
Farming
By Alistair Lawrence,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Lackluster British drama has racism, language, violence.

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Farming
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What's the Story?
FARMING follows a young British Nigerian boy, Enitan (Zephan Hanson Amissah and Damson Idris), who is "farmed" out to live with a White British family in the 1970s. But as Enitan struggles to come to terms with his own identity, he becomes involved with a gang of White racists.
Is It Any Good?
A grimly interesting story that is sadly reduced to a cliched, tedious movie. Farming portrays the startling impact of a policy that separated the young children of British immigrants from their parents to go and live with foster families. While it was hopefully a cathartic experience for writer-director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje to lay bare the horrific treatment he received as a young child and teen, there's so little character development here that his adapted life story quickly delivers little more than a series of depressing set pieces.
In addition to finding out practically nothing about what Enitan internalizes, the ambivalence of his greedy foster mother Ingrid (Kate Beckinsale) is also left unexplored. Instead we get a lot of dull, repetitive violence led by a gang of skinheads that could have been lifted from dozens of other stories. Farming also neglects a far more interesting period of Akinnuoye-Agbaje's biography: his eventual rise to university graduate, model, then an acting career that has produced a series of memorable performances over the past three decades. None of which, sadly, are present here.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the racist language, and the violent, racially-charged attacks in Farming. As essential as they were to the narrative, did you find them difficult to sit through? How to talk with kids about racism and racial violence.
Discuss the violence in the film. How did it make you feel? What's the impact of media violence on kids?
Discuss the language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?
What did the movie have to say about identity? Discuss your own heritage. What do you know about it? Does it impact the way you see yourself, or how you're seen by others?
The movie is based on the writer's real life. Did this make the movie even more shocking?
Movie Details
- In theaters: October 25, 2019
- On DVD or streaming: October 25, 2019
- Cast: Damson Idris , Kate Beckinsale , Gugu Mbatha-Raw
- Director: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Inclusion Information: Black actors, Female actors
- Studio: Momentum Pictures
- Genre: Drama
- Run time: 101 minutes
- MPAA rating: R
- MPAA explanation: disturbing racial violence and epithets throughout, pervasive language and some crude sexual material
- Last updated: October 8, 2022
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