A refreshingly honest portrayal of learning to live with Tourette's

Swear is a biographical drama based on Scottish campaigner John Davidson's experience of Tourette’s syndrome, writes Melina Malli, senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford.

- Melina Malli on I Swear

Spanning his teenage years to the present, it follows the first tics and their social fallout. It traces how Tourette's syndrome— and the relationships and institutions around it - shape a life over decades.

Swearing forms part of Davidson's experience —the film opens with an expletive-laden outburst at his MBE ceremony. But I Swear is careful to stress that coprolalia (involuntary swearing) affects only a small minority of people with Tourette's. In doing so, it moves decisively beyond the sensationalising of symptoms that so often dominates media representation.

Davidson's (Robert Aramayo) story begins in Galashiels, Scotland, in 1983, when he entered “big school”. At first, his tics are dismissed by teachers and classmates as little more than irritating, attention-seeking gestures. But gradually they become impossible to ignore - uncontrollable motor and vocal outbursts.

This shift strains Davidson's relationship with his father (Steven Cree), who had pinned hopes on his son’s promise as a footballer.

The dream of a professional career collapses, replaced by frustration and disappointment.

The consequences ripple outward to physical punishment at school and mounting conflict at home