No Mean City

Three workmen drive through the city at night, replacing old sodium streetlights with LEDs. Beneath their glow, the city grapples with change.

In No Mean City, Ross McClean follows three workmen through the city of Belfast as they replace aging sodium street lamps with harsh LED lights. With perceptive observation and stunning cinematography, the film is a meditation on change — technological, generational and societal. Light itself emerges as a central character, casting new hues on familiar spaces, revealing hidden textures and questioning what is lost in the march of modernisation. Against the backdrop of a city undergoing a rapid transformation, the workers' conversations touch on fading traditions and the quiet obsolescence of once-valued roles. From orange glows to blue flickers, the film captures a city caught between nostalgia and progress, illuminating how even the smallest infrastructural shifts can echo through nature and culture.

Contains flashing images