A sly and darkly amusing British comedy, The Young Poisoner's Handbook features an exceptional talent in the shape of young Hugh O'Connor, who first came to notice in the Channel 4 film Lamb and later played the young Christy Brown in My Left Foot.
Here, O'Connor takes centre stage for the first time as 14-year-old Graham Young, a real-life murderer in Britain in the early 1960s (although the movie is only loosely based on Young's life).
As directed and co-written by Benjamin Ross, The Young Poisoner's Handbook is a very black comedy, a sinister little tale of genius run amok.
Shot darkly in the environs of London's North Circular Road, it starts out in 1961 Neasden, with schoolboy Young at the beginning of an obsessive love affair with his home chemistry set.
Fascinated with the poisonous substances antimony and thallium, the schoolboy boasts of one day becoming a famous toxicologist - but he knows he must experiment first, and starts out with his family, leaving behind a trail of illness, disfigurement and death among his immediate relatives and schoolfriends.
After finally dispatching his stepmother Molly (Ruth Sheen), Young is duly convicted of murder and sent to jail in a high-security mental institute.
There he befriends - in a fashion - the controversial Dr Zeigler (played by Anthony Sher), famous for his pioneering work with psychopaths. And on Dr Zeigler's recommendation, Young is paroled and sent back into society after eight years behind bars.