It stars Aml Ameen, Red Madrell, Adam Deacon, Jaime Winstone, Femi Oyeniran, Madeleine Fairley, Cornell John, Kate Magowan, Pierre Mascolo (who also acted as executive producer), Rafe Spall and Nicholas Hoult.

The film explores themes, such as sex, drugs, bullying, violence, suicide, teenage pregnancy, gun control and racial issues.

Made on a budget of £560,000, Kidulthood was released theatrically on 3 March 2006 and received praise and controversy for its depiction of teenage life in London.

Having successfully sold the drugs they acquired earlier, they head to a shopping centre to buy dresses for a party later that evening, before meeting up with the boys.

As this occurs, Lenny arrives at the party; brandishing a gun, he forces Sam to the ground at gunpoint, and produces the note Katie wrote before she hanged herself.

Sirens are heard in the distance, so Lenny, his accomplice, and Sam all flee the party as Trife dies before the ambulance and police arrive.

He was also encouraged to write films about his own experiences by his mentor Rikki Beadle-Blair, who had given Clarke his first acting role in the Channel 4 television comedy drama series Metrosexuality (2001).

The script for Kidulthood was the fourth Clarke had ever written; the first two, Remembering Jessie and Society, were undeveloped and the third, the wedding-centric comedy The Knot, was later released in 2012.

According to Clarke, a large majority of the film is an autobiographical depiction of him and his four friends growing up in Ladbroke Grove, West London, with the expection of the character of Uncle Curtis and the gun drilling, which was added later on.

The soundtrack drew on British hip hop and grime music including The Streets, Roots Manuva, Dizzee Rascal and Lethal Bizzle.

What Kidulthood does is take all the violence, sex and intoxication experienced in a teenage year and condense it into a single day, because that's far more marketable than a film about eight kids spending four hours sitting on the swings wondering what to do".

[6] The Daily Mirror described it as being "as potent as a shot of vodka before breakfast – a harrowing, uncompromisingly bleak but thoughtful look at the anguish of being young and poor in Britain".