Watching The Last Tree for the second time, I thought I detected echoes of Chris Doyle’s shimmering work for Wong Kar-wai in director of photography Stil Williams’s terrifically expressive cinematography. Widescreen, hand-held closeups and the regular use of slow-mo place us inside Femi’s experience, with the super-saturated colours of those early Lincolnshire scenes contrasting with the starker hues of London life and the emotional melee of a late-in-the-day trip to Lagos. Each location has its own distinct personality but everything is filtered through Femi’s changing frame of mind. There are visual nods to the iconic final scene of Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups and a sly invocation of Spike Lee’s trademark “gliding walk” dolly shots, but such references feel organic rather than intrusive. They need more protection from the weather so they chop down trees to build shelters. When their shelters aren’t warm enough, they chop down more trees to build cabins.

So by the time we find Femi again at 16, now played by a brooding Sam Adewunmi, he’s grown a carapace of hard-man masculinity. Listening secretly to The Cure while telling friends it’s Tupac, he’s learned to hide his soft underbelly. Despite this, the film opts to show him dabbling rather than diving into lawlessness – shoplifting, enforcing Mace’s beatings, acting as a bemused lookout during a violent crime – which is a useful reminder that teenage life is mutable. Not every ‘lieutenant’ inevitably opts to stay with the gang. Nonetheless, it gives the plotting an oddly uncommitted air. Then they found the forest. It was perfect. The leaves gave shelter from the sun and rain, and a gentle breeze wound through the branches.A group of friends live happily in the forest until they decide to begin cutting down the trees to build homes and, ultimately, a huge wall. Then, living in the shadow of the wall, their friendship begins to fall apart. Change only happens when their children discover the last living tree and the joy of playing beside it. They decide to take matters into their own hands and ultimately help the adults realise that by protecting their environment they'll look after their community too. They’re happy playing among the trees and sleeping on the mossy ground until winter comes. They cut down branches for firewood. This book would be wonderful for generating discussion on the themes of taking care of our environment, working together, community and friendship. It also highlights the power children can have and use when they are given the opportunity to do so. From the author of the phenomenally successful The King Who Banned the Dark comes a new tale about community and our relationship with the environment and nature.

Writer-director Amoo’s plot takes on a generic gang-tale feel, however, as Femi is recruited by local gangster Mace (Demmy Ladipo). From early on, we understand that violence, from Yinka’s canings to the ‘punishment beatings’ he metes out on Mace’s behalf, is the price Femi pays for adult attention. OMG I can't believe this!!! It actually got me teary in the end! I have to admit, initially while glimpsing the thumbnail of the book cover, I honestly thought it were two little birdies on it lmao. It was until I started actually reading that I realized the figures are boys. The art style is easy to warm up to though! When summer returned, the sun was hot but there weren’t enough trees for shade. The people cut down more branches to make porches. The Last Tree” is an ecological fable for children. The story begins when a group of friends look for a place to live and settle in a forest. With nothing to look at but a wall, the villagers changed. They forgot their games and songs, and became cold and hard. They became suspicious of one another.A group of friends make their home in a forest. After years of happiness, the community begins to build houses and walls. Soon the adults are not curious about the world beyond. Can the children save the last tree? Their actions upon finding the little tree got to me. It was phrased so very simple, but I can practically hear the awe in the exclamation. Read this book, cherish trees, folks! When they heard their children playing by the tree and saw how the cool wind twisted gently though the tree’s branches, they remembered how things used to be. Suddenly, they understood what they had done wrong and decided to try to begin again. But when the children crept out beyond the wall and found one another by the little tree, they laughed and played. They tended the tree, and each day it grew taller and prouder. But the friends soon wanted to build shelters. The shelters became houses, then the houses got bigger. All too soon they wanted to control the environment and built a huge wooden wall around the community.