Pedro is a teenager who sells drinks in the traffic jam on an expressway that takes thousands of people to the coast during summer. Driven by curiosity and desire, Pedro embarks on an adventure that transforms him profoundly. Victor (…) Continue Reading »

Maria Salafranca’s film (titled Obituary Service For You in English) offers a tour of the funeral home in a small Cuban town led by Maurilio and Fidela, driver and assistant on duty, who have been preparing corpses for 17 years in the same space (…) Continue Reading »

‘I’ve lived here for 23 years, but I am afraid to call it home. There’s always the feeling that I have to leave.’ The opening line of the film All We Imagine as Light perfectly depicts the turmoil of being an immigrant, away from a land you call (…) Continue Reading »

It’s odd that, given the current state of things, online lists of ‘films that make you cry’ rarely include political documentaries. Maybe to be seen crying at such a film would betray a shameful naivete (‘didn’t they know the World Bank is evil? (…) Continue Reading »

Schuchi Talati’s first feature film Girls Will Be Girls (2024), starring Kani Kustruti and Preeti Panigrahi, is a tenacious yet tender tale of a mother and daughter in this quiet but dazzling coming of age story. Set in the Himalayas, the film (…) Continue Reading »

Films of Resistance: A Night of Shorts was held at the Genesis cinema in London. The programme of Palestinian shorts was put together by the newly created Films of Resistance initiative, backed by magazine Culturala. The films shown were: - (…) Continue Reading »

The screening programme Of The People, For the People: Militant Palestinian Cinema (1968-1982) was held as part of Doc City Festival. It was curated by filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky. Before attending Of The People, For the People, my main (…) Continue Reading »

I spoke to film critic and stand up comedian Nick Bartlett about the Karl Strauss technique in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the mirror gag in Airplane! and the old school effects used to create the beautifully macabre world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (…) Continue Reading »

Four kids from the refugee camp in Bethlehem decide to visit the sea for the first time in their life. Ibrahim Handal is a cinematographer and filmmaker living in Bethlehem, who graduated in Cinematography in 2019 from Dar Al-Kalima University. (…) Continue Reading »

In the first instalment of Talking Spectacles I spoke to Matt Houlihan from The Garden Cinema about the drooling aliens of Alien, Event Horizon’s gothic spaceships and the wonderfully absurd animatronics of The Thing. Alien - This is (…) Continue Reading »