It isn’t just one of the best debut films of the year, but one of the year’s best films, period.

The Levelling is a wonderful first feature from Hope Dickson Leach. Morose beyond measure, but leavened with subtle hope via Ellie Kendrick's superb central performance.

It may be modest in scale but the film is assured in both intention and execution, building successfully towards a quietly moving climax.

The Levelling is an intimate story, waterlogged with guilt, grief and blame, but it explores this dark spectrum with such unsentimental honesty that its tiny moments of uplift, when its repressed characters form tentative connections despite themselves, are magnified and moving.

Set on a dairy farm in southwestern England, The Levelling is a modestly scaled, superbly crafted drama with a powerful sense of place.