This movie is like a Play for Today updated for the 21st century

The Herald Scotland

10-06-2025

But right now, right at this moment in Edinburgh in August 2024, Hudson is all nerves and anticipation. 'You make a film and you are in an incubation period for a long time and then it's here.'
It's been worth the wait. Lollipop is a small film with a big heart. Hudson has brought all of that energy to bear on it and the result is compelling. It's the story of Molly - played by Posy Sterling in what should be a star-making turn - fresh out of prison who's keen to see her two kids again. But they have been absorbed into foster care and all of her efforts to get them back are blighted by polite but obstructive bureaucracy.
It's a film about homelessness and love and despair and it feels like a Play for Today updated for the 21st century. A contemporary Cathy Comes Home, if you like, but not without hope. Ultimately, it's a hymn to friendship and resilience.
'Maybe at first it feels relentless,' Hudson admits, 'but what is so powerful and profound is Molly's absolute determination and firecracker energy to keep going, driven by that lioness protective energy of what it means to be a mother.'
Lollipop is a film with an all-female cast and at its heart is Sterling as its flawed, heroic heroine. It's a film that plays out on Sterling's face.
Lollipop Director Daisy-May Hudson (Image: PA)
'Posy was the first person we saw,' Hudson recalls. 'That's some spooky stuff, isn't it? And she walked in through the door and I was like, 'I can't believe the person that I've written in the film is actually walking through this door.'
"She was just so alive and she was genuinely moved by the script. She read it seven times before she walked in. And she wanted to ask me so many questions. I could feel that it was in her and you see it on screen.
'She just gave everything in the most incredible way.'
Hudson and Sterling could be sisters. Or maybe it's Hudson and Molly who could be related. Hudson, after all, is not a voyeur in this world.
Lollipop is deeply researched, but also comes from lived experience. In 2013, when she was in her early twenties, Hudson's own family were made homeless. Hudson started to film the experience and her mother's battles to find them a new home. That became Hudson's debut documentary film, Halfway. Now she has turned to fiction to tell another similar story about those at the margins and the battles they have to fight every single day.
Lollipop is a film about relationships - failing ones in the case of Molly's mum [TerriAnn Cousins] - and supportive ones, as with Molly's best friend Amina [played by Idil Ahmed].
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But it's also a movie that tells us something about social systems and how they become a barrier rather than a conduit.
'Halfway came from this feeling of not feeling heard or not feeling seen,' Hudson admits. 'I went to a protest outside the Houses of Parliament and I saw these women who were protesting for the right to have their children back. They weren't being listened to and they weren't being seen and I could connect to that.
'I think a lot of what drives me and my work is to be able to create space to be able to listen to people who aren't heard. Because I think magical things happen when we actually listen to each other.'
Hudson did a lot of listening in preparation to making Lollipop. 'Because I come from a documentary background I'm already a complete nerd and love to research for months.
'So, when I found these women I did a lot of research from their perspective - just hearing them and understanding.'
She also spoke to women who had been in prison, and to social workers, housing officers, a family lawyer and a judge.
'It was really important to me that, even though it's told from Molly's perspective, it is also true and authentic and everyone feels that it's a fair representation. I'm not saying one person is bad and one person is good. It's about really questioning this system as it is. Does it work? And is it effective?'
What emerges is a vision of a bureaucracy that is not malign but politely frustrating.
'I think that's what I noticed from my own experience of homelessness. No one that I met were villains. I don't think people go into a job to be horrible to people. I think they genuinely go in because they want to make a difference. And then what happens is you have years of it and it's so emotional and so heartbreaking and you can't help people and you have to start to self-protect.'
And ultimately, she says, many of us only one missed rent payment, one lost job away from finding ourselves in the same position as Molly.
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'You're just one choice or one teacher's encouragement or one father's absence away from being on the other side of the table."
Hudson knows that all too well from her own life. How, I wonder, has her own experience of homelessness shaped who she is today?
'I think that it really enabled me to see the power of using our creativity to transform our pain into light and joy and something that can be medicine for others.
'That was a big driving force for me when I was making Halfway. I want people who are also going through this experience to not feel the isolation and the loneliness that can come from being homeless. This is a shared collective experience.'
This is the drive behind everything she does, she says. 'How can we keep coming back to our shared humanity and our collective experience? Turning our pain into something beautiful.'
What does the word 'home' mean to you now, Daisy-May?
'I think home is inside now. It's inside of you. You can create a feeling of home wherever you go. Because I think when we rely too heavily on government or councils - things outside of us - we lose sight of what is important.
'And for me home is - and it sounds so cheesy, but it's absolutely authentic and true - home is in my heart.
'Once you find that, it's this groundedness and centredness that means that you can navigate anything in life.'
It's not necessarily bricks and mortar, then.
'I don't think so, no.'
Lollipop is in cinemas now