In a Tunisian village, children are playing football on a wasteland. Meanwhile, Abdallah and Mohammed come across a donkey with headphones on his ears and bags full of a white powder on his back. The two young brothers decide to bring those bags (…) Continue Reading »

This sweet, topical short from director Daniel Marc Janes is both profound and poignant, masterfully touching on the English psyche from an outsider perspective. Shot in 16mm, the visually warm picture ends with a more succinct and intimate expression of Post-Brexit Britain than any insider knowledge could secure. It was showcased as part of the London Short Film Festival’s Visions of Albion (…) Continue Reading »

Aljafari’s Port of Memory is the second instalment of a three part series entitled Recollective Resistance, serving as a witness to the destruction, repopulation, and gentrification of the once thriving Palestinian port city of Jaffa – now an extension of Tel Aviv. Using footage from imperialist–themed action films set in Jaffa, Aljafari provides us with a memoir of the everyday activities (…) Continue Reading »

One day Ahmed, employed at the public baths and nearing retirement, encounters Mike, a teenager adrift. Between the bath house walls, in a place on the point of disappearing, a strange relationship will develop between these two fractured souls. (…) Continue Reading »

The Mole, (Yiling Ding, 2018) This short and enigmatic film is a glimpse into the life of a young masseur in Chinatown. A montage of moments in his working day at family-run Hong Ning Herbal Medicine, with voiceover narration in Chinese, (…) Continue Reading »

Telling a friend where I was going on Wednesday, I had hesitated over the title – was it ‘London Lives, as in ‘many lives’, or could it be lives, as in ‘she lives’? After taking in these eight juxtaposed stories, I felt sure it was the former – (…) Continue Reading »

Gaza never falters in its intimate portrayal of humans whose lives have been profoundly affected by political decisions made without their consent or interests at heart. The footage is unmanufactured; it is not a passive news report about the (…) Continue Reading »

The London Palestine Film Festival’s ‘Women of the Revolution’ event featured two films from female directors – both grainy but politically vital insights into the plight of Palestinians in the 1980s. The first, Layaly Badr’s Road to Palestine, (…) Continue Reading »

The London Palestine Film Festival opened with an expectedly strong, but nonetheless captivating experience, screening Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven at the Barbican. The film’s protagonist leads a life by observation, with Suleiman playing himself - only presumably more silent and bemused. His quizzical looks throughout invite us to view the bizarre events before our eyes with a similar (…) Continue Reading »

Avant de réaliser le long métrage documentaire L’époque (2018), Matthieu Bareyre a posé sa caméra à l’hippodrome de Vincennes. Loin des représentations de Degas et Manet, l’hippodrome est devenu un lieu devenu anonyme, voué à la fabrication et à la diffusion d’images. Sous les lumières blafardes et au milieu des chaises en plastique, Mehdi, Jimmy, Safir et Kader réalisent leurs pulsions (…) Lire la suite »