Once upon a time, a group of young graduates from the Nissan Nativ Actors Studio had a vision. They would work together as an ensemble, crafting comedy from absurdist observations, mime, dance, and physical humour, for the delectation of audiences wheresoever they might find them in Israel. They workshopped, brainstormed, burnt the midnight oil and came up with a show. It was presented to audiences, and it was perceived to be good. So they did it again. And again. And then they decided to do something distinctly different. “Why don’t …

Nimr is from Ramallah, studious and just that little bit shy. He’s working towards a postgraduate degree in Psychology at Birzeit, and hopes to do a Ph.D at Princeton. A visa allowing him to take classes at Tel Aviv University brings this dream just that bit closer within reach.
He has a secret life, though. (Don’t we all?) In the opening scene of Michael Mayer’s Out In The Dark, Nimr smuggles himself across the border dividing the Territories and Israel, and makes his way to the big city. Nimr is gay, …

Creativity finds many outlets, but stems from a common source: unimpeachable self-belief, such as to allow one conceive that they have something worth sharing with the wider world: something so different, so inventive, so new, as to compel others to pay attention to them. Exposing oneself thus comes with risks attached, of course. Believing that one has something important to say about the world is not quite the same thing as actually having something important to say. But as three very different documentaries to be screened at EPOS, the International …

Gaza, 1989. Tomer, 18 and a half, wide eyed and innocent, is on his first tour of duty. It’s particularly telling, even at the start, the inchoateness of his transition from carefree to combatant. One moment the boys are ribbing each other about girlfriends and the like, the next they’ve lined up in single file to receive magazines for their rifles. A red band around the cartridge denotes plastic bullets, a blue live ammunition. It’s good to know the distinction, but it might even better to know how to determine …

What Richard Did, Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s thoughtful and meditative new film draws inspiration from the notorious (and apparently purposeless) murder of a teenager by three contemporaries outside a Dublin nightclub in 2000. Important to emphasize inspiration, because rather than focusing on the whys and wherefores, What Richard Did instead uses the now-fictionalized event as the fulcrum to explore the moral and social values of an oft overlooked social milieu, the Irish middle classes.
The convincing authenticity of What Richard Did‘s mise-en-scene frames sharply observed but unforced portrayals of youth and …

Sex and disability both struggle to find realistic interpretation in film. The former frequently flounders amidst efforts to evoke a meaningful synthesis of emotion, desire and good old fashioned carnality; the latter is oft overwhelmed by well-intentioned but reductive constructs of the lesser-abled lacking autonomy, somehow deserving the audience’s sympathy just because of their challenges. The Sessions, an intelligent, funny and largely unsentimental film written and directed by Ben Levin, does well to find space within the cliche for a narrational depth often apparent only in its absence.
Disabled by polio, …

The trouble with Black Pond is that it tries a bit too hard to be all things at once. Not that one wishes to fault ambition, but it is a little frustrating to watch a film with so much potential sabotage itself through over-reach.
The Thompsons, one might say, are your average dysfunctional family. Empty nesters Tom and Sophie scarcely communicate, Sophie wandering about their large suburban home disjointedly whilst Tom takes walks in the nearby wood with their three-legged dog, Boy. Daughters Jess and Katie have shifted their squabbles to …

40 year on from the end of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, its unique contribution to comedy still lives on. Their perverse take on the beloved British tradition of “light entertainment” – rude, surreal, subversive, sweary, silly – still wields influence over later generations of comedians, sketch-writers, campaigners for free speech and the right to cause offence…  The last wouldn’t be immediately obvious to many, but as 2011’s Holy Flying Circus recalls, comedy can be a remarkably subtle vehicle for profound argument.
The Life of Brian, Monty Python’s 3rd feature film, makes …

What comes to mind when thinking about the British contribution to international cinema?  Costume dramas, perhaps? Mike Leigh? Smoothly spoken uber-criminals, Judy Dench? Maybe even improbably fluffy little dogs and psychopaths? But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to explain.
Martin McDonagh is not your typical British transplant to Hollywood. True, his roots lie in theatre, the film-making business’s most efficient farm system. But this is author of The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman that we’re talking about; it’s fair to assume that he didn’t head out West to …

In these uncertain times, it is always reassuring to know that certain anchors remain that we can orient our lives around. That the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, for instance. That politicians will continue to be economical with the truth. That Quentin Tarantino will never quite mature as a film-maker.
Cruel? I think not. The Tarantino that wrote and directed the just-released Django Unchained is not far removed from Tarantino that wrote and directed Reservoir Dogs back in 1992. First and last and always, he …