encounter with a shady record producer, based on a real figure, whose offer of a deal is not what it seems. Woven into this is a provocative subplot hinting at satanic cults, which adds a layer of menace and intrigue.

At just under two hours, the film is tightly assembled, and its succession of episodes carries real momentum – it never drags. What emerges is a slice-of-life portrait of a community at a turning point, capturing the twilight of an industry and the unions’ last stand against the establishment. The recreation of 1980s music is a highlight, with the band formed for the film providing a strikingly authentic soundtrack.

At its heart, though, ‘The Miner’s Son’ is a coming-of-age story. A father offers advice to his children even as the industry that sustained him, and generations before him, faces collapse. With no secure future in mining, the children’s hunger to pursue something new, even risky, feels inevitable. In tracing both the resilience of a community and the ambitions of its youth, the film powerfully evokes a moment when tradition, solidarity, and aspiration collided in the shadow of a vanishing way of life.