From Israel to Canada: yesterday’s soldier looks back with regret
What a tragically sad title for Itai Erdal’s monologue at the Finborough Theatre: Soldiers of Tomorrow.
When the aid worker met the Kenyan activist
What has Florence Nightingale got to do with the post-World War Two international development aid industry?
A Fine Idea joins the dots on the failure of aid
Theatre should make you think, but the Arcola is about to ask audiences to consider a particularly awkward and painful question: if you support international aid, do you really want to change the world — or do you just like the idea of helping?
Project Black Planet fights its way through a thicket of jargon
Forget the academic jargon that infests the new blockbuster exhibition on Panafricanism at the Barbican and enjoy the fighting spirit, creativity, bite, diversity, drama and humour on show.
Chicken steals the show in people-smuggling drama
I felt sure that A Useful Ghost - a Thai love story about vacuum cleaners - was a shoo-in for the most unusual film of the year. Until I saw Hen.
A Jewish family, killing Nazis and supporting Palestinians
Is anti-Zionism antisemitic? If you think so, or perhaps have been accused of being antisemitic for supporting Palestinian protesters. Kaddish is for you.
Striking voices from the Asia-Pacific region
Instead of the grimacing Maori warrior or dancer you might expect at Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, you are confronted at the exhibition entrance by a pot-bellied figure of a Polynesian security guard.
When Third Cinema was a power in the land
One of the glories of London’s mega-galleries and museums is their willingness to put on exhibitions about important subjects that are of interest to only a few people.
Dust to dust: A love story about animated vacuum cleaners
A Useful Ghost is almost certainly the strangest film you will see this year.
A father’s shadow - and the shadow of a Nigerian coup
The set-up is disarmingly simple: “Two young brothers explore Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian elections crisis, witnessing both the city’s magnitude and their father’s daily struggles as political unrest threatens their journey home.”
Try a taster at the Museum of Edible Earth
Museum of Edible Earth is, of course, a tasting exhibition.
Have you heard the one about six Palestinian stand-ups who walk into a theatre?
Six stand-up comedians on a tour of Palestine? You must be joking.
They are. And (most) audiences are laughing.
A British Indian-Pakistani romcom sparked by diabetes
Sweetmeats is an elderly Indian-Pakistani romcom set in London about past marriages, new love, food and diabetes. It’s a delight.
From boy to man in a flash in the Lord’s Resistance Army
“If I invited you to come with me on a journey, a story, will you come with me?” asks Okumu at the outset of Far Gone. Of course, the audience says Yes. But what a journey, what a story.
How last-minute diplomacy halted a genocide
Safe Haven brings to the stage a hold-your-breath moment in Kurdish and Iraqi history when Saddam Hussein, forced out of Kuwait by overwhelming US force in 1991, turned his helicopter gunships on the Kurdish minority.
The voices of Gaza’s children, and a call for collective action
A Grain of Sand is a short, anguished cry for help for Gazan children
The Greenland shadow over a wonderful Hawaiʻi exhibition
US desire to take over Greenland casts an ominous shadow over the British Museum’s superb new exhibition, Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans.
A girl, a boy and a rooster and a cake for Saddam
“Cutesy and naive” or “beautifully shot and haunting”? Contrasting reviews in Letterboxd for The President’s Cake illustrate how critics and audiences vary so much in their reactions to films.
Twice-jailed Panahi spins a moral tale for our authoritarian times
When Eghbal, driving at night, accidentally kills a dog, his young daughter is upset. It Was Just An Accident, says her mother dismissively in the front seat. But life is not always so simple.
‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’ The tiger replies
You have to admire US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s ambition in taking on war and God as his main themes in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. And the title shows he has originality, too.