Nil by Mouth was Gary Oldman’s bleak, brutal triumph – but why hasn’t he directed anything since?

Released 25 years ago, the celebrated actor’s filmmaking debut was widely praised as one of the best British films of its era, but it remains his sole directorial effort. Producer Douglas Urbanski tells Geoffrey Macnab why

Ray Winstone in Gary Oldman’s ‘Nil by Mouth' (Alamy)

Last summer, Gary Oldman and producer Douglas Urbanski went to the British Film Institute to watch a restored version of Nil by Mouth, the movie they made 25 years ago. “Neither of us had seen the film in years and years,” Urbanski recalls. “I have to tell you we were knocked over by how really wonderful it is; it really is a masterpiece. We were both pleasantly surprised to see how it remained powerful and potent – and, in a weird way, very prescient about women, Time’s Up and #MeToo.”

Set around south London pubs, streets and on council estates, Nil by Mouth is a hyper-realistic drama about working-class life, alcoholism, masculinity and family strife. Back in 1997, when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, most critics agreed that Oldman’s “bleakly brilliant” and “brutally truthful” directorial debut was indeed one of the best British films of its era. The film’s two lead actors – Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke – won many awards. Oldman’s sister Maureen, under her screen name Laila Morse, picked up the first ever BIFA award for Breakthrough Performance for her role as family matriarch Janet – and she was 51 at the time.

Behind the camera, Oldman showed the same relentless energy and invention which has always made him so compelling on screen. In his screenplay, he drew ingeniously and brilliantly on his own hardscrabble family history growing up in New Cross. The film followed in the long tradition of British social realism but, reflecting its director’s mercurial personality, it had an aggressive intensity which you didn’t always get with Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. Whereas they gave the impression of being outsiders looking in at the worlds they depicted on screen, this was a story told from the inside, from the guts.