‘Grief can cause such a disruption,’ proves more than just a homily for young Dondo (Louis McCartney), an angst-ridden teenage surfer returning home to Lewis on the Outer Hebrides. Writer/director Johnny Barrington’s bittersweet drama takes place in a well-drawn island community where Dondo is harbouring questions about his father’s disappearance at sea, with messy catharsis coming about through his relationship with classroom rebel Sas (Ella Lily Hyland).

Silent Roar is an emotionally sensitive, but also bracingly rude account of a teenager wrestling with intertwined notions about his faith in god and the fate of his father. It’s also peppered with the kind of lively sex talk that producer Chris Young mastered with The Inbetweeners, and a strong sense of the remote setting. If the final gear-shift from pawky coming-of-age comedy to sea-superstition melodrama feels abrupt, there’s an agreeable awkwardness about Barrington’s well-acted film that’s sympathetically in-tune with Dondo and Sas’ predicaments by the slight yet transcendent coda.

With a keen awareness of the barely repressed sexual energy of Scottish teenage life, Silent Roar is an assured debut from Barrington, not conforming to Scottish cinema clichés about sentiment but offering a caustic alternative. Taking its name from the sound of surf, Silent Roar is a small, individual film that should find some resonance with audiences at home and abroad.

Silent Roar reviewed as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival.