Syria
Liaison, Apple TV+ review - tangly Franglais thriller presses some hot buttonsThursday, 02 March 2023![]() Vive l’entente cordiale! “Despite Brexit” (as the BBC likes to say), Apple TV+ has successfully bridged the Channel to create this lurid Anglo-French thriller, in which Euro-skulduggery rubs shoulders with bribery, corruption and high treason.At... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021![]() “I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
Limbo review - quiet but volubleSaturday, 31 July 2021![]() Displacement looms large over every quietly impressive frame of Limbo, writer-director Ben Sharrock's magnetic film about a young Syrian man called Omar (Amir El-Masry) who finds himself biding his time in the remotest reaches of Scotland on the way... Read more... |
Mark Townsend: No Return review - a masterclass in journalismWednesday, 08 April 2020![]() When Amer Deghayes departed for Syria in a truck leaving from Birmingham, a worker from a youth arts organisation in Brighton had been trying to get in touch with him. She wanted to inform Amer, an intelligent and creative 18-year-old who had once... Read more... |
The Cave review - heroic Syrian hospital workersMonday, 09 December 2019![]() War crimes are war crimes, irrespective of the victims’ ages, gender, or ethnicities, and no one’s torture or murder is more abhorrent than anyone else’s. Yet because children are essentially innocent and incapable of defending themselves, and... Read more... |
For Sama review - besieged, bombed, and defiant in SyriaSaturday, 14 September 2019People who idly use the phrase “it’s like living in a war zone” when considering their domestic mess should see Waad al-Kateab’s documentary For Sama.Everyone should see it, in fact. Waad lived in a terrifying war zone – besieged East Aleppo in... Read more... |
CD: Bedouine - Bird Songs of a KilljoyThursday, 20 June 2019![]() With her timeless vocals and jazz-inflected folk melodies, it feels like a bit of Los Angeles songwriter Bedouine lives in the golden age of Hollywood. It’s a dichotomy she goes as far as to address on “Echo Park”, a woozy Sunday morning wander... Read more... |
A Private War review - Rosamund Pike burns with passion in well-meaning biopicSaturday, 16 February 2019![]() The Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin lived such a fearless life that it's a shame this celluloid biopic isn't correspondingly brave. Sincere to a fault and bolstered by a blazing performance from an impassioned Rosamund Pike, Matthew... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Matthew Heineman on directing 'A Private War'Saturday, 02 February 2019![]() The release of Matthew Heineman’s film A Private War, about the tumultuous life and 2012 death of renowned Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, has gained an added edge of newsworthiness from this week’s verdict by Washington DC’s US... Read more... |
DVD: A Moment in the ReedsFriday, 12 October 2018![]() Mikko Makela’s debut feature is as sheerly concentrated a piece of filmmaking as you can imagine. The Finnish director – previously better known as an actor – manages his principle cast of three immaculately as they play out a powerful drama that... Read more... |
Under the Wire review - risking everything to tell the world the truthWednesday, 05 September 2018She was “the most important war correspondent of her generation”, says Sean Ryan, her editor at The Sunday Times. And her colleague Paul Conroy describes her as “a complete and utter one-off – exceptionally driven, with a real sense of purpose”.... Read more... |
The Jungle, Playhouse Theatre review - new territorySaturday, 07 July 2018![]() "I am dead," declares Okot before recounting the horrors he survived to reach Calais. Each time, he says, "I died." How many times can you die before you are truly dead? What is it that finally kills you? These are the questions at the heart of... Read more... |
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