The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a 1962 film, based on the short story of the same name. The screenplay, like the short story, was written by Alan Sillitoe. The film was directed by Tony Richardson, one of the new young directors emerging from documentary films, specifically a series of 1950s filmmakers known as the Free cinema movement. It tells the story of "a rebellious youth" (played by Tom Courtenay), sentenced to a borstal (boys' reformatory) for robbing a bakery, who rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as the Governor's (played by Michael Redgrave) prize runner." Set in a grim environment of early-1960s Britain and like other films which deal with rebellious youth, it is a story of how the youth chooses to defy authority, in so doing securing his self-esteem (at the probable personal cos...