Kisses is a Dublin film and a Christmas film. To 11 year old runaways Dylan and Kylie, the inner city offers a refuge from their stifling, abusive lives in the dreary suburbs – the film literally changing from black and white to colour as they sail down the grand canal towards the basin. Dublin at Christmas is initially presented as a consumerist wonderland, Jervis St shopping centre like the inside of a christmas bauble, filled with a light and warmth the kids aren’t used to as they zip around its shiny floors on their new Heelys.

When night falls, they take us down streets we’d usually avoid, in search of Dylan’s homeless older brother. Through the eyes of children, the darker side of city life takes on a sense of almost pantomime villainry, and scenes we routinely turn our backs on – people puking up their Christmas pints, cruising for underage girls, or in some cases, meeting a lonely end in the biting winter cold – take on a renewed sense of disturbing poignancy.

While the film is more than a little sentimental, Dublin is demonized more than romanticised. The vast suburban council estate they call home is decried by Kylie in no uncertain terms as “a kip”, and the inner city is filled with unfriendly natives that prompt her to remark “there is no devil, just people”. The cinematography works against the harsh narrative, creating a sense of fairytale appropriate to the season. Streetlights, car lights, and Christmas lights twinkle and blur across the screen, lending a pronounced sense of suspended time to the bustling city.