The film painting an unflinching portrait of county lines

It’s approach­ing din­ner time in Lon­don, and Femi Oyeni­ran has man­aged to sneak away from the chaos. He takes a seat in his dress­ing room, sit­u­at­ed two floors above the expan­sive, 2,000 capac­i­ty main room of HERE at Out­er­net, where pro­duc­ers and venue staff are hur­ried­ly putting the final touch­es to instal­la­tions, light­ing, sound, and the red car­pet. The pre­mière of TRAP­PING – a new fea­ture film that he co-pro­duced along­side his Fan Stu­dios busi­ness part­ner Nicky ​‘Slimt­ing’ Walk­er – is set to kick off in less than an hour, and there’s a hec­tic, elec­tric ener­gy in the air.

“Had to get some Air Force Ones,” he says with a wry smile, before point­ing to a take­away box of Nando’s. ​“Mind if I eat this by the way?”

With a loose dress pol­i­cy where train­ers and track­suits are equal­ly embraced along­side smart shoes, high heels, and suits, this is no ordi­nary film pre­mière. Side-by-side with some of the UK’s bright­est cul­tur­al tal­ents – with the likes of Top Boy star Ash­ley Wal­ters and UK rap roy­al­ty Head­ie One expect­ed to be in atten­dance – mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic have been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grab tick­ets of their own to the event.

“It’s some­thing dif­fer­ent, the approach that we’ve tried to take with the pre­mière,” Femi explains. ​“I didn’t want to do a con­ven­tion­al sit-down pre­mière. I want­ed some­thing that accom­mo­dat­ed a lot of peo­ple because I’m not elit­ist. I don’t real­ly like indus­try things, and I want peo­ple to have access.”

He’s in a good posi­tion to pass judge­ment on the film world, hav­ing been in and around the indus­try for close to two decades now – his break­through com­ing in 2006 play­ing the role of Moony in cult clas­sic Kidult­hood. Since then, he’s built a diverse and suc­cess­ful career in front of and behind the cam­era, span­ning act­ing, direct­ing and pro­duc­tion. His lat­est ven­ture, released via his and busi­ness part­ner Nicky’s new pay-per-view stream­ing plat­form The Drop and direct­ed by Pen­ny Wool­cock, sees a baby-faced teenag­er named Daz (played by Louis Ede) go ​“OT” (out of town) to work in a coun­ty lines drug deal­ing oper­a­tion – drug net­works that oper­ate across admin­is­tra­tive bound­aries. There, he finds him­self sta­tioned in a trap house along with a group of hero­in addicts, quick­ly real­is­ing that drug deal­ing is not quite the mon­ey-spin­ning lifestyle that he ini­tial­ly imagined.

Spurred by the ​“need to put food on my plate for my mum” and repay a £50 debt that his broth­er owed before being sent to prison, Daz finds him­self over­seen by Mag­ic, played by Tot­ten­ham-hail­ing rap­per and OFB mem­ber Abra Cadabra. It’s a con­fi­dent debut act­ing role, while also show­ing off his musi­cal chops by cre­at­ing the movie’s sound­track. Giv­en his pro­file, it is wild to think that tonight, per­form­ing at the pre­mière will be his first Lon­don solo show. After years of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police cen­sor­ing drill musi­cians and shut­ting down their shows, tonight will be his chance to step out on his own. 

Back above the throng, talk has turned to the long jour­ney to bring TRAP­PING to life. Femi was first shown the script by Pen­ny, the film’s direc­tor, half a decade ago now in 2018. She explained that she had been work­ing on the script with Dylan Duf­fus – who plays Big­man in the film – which was loose­ly based around Dylan’s expe­ri­ences grow­ing up. ​“I read it and it made me feel dis­turbed,” Femi recalls. ​“I felt dis­gust­ed, I felt the con­tent – I read lots of scripts. Most scripts don’t make me feel any­thing – this made me feel something.” 

The film opens with Daz in the Broad­wa­ter Farm estate in Tot­ten­ham, where he’s con­front­ed by a group rap­ping over a drill beat. The area was made infa­mous after the explo­sive 1985 riots in the after­math of death of Cyn­thia Jar­ret fol­low­ing a police raid on her house. ​“It’s a pover­ty-strick­en estate, and it’s an area of Tot­ten­ham that hasn’t been gen­tri­fied yet,” Femi says. ​“As a part of that, you see crazy things – fun things, I grew up on an estate as well. There’s fun to be had, but there’s always dan­ger round the cor­ner and coun­ty lines is part of that. You’re always only one con­ver­sa­tion away from get­ting in trouble.”

Yet it’s also a breed­ing ground for tal­ent. Abra Cadabra grew up on ​‘The Farm’, as did his fel­low OFB rap­pers Head­ie One and Ban­dokay, the son of Mark Dug­gan who was fatal­ly shot by police in 2011, spark­ing riots across the coun­try. ​“There’s like 20 rap­pers from Broad­wa­ter Farm,” says Femi, excit­ed­ly. ​“These guys have man­aged to carve a way out for them­selves. I love music, man – I think it’s very impor­tant. It’s one of the art forms that is accept­ed that Black peo­ple are good at, so it’s almost like one of the things with­in the main­stream that we’re legit­i­mate­ly allowed to have.”

Out­side of the inner-city estates, TRAP­PING also shines a light on the scale of drug use across British soci­ety. One scene sees Daz make ​“spe­cial deliv­er­ies” to giant coun­try­side hous­es, where well-to-do fam­i­lies buy drugs from him. ​“The movie shows that [coun­ty lines] is not just a work­ing-class prob­lem,” Femi says. ​“It’s [also] a mid­dle-class prob­lem, and it also shows that actu­al­ly when you’re not from [a work­ing-class] back­ground, some­times you just get away with it.”

Oth­er films and tele­vi­sion shows that focus the lens on drug deal­ing and crime with­in the UK have been accused of glo­ri­fy­ing gang cul­ture. Whether you think the crit­i­cism is fair or not, no such argu­ments can be made about TRAP­PING. From the open­ing salvos of the film, there’s uncom­pro­mis­ing scenes of drug use and bru­tal vio­lence in what is a dis­qui­et­ing por­trait of coun­ty lines in the UK, and its effects on young peo­ple around the coun­try. ​“I don’t think we’re glo­ri­fy­ing it as a path for young peo­ple to take,” Femi says. ​“What­ev­er per­son watch­es this and decides ​‘I want to sell drugs’, they need real help, real support.”

In recent years, the term ​‘coun­ty lines’ has become some­thing of a buzz­word, par­tic­u­lar­ly in polit­i­cal speak. The issue has been used in recent times to jus­ti­fy increas­ing polic­ing resources and pres­sure on already over­po­liced com­mu­ni­ties. In Octo­ber 2022, a so-called ​“inten­si­fi­ca­tion week” saw 1,360 peo­ple arrest­ed, with Home Sec­re­tary Suel­la Braver­man com­ment­ing at the time: ​“Coun­ty lines bring vio­lence and mis­ery to com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, and it is vital we stamp them out.

“I wel­come these recent oper­a­tional suc­cess­es, and we are con­tin­u­ing to sup­port these impres­sive oper­a­tions by pro­vid­ing up to £145m over the next three years through our Coun­ty Lines pro­gramme,” she continued.

But Femi isn’t con­vinced such tac­tics and lan­guage – of focus­ing resources towards clamp­ing down and hard­en­ing crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, will solve the root caus­es of the issues. ​“They’re fool­ish, because they cre­at­ed the prob­lem,” he asserts about those at the head of gov­ern­ment. ​“They cre­at­ed the cir­cum­stances for these prob­lems to exist. I grew up at a time when there were youth clubs, and they were well-fund­ed. By lim­it­ing fund­ing to these organ­i­sa­tions, you cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where young peo­ple have nowhere to go, where young peo­ple have no sup­port out­side of school if they’re from a deprived back­ground, so politi­cians need to bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for what’s going on rather than try­ing to shift the bark onto young peo­ple them­selves. How can young peo­ple be the vic­tim and the prob­lem?”

There can be no deny­ing that coun­ty lines is a seri­ous issue in the UK, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to young peo­ple. Chil­dren and teenagers are often recruit­ed into mov­ing and sell­ing drugs because they are deemed to be less like­ly to be stopped and searched by police. Accord­ing to Home Office fig­ures, an esti­mat­ed 27,000 chil­dren are involved in coun­ty lines, while the Children’s Soci­ety pre­dicts that 4,000 teenagers in Lon­don alone are being ​“crim­i­nal­ly exploited”.

As Femi says, it’s a sit­u­a­tion that has as much to do with the strip­ping of youth fund­ing and oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, as ris­ing pover­ty among the most vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety. Gov­ern­ment aus­ter­i­ty over the past 13 years has led to low­er wages for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, while cuts to wel­fare and ben­e­fit pay­ments have left mil­lions with less mon­ey in their pock­ets, all against a back­drop of a cost of liv­ing cri­sis dri­ven by rapid ris­es in inflation.

Mil­lions are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep their heads above the pover­ty line. It means that there is less mon­ey for par­ents to keep their chil­dren prop­er­ly fed, and less time to ensure they are stay­ing out of trou­ble. An Observ­er report from Decem­ber warned that coun­ty lines gangs were ​“using burg­ers and warm coats to recruit hun­gry, cold chil­dren”.

But there’s the chance to tack­le some of the issues at the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er, with a pan­el dis­cus­sion tak­ing place inside the House of Com­mons to dis­cuss coun­ty lines and oth­er themes in the film. ​“We can’t just be hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion down here,” Femi says, antic­i­pat­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spot­light the issues. ​“We need to be hav­ing it up there. It’s impor­tant. We need to be chal­leng­ing the pow­ers that be to enact change.”

Two days lat­er, the dis­cus­sion takes place in a Par­lia­ment com­mit­tee room, reached after going through air­port-style secu­ri­ty and pass­ing sev­er­al mar­ble stat­ues of for­mer Prime Min­is­ters in the grand, goth­ic, cor­ri­dors of pow­er. At the head of the room sits Femi, Abra, pan­el chair Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP for Streatham, CEO of Enact Equal­i­ty L’Myah Sher­ae, youth coach and cam­paign­er Amani Simp­son, and Pow­er The Fight founder Ben Lind­say OBE.

Over two-and-a-half-hours, the pan­el dis­cuss the impact of pover­ty on the increas­ing num­bers of chil­dren involved in crim­i­nal gangs, how drug crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and the ​‘War on Drugs’ has only exac­er­bat­ed crime, and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate effects of harsh polic­ing on eth­nic minori­ties. ​“Black and Asian peo­ple are 240 per cent more like­ly to receive a prison sen­tence than their black coun­ter­parts,” L’Myah says. ​“In regard to drug offences again, only eight per cent of white sus­pects are actu­al­ly arrest­ed, where­as 18 per cent of Black sus­pects are arrest­ed. The stats are super clear.”

When speak­ing about TRAP­PING, Amani and Femi explain how they have had con­ver­sa­tions about col­lab­o­rat­ing and using the project to teach chil­dren about the dan­gers of becom­ing involved in coun­ty lines. Amani has also made a short film called SAVE ME, which has been com­mis­sioned by Enfield Coun­cil and London’s Vio­lence Reduc­tion Unit to be used as a train­ing tool.

With the con­ver­sa­tions in Par­lia­ment and the pow­er­ful themes of the film, Femi hopes that TRAP­PING can make an impact. When Amani rais­es the idea to show both his film along­side Femi’s in schools, they’re both in agree­ment. ​“I’m all for col­lab­o­ra­tion. You can take the film into schools, I’ll make it avail­able to you Amani and you can do what­ev­er you need to do with it,” he says.

​“It’s impor­tant for every­one to know that these are all our chil­dren,” Amani responds. ​“Even if it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly come into your house­hold, these are going to be the chil­dren that are around your chil­dren. Ulti­mate­ly, we all have to come togeth­er to make this work. Oth­er­wise, it’s going to be anoth­er 10 years of us talk­ing about the same things.”

Watch TRAP­PING at The Drop.

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