I Swear

I SWEAR (15)

D: Kirk Jones

StudioCanal / Tempo / One Story High (Kirk Jones, Georgia Bayliff & Piers Tempest)

UK 🇬🇧 2025

120 mins

Biopic/Drama

W: Kirk Jones

DP: James Blann

Ed: Sam Sneade

Mus: Stephen Rennicks

Robert Aramayo (John Davidson), Maxine Peake (Dottie Achenbach), Peter Mullan (Tommy Trotter), Shirley Henderson (Heather Davidson), Scott Ellis Watson (Young John)

I Swear is based on the true life story of John Davidson, a Scottish man suffering from Tourette Syndrome who would become an activist and campaigner for greater awareness and acceptance surrounding the condition.

The biopic follows John’s life from his school days, growing up in the small town of Galashiels in Scotland, where he starts to develop tics in early puberty, derailing his aspirations as a football goalkeeper and leaving school without qualifications. His parents since separated, he goes into young adulthood without employment and draining his mother of her patience, but the path of his life turns a corner when Dottie, a former mental health nurse takes him under her wing and convinces him to come off medication and embrace his ailment more and eventually helping him to obtain employment as a caretaker for a local community centre, where he sets up meetings for other people suffering from the same condition and aims to help them and their families cope easier with the difficulties they face.

It’s a very human story about a regular man with a long-suffering condition, filmed in a rather televisual style, but it doesn’t need any more than that. It may take some liberties with the factual events for dramatic purposes, but that’s par for the course for films of this type and isn’t a criticism, since the changes help with narrative flow and offer some often-humorous dialogue.  The real revelation here, however, is Robert Aramayo, whose performance is nothing short of brilliant, earning him a surprise Best Actor BAFTA Award in 2026 in a field with some very heavy-hitters.

There are several documentaries about John’s life also available to watch, but as a dramatic biographical film, this is exceptionally well done.

8/10