The tug of home, the lure of the street
It’s street versus home in Ish, a coming of age story about a Muslim British Asian in the Bedfordshire town of Luton.
Souleyman pedals for his life on the streets of Paris
Souleymane’s Story begins in an asylum assessment office in Paris and ends with an intense asylum interview that takes an unexpected turn.
A love letter to Ghanaian cinema gold
Lights! Camera! Action! Yet another film about film-making and a disused cinema: this time it’s about Ghana, and it’s a delight.
Med migrants through their own lens: building a new future
Documentaries about “small boats” usually portray the migrant passengers as victims of people smugglers. Not in The Travelers (Les Voyageurs).
Yaounde’s tough cop takes on crime - and his family
Here’s a collector’s item: a police procedural set in Cameroon.
One Woman One Bra and one non-message film with a message
The title of One Woman One Bra comes from a conversation between an awkward meeting between a gung-ho Western NGO worker and a desperate landless villager, Star.
A moving glimpse of Ivorian life in Tunisia - and a warning
Promised Sky, about three Ivorian women struggling to make new lives in a less-than-welcoming country, is a reality for millions of migrants around the world today — and may be a worrying future for many in UK unless we manage to halt the rise of the far Right and its anti-immigrant agenda.
A howl of protest, a ballet of pillage and destruction
Uprooted is a nerve-jangling howl of protest - against the rape of Latin America’s natural resources, its indigenous peoples, its environmental defenders, many of whom are women.
‘If you say black, you should see black’
The subject of Kerry James Marshall’s paintings are Black people. Very black people. He ignores the many hues and shades of Africa and the diaspora.
Sexual violence in conflict - ‘the cheapest weapon known to man’
Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Conflict is tough viewing, and some people understandably will not want to see it.
Starring role for snakes in Ancient India exhibition
Snakes rarely get a good press, but they almost steal the show in the British Museum’s exhibition, Ancient India: living traditions.
Thirst: an exhibition bridge over troubled water
There’s no doubt about the relevance of the Wellcome Collection’s new exhibition, Thirst: In Search of Freshwater.
Postcards from Africa
It’s a pleasing idea: 11 individuals fan out across 54 African countries to compile a state-of-the-continent report for the Arcola Theatre stage.
Remember the Sudanese protesters who thought their time had come
Hind Meddeb’s documentary is called Sudan, Remember Us. And we should.
A story, and a life, that’s not easy to tell
Little Brother is Ibrahima Balde’s extraordinary journey from a Guinean village, across a desert dotted with the bodies of migrants, hours of feet-blistering walking, to torture, slavery and vile racist abuse (“Libya is not a place for the living”), and to an overcrowded slowly-sinking boat to Europe.
Brilliant British story about asylum - and OCD
Ignore the title, Insane Asylum Seekers, which suggests a whacky comedy straining for laughs. Think instead of an intimate, brilliantly written and performed monologue about a British Iraqi family.
Kurdish revolution hanging by a thread
Documentaries don’t get more esoteric than Threads Of A Revolution: it’s about a woman’s tenuous connection to a little-known social experiment in an unreported part of the world.
Plunder, art and the British Museum: Time to go home
“All of human history? It’a basically people taking things from other.” A 1,000-year-old statue is moved from the British Museum to a Chinese airport.
Revisiting 1960s class warfare
Lessons on Revolution is like a dramatic, imaginatively presented lecture, which is appropriate since it’s about a 1968 London School of Economics student uprising.