About this series
The Bill Douglas Trilogy recounts the harrowing experiences of a young boy, Jamie, growing up in crippling poverty: material and emotional impoverishment; harrowing privations at the hands of his paternal grandmother; incarceration in a children’s home; living in a hostel for down-and-outs.
All films — in order
1
My Childhood
The first part of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.
2
My Ain Folk
When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
3
My Way Home
Jamie leaves the children's home to live with his paternal grandmother. After working in a mine and in a tailor's shop, he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.
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