Poverty, despair - and a great film, in the mode of Winter's Bone

Not positive but pretty sure that Andrea Arnold, who wrote and directed "Fish Tank," is also the writer/director of the great Red Road - the two movies share a setting and a world view that you rarely see in movies, thoughtful and powerful presentations of a young woman (in Fish Tank the 15-year-old Mia) in Britain's dreary industrial suburbs and projects (setting not specified in Fish Tank, perhaps outside London?) who faces a crisis in her life and through strength and wherewithal and cunning takes life into her own hands at great risk, in the process gaining some victory but suffering great loss, too. Mia, in Fish Tank, is a totally tough customer, not at all sympathetic, at least at first, but you see the horrible family she comes from, the endless cycles of poverty and despair, and you wonder what hope she has - though she does have some because of the strength of her personality. There's not a moment of sentiment or sweetness here. Also, not a moment that's anything but completely credible (in this regard, FT is better than Red Road, which, for all its strengths, relied on several improbabilities and even impossibilities to bring its plot to conclusion). Katie Jarvis is, I think, the name of the actor playing Mia; she's great. Arnold has staked out a territory all her own, though she shares a lot of the world view of the Belgian directors, the Dardennes (L'Enfant, et al.), and maybe a little of view of a few American indies such as Winter's Bone. But there aren't many others. You wouldn't want all films to be like this, but it's great that some films take on such difficult subjects, settings, and people with honesty and compassion.