For want of a better word, there’s something really nice in the opening act of The Sweet East. It starts with some old home-videoesque grainy footage of a young couple behaving exactly like a young couple. They’re a bit awkward around one another, but they’re full of dreams and aspirations that they aren’t shy about. There’s an air of hope which only grows when we follow them, along with their classmates, to the White House on a school trip. We learn about how it deliberately faces west to look towards the rest of the country from its eastern position, and it’s all very promising. It feels as if we’re about to get a modern bildungsroman about the forgotten neighbourhoods that lie east of the White House. Brilliant.