The short, tragic life of working-class playwright Andrea Dunbar - author of bawdy 1986 British movie Rita, Sue and Bob Too - is the starting point for this ingeniously staged drama documentary. Based on a series of tape-recorded interviews with the late writer's family and friends, it uses a cast of lip-synching actors to re-create events surrounding Dunbar's rise to fame from her poverty-stricken roots in the Bradford street that gives the film its title. Dunbar, however, is not the film's entire focus, and attention is swiftly switched to her mixed-race daughter Lorraine, whose startling true-life misfortunes dwarf anything in her mother's hard-hitting dramas. The style of the film is often brilliant and always arresting, especially when Dunbar's work is performed by lively local actors on her desolate former stomping ground. But for the closing moments, when the full horror of Lorraine's situation is revealed, a less unorthodox approach might arguably have been more appropriate.

The lives of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar and Lorraine, one of her daughters, and the community of Bradford, in the 30 years since the 18-year-old Andrea penned a play about growing up in the community titled "The Arbor".