‘You end up as ghosts’ … Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Daryl McCormack, Jay Lycurgo and Lola Petticrew in I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. Photograph: Chris Harris View image in fullscreen ‘You end up as ghosts’ … Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Daryl McCormack, Jay Lycurgo and Lola Petticrew in I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. Photograph: Chris Harris Film ‘To succeed meant to leave’: inside the jolting film about Brummie estate kids knocked flying by demolition The novel had no hero, no dialogue and little action. So how was I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning turned into such a funny, rousing and acclaimed film? Director Clio Barnard reveals all
Xan Brooks Thu 15 Oct 2026 06.00 CEST Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2026 09.29 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A s a kid in 90s Birmingham , Keiran Goddard would gather with his friends to watch the tower blocks coming down. That’s what passed for entertainment back then. Controlled explosions, collapsing buildings. The demolition of Shard End’s postwar council estates marked the end of one story and the start of another. It was a dust-blown display of regeneration and progress. The housing that replaced it would be an improvement. The people of east Birmingham would move on to better lives.
Goddard, specifically, moved on to study English at Oxford University. He now lives in London and writes books for a living. Physically, he has left his home town far behind. Emotionally and spiritually, not so much. “So I feel quite splintered,” he says. “I’m not sure anyone ever really leaves the world they grew up in.”
‘Work hard, rise out of your class – that was the story’ Goddard’s Birmingham-set second novel has just been made into a film. Enda Walsh wrote the script; Clio Barnard called the shots. Set in and around Shard End, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a jolting, stirring ensemble drama in which a tower block’s demolition serves as a kind of societal big bang, spinning five childhood friends into a fraught adulthood.
When writing the book, Goddard identified with the character of Patrick, the idealistic graduate turned zero hours delivery driver who argues that decent housing is a basic human right, not a capital asset. But he’s also like Rian, the group’s breakout star, who made a killing on the stock market and bought a sterile London flat. Rian is the chief investor behind a new apartment complex that is to be built on the bones of the old estate. The film shows it rising in time-lapse leaps and bounds, just as historic strains set to work on Rian’s close-knit gang of mates.
View image in fullscreen ‘Joy in itself can be its own positive protest’ … Clio Barnard. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/the Observer The story scaffold may be simple, yet the drama that follows is anything but. It’s nuanced, thorny and possibly irresolvable, with no easy answers or obvious hero to root for. Goddard wrote the book as a series of interior monologues then delivered it to his agent and editor in a spirit of wild optimism. “I said, ‘You know, I think it’s got some cinematic potential.’ And both of them replied, saying, ‘There’s no dialogue and not much happens. It’s got the least cinematic potential of anything that we’ve seen.’”
Read more The film was a challenge, Barnard admits. It’s about the pull of the past and the sharp edge of the present, stitching an intimate human story against the broader social canvas. “It feels to me that there is an equality in this group of friends,” the director say…