Too often you wonder how British films ever got the green light. Not so Shifty, Eran Creevy’s first feature, which was financed cheaply by Film London’s Microwave scheme and shot in 18 days under the guiding hand of Asif Kapadia (director of The Warrior).

It’s one of two films specifically about life among London’s youth out this week, with City Rats also on release, and by far the better work.

Set in a series of dreary housing estates in an unnamed area of the capital, it is more than just another urban thriller. Creevy’s film depicts the underbelly of big city life with style and substance.

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Chris (Danny Mays) returns from Manchester to visit his old friend, Shifty (Riz Ahmed), with whom he has “history”. Chris has a regular job and a mortgage while Shifty has become a full-time drug dealer. Chris watches as he confronts a double-dealing supplier (Jason Flemyng) and deals with his regular customers, including a crack-smoking pensioner (Francesca Annis), an ex-girlfriend with children, and a husband (Jay Simpson) who’s trying to keep his coke addiction from his family.

Things do not go well as Chris and Shifty rediscover their friendship. Chris has found himself back in a world that seems all the more desperate for being so ordinary. Couched in a kind of Pinteresque slum language that needs a glossary to be totally intelligible, the film boasts an authenticity and wholly natural performances, particularly from Mays, and is devoid of the usual clichés of its genre.