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It's hard not to feel slightly depressed about the subject of Peter Mullan's new film.

Writ high in giant letters around Glasgow's Cineworld Cinema - NEDS.

Film critics have been raving about it.

The San Sebastian Film festival gave it their top award - and another for its teenage star Conor McCarron.

But do we need another film about Glasgow's grim and depressing gang culture?

Mullan certainly believes so.

It's been almost a decade since his last film - Magdalene Sisters - and this was on his radar long before. He describes the story as "personal but not autobiographical".

His own experience of gang culture was on the fringes but enough to inform the film's narrative.

It does have its funny moments - not least the best schoolteacher cameo, from Gary Lewis, since Chic Murray in Gregory's Girl - but mostly it's a sad and moving story about a young boy let down by his friends and his family (Mullan gives a searing performance as his drunken, violent father).

Its authenticity is further helped by the fact that Mullan - and his brother, the casting director - chose to use untrained local youngsters, rather than the usual source of the Scottish Youth Theatre.

The result is some genuinely unsettling, and adrenalin-fuelled performances.

Then there's McCarron, himself, his stocky, sweet-faced John McGill is a far cry from the Mullans' vision of a wiry youth - but his performance is both enthralling and disturbing, as he descends from studious kid to out of control teenager to full-blown pyschotic.

His performance has been compared to De Niro - not bad for a boy, whose main ambition until now was completing a course in heating insulation at Cardonald College.

The ending is surreal and ambiguous.

You can only hope McGill transcends his circumstances - and finds a way out of the spiralling tit-for-tat violence.

Mullan himself may have only been on the sidelines of gang culture, but he moved on to tell his tale, a heartbreaking story of the pointless cycle of violence which continues today.

In a sad ironic twist, McCarron's own father is currently serving a prison service for the knife murder of a customer in his Glasgow pub.

Mullan is quick to defend his young actor.

"We carried out thorough checks of all the cast when we began filming - to make sure no-one was involved in anything untoward, particularly with over 16s working with under 16s.

"This (the murder) happened when filming was finished and we were in post production so it wasn't an issue at the time.

"Thankfully we live in society where the sins of mums, fathers, uncles, siblings should not be visited on the individual.

"For me it's unspeakably unfair because you cannot have the crimes of relatives determining the lives of a complete innocent who had nothing to do with the crime."

So do we need another film about gangs? Bafta clearly don't think so.

The film was completely ignored on their shortlist announced earlier.

But Mullan is unfazed.

"I don't think Bafta juries watch half the films that are out there so I'm really not disappointed.

"I'm much more interested in how the film goes down with real audiences when it's released next week. That's what really counts."

NEDS is on general release from Friday.