Inside the austere walls of a juvenile detention centre, love dares to blossom against all odds in Zeno Graton’s bold and tender feature debut. After yet another of his many escape attempts, the restless Joe (brilliantly played by Khalil Ben Gharbia) is sent back to this forbidding facility. His wandering mind is awakened to new desires by the arrival of William (Julien De Saint Jean), a detainee with a penchant for breaking rules. While physical escape remains elusive, the mutual attraction between the two boys forms a means of emotional rescue.

Imbued with red-hot passion as well as tenderness, their intense bond defies the system of rules and surveillance that governs their every move. The days now come not only with tasks and lessons, but also kisses and embraces. At night, the lovesick pair press their bodies close to the wall that separates their cells, and as music from Joe’s radio floats through to William, this powerful scene pays tribute to Jean Genet’s classic queer short Un Chant d’Amour, in which two incarcerated inmates share a cigarette through a hole in the prison wall.

Graton’s film also emphasises the structural abuse that leads to the detainees’ criminal lives, against which rehabilitation measures and the good intentions of social workers prove equally inadequate. During a poetry exercise, Joe, choked with emotions, reads his piece out loud, speaking of his broken home life and the systemic racism he endures as a French youth of Arab descent. By design the cycle of incarceration is inescapable – yet, like the ouroboros symbol lovingly tattooed on Joe by William, the film also looks towards a different kind of cycle: the possibility for spiritual rebirth, as seen in the love that grounds the pair.

• The Lost Boys is released on 15 December in UK cinemas and on digital platforms.