Premiere: National Film Theatre, 28th January 2000

The ambition to create something lasting and worthwhile is powerful in all of us, but very few of us have the strength to carry it out, and with good reason. Apathy is not merely restricted to student politics - today if you have a vision, you are more likely to be ignored or ridiculed than helped in realising your dream. This is certainly the case for Simon Rumley, a young film director who was so appalled by the lack of interest in his ideas that he went out and made his film anyway, on a minuscule budget.

Rumley's idea was simple: to create a snapshot of life in London at the turn of the Millennium in a trilogy of feature-length films. Having already cut his teeth on short 8mm and 16mm films while a law student, he wrote the first two instalments of his planned series while working as a runner on other film projects, before calling in all the favours he could in order to make Strong Language.

It is one thing to write, produce and direct a masterpiece, but quite another to get other people to believe in it as strongly as yourself. On the plus side, critics gave it a definitive thumbs-up: Total Film described it as the "quintessential late 90s British film" while the Telegraph dubbed it "the hippest film of the year". Despite this acclaim, Rumley was discouraged by the fact that no distributor would touch it.

Realising that without a commercial release, the other two parts of his triptych would never be made, Rumley concentrated on showing his film wherever he could; at one point, he offered it to Surrey's very own Oscar Film Unit (who rejected it because, without a distribution deal, the only copies of the film were on video).

A chance encounter with the director of the National Film Theatre has finally resulted, after four years, in a cinematic release, albeit for a single week. Strong Language opened on Friday to a packed NFT1.

The evening's programme commenced with a delightful short comedy by Jamie Goold called The Rules Of Engagement, which struck chords with everyone who had shared a house with their other half. Then the main feature - regrettably still only being projected from a video - began to a still slightly-sceptical crowd, who rather feared that the supporting short would be the only entertainment they would get all evening. At first, the appearance of Rumley’s name a half dozen times in the opening credits did little to dispel their fears that this was the work of a keen amateur. They need not have worried: Rumley's wacky sense of humour and unique style easily won them over.

Strong Language breaks cinematic rules by having a cast of seventeen young Londoners, none of whom ever meet up on-screen. Rather, they talk to the camera as though to an old friend, Talking Heads-style, about issues that affect them: drink, drugs, clubs, sex, music. They come from a variety of backgrounds and professions, including a college lecturer, a fetish model and one young lady who says she is "far too busy to work". Whilst the various anecdotes they offer are often fall-about funny and sometimes completely hilarious, and occasionally even deeply insightful, it is in the tragic twist-ending to the film, in which we discover that all these characters are inextricably linked by a terrible shared experience, that the film finds its greatest strength. There is no plot to the film, as such, unless it is the devastating story told by one of the characters - around which the others make their comments on every subject from New Labour to AIDS and which, as it eventually unfolds, serves to tightly bind the film and the otherwise detached characters together.

The film concluded with a well-earned and enthusiastic round of applause for its creator, who then answered questions from the audience, during which he shared his frustration at the film industry who would not take the risk of funding his venture. In particular he spoke of his despair when one distributor walked out of a screening after just ten minutes because he had another appointment - only to then spend an hour chatting with Rumley in the bar.

Since completing Strong Language, Rumley has filmed the second part of his trilogy, The Truth Game; but sadly, this does not yet have a distribution deal either. Consequently, he still does not have the finance for the final part of the series. "If Quentin Tarantino were making films in England", says Rumley, "he'd probably still be waiting for a response from The Bill or Hollyoaks or Eastenders and all the agents would say we think your stuff's a little bit too racy and there's too much swearing and it's slightly politically incorrect..."

But so far 2000 has been a good year for him, with an article published in last Sunday's Observer about his experience at the Sundance Festival, and yet more rave reviews for Strong Language after its successful premiere. Now he is looking forward to its release on video and DVD in March. After that, he will be finishing and releasing The Truth Game before starting work on the final part of the trilogy, Club Le Monde. If the standard of Strong Language is anything to go by, let us all hope that he does find the money from somewhere.