Second Chance – a high altitude tale of hope and kindness from filmmaker Subhadra Mahajan (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Second Chance is a beautiful slow hug of a film.

After a pregnancy scare and being ghosted by her boyfriend, 25-year-old Nia (Dheera Johnson) takes some time out and heads up to a village in the snowy heights of the Himalayas. Mobile coverage is patchy, the weather is extreme, but she’s close to nature and enjoys the different pace of life. But she’s not alone. As well as cooking and cleaning and spinning wool to earn extra money, the cabin’s housekeeper Bhemi (Thakra Devi) is responsible for a boisterous and Superman-obsessed grandson Sunny (Kanav Thakur).

The setting is suited to the black and white cinematography, and the coolness of the climate is soon in sharp contrast to the sense of understanding and gratitude that develops between Nia, Bhemi and Sunny. Into the mix comes an ex-boyfriend and his wife who provide (on balance) more comfort than regret. There’s also unexpected companionship courtesy of a beautiful kitten (Supercat played by Yuki).

While parents worry about Nia’s life mission to curate blends of tea, or create vegan nightwear, there are more pressing matters to be resolved. The healing trajectory of Nia’s sojourn in the hills is interrupted by further heartache in scenes that gently explore her choice in contrast with the tragic experience of Bhemi’s daughter/Sunny’s mum.

Indian writer/director Subhadra Mahajan crafts a gentle tale that is imbued with hope, kindness and a stern resolve to make good decisions rather than be pulled along by other people’s wishes. Hopefully this film will make its way into the QFT programme in months to come to give Belfast cinemagoers a Second Chance to enjoy it.

Belfast Film Festival continues until Saturday 9 November.

 

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Dead Man’s Money – where there’s a will there’s room for fear, uncertainty and doubt (Belfast Film Festival) #bff24

Screened as part of the 2024 Belfast Film Festival, Paul Kennedy’s new film Dead Man’s Money shows a lot of promise with great casting and some interestingly-constructed characters set loose in a close-knit community as a couple try to tie down their long-term financial security.

A childless couple run the local pub. The husband also puts a lot of work into a local farm. Both are owned by his uncle who has become flaky and workshy in recent weeks. Pauline fears that Young Henry might be labouring in vain if he doesn’t stand to inherit the farm and the pub from Old Henry. Maybe they should ask? Then the reason for Old Henry’s distraction is revealed: he’s spending a lot of quality time with Maureen Tweed, a woman from the village who has been thrice widowed. Will she obstruct Young Henry’s entitlement?

Judith Roddy and Ciarán McMenamin make a fun rural couple. Both Pauline and Young Henry are hard-working, but it’s Pauline who is the more hard-nosed and directly-spoken of the two. For a while – not least because of an opening quote, and the five act structure – it feels like they’ve been written as Lady Macbeth and the Thane of Cawdor … but that notion feels like it is stretched quite thin as the plot develops. While Roddy is fierce and can be brutally heartless, she still keeps a twinkle in Pauline’s eye and there’s a playfulness between the pair when spirits are up.

For a long time, Pat Shortt gives little away as Old Henry. In later scenes, he becomes more forthright, squaring up to the pressure coming from a Young Henry who has finally grabbed the inheritance bull by the horns. While Pauling and Young Henry fear Maureen – known as ‘Widow Tweed’ behind her back – Kathy Kiera Clarke plays her as an non-threatening woman who is quite unperturbed by the couple’s lack of manners. Into the mix comes Gerry the Wheels (Gerard Jordan), a henchman who sings rebel songs in his car, a republican with a paramilitary past and a violent future if you cross his palm with silver. He’s not the subtlest of characters, but serves the plot well. Watch out for the fine musical cameo by Mollie McGinn and Orláith Forsythe (Dea Matrona).

Ultimately, Dead Man’s Money suffers a bit of a slow puncture in the third act. There’s a very suspect bent-over-the-pool-table bonk scene that would have been better cut even shorter and solely played for laughs. Some non-emergency LED lighting remains on even though the pub is in the middle of a power cut. And having established that Pauline and Young Henry run Old Henry’s pub between them, when they disappear off to another room on one of the busiest nights of the year, the audience spend twenty minutes worrying about the mayhem in the main bar behind them. To make matters worse, their absence is on the mind of Gerry who seeks them out to say that there’s no one behind the bar and the punters are thirsty. Any sense of reality is lost, and there’s a heavy reliance on suspending disbelief. A couple of shots of a young lad from the village helping pull pints could have made this last annoyance go away.

Split into chapters, and full of scenes that separate pairs of characters away from the rest, Dead Man’s Money feels like a stage play that has been beautifully shot on film. It’s a fun 82-minute watch, but for me, the dark tragicomedy storyline is let down by its dramaturgy and believability (even in the rarefied world that has been constructed).

Belfast Film Festival runs until Saturday 9 November.

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Blitz – Steve McQueen pulls at the less well explored threads of wartime London (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November)

Blitz is on a similar scale to war films like Dunkirk. Its sets are huge, stuffed full of extras and moving machinery. CGI allow the camera to rise above London to see the scale of destruction from the German bombing raids. Yet at its heart, Blitz is the story of a single mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her son George (Elliott Heffernan) during a couple of days in 1940.

The script could have been predictable. Plucky Londoners taking shelter and pulling together when the bombs decimate their homes and families. Yet writer/director Steve McQueen hasn’t settled for simple remembrance and jingoism. He instead pulls at the threads of the well-understood period of wartime history and highlights how Londoners didn’t have adequate access to safe air raid shelters: tube stations were meant to be off limits. How racism was rife, seen through George’s experience as a biracial child who never knew his deported father. How social justice was misinterpreted as communism: “Maybe Jesus was a red?” McQueen also shines a light on the looting of the shops and corpses: one person’s tragedy is always someone else’s opportunity.

“Please Mum, don’t send me away” is not just the cry of a child not wanting to step into the unknown of being evacuated. It’s the cry of a child who is already bullied for being different. The cry of a child who has precious few friends and feels safer at home under the threat of aerial bombardment than sent across England to spend the next few months and maybe longer with strangers. George doesn’t stay evacuated for long, and much of the film follows his intrepid journey back to find the family home.

In a world where everything is fragile, finding who can be trusted is difficult. But the story includes moments of great humanity. An air raid warden called Ife shows great kindness to young George, and over the course of a few precious hours treats him like a son. Their bond is beautiful, and cruelly short-lived.

George is a scrapper. Rita is a survivor. Young Hefferman makes his professional debut in this film and thrives on portraying loveable, nippy on his feet (he’ll go on to be an adult actor doing his own stunts!), quick thinking, and strong. Other than some great musical numbers that show off her voice, the screenplay doesn’t give Ronan much opportunity to diverge from a mix of stoicism and fear. Paul Weller – yes, that Paul Weller – completes the household, playing Rita’s dad. Like every film I’ve watched this week, there’s an animal in it with a sense of purpose and a strong presence. This time it’s Ollie the cat (played by Zinger and Tinkerbell) who certainly knows how to occupy a bed.

Music plays a big role in Blitz. Jazz is how Rita met George’s father. And it’s the scene of an extraordinary transition as the brash music and dancing fall silent and Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack picks up the melody of Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh! in a minor key. And in a rare red herring in an otherwise well-constructed two-hour film, a grand piano hangs overhead Chekhov-style in one scene, but we’re never granted the satisfaction of hearing it fall to the ground.

Blitz is a film that concentrates on the little people, those on the margins of society, and those who were already high up in the loss stakes before bombs destroyed their homes and communities. In many ways it is low key, but that’s a strength. The film will soon appear on Apple TV+ on Friday 22 November. But given the scale of the ambitious production, it’s well worth viewing Blitz on the big screen with the benefit of a proper surround sound system at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November.

 

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Fréwaka – a Irish folk horror movie that is a gem of Irish filmmaking … at Belfast Film Festival #BFF24

This year’s Belfast Film Festival opened on Thursday evening with a gala screening of Aislinn Clark’s Fréwaka.

It’s set on the Cooley Peninsula in rural County Louth. A live-in home help Shoo (played by Clare Monnelly) is dispatched to look after an older woman Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who resides alone. Or is she alone? Is she being tormented by the souls living in the home she believes is buried under her house? She’s certainly superstitious to the point of paranoia. And what’s with the wee fella from the village with the stern looking billy goat? (It’s as if every movie at this year’s festival has a prominent animal. Check out Universal Language’s gobbling turkeys.)

This is an Irish horror film, and one of the questions at the forefront of my mind at the premiere was whether the geography and the language mattered. And the clear answer was yes. In so many ways. Visually there’s a strong connection with the earth, rooted in the trees and fauna. The tradition of wakes is prominent, along with poring over death notices in newspapers. There are Mummers! But there’s also a sense of intergenerational grief and inherited trauma. Of not dealing with the past – being mentally and perhaps even physically haunted by it – and storing up problems for the future. The use of Irish language also roots the drama in a close-knit community. As an English-speaking audience member, it gave the characters a sense of being on the same wavelength, of sharing history and culture … and baggage. There are smatterings of English and even some Ukrainian exchanged too between Shoo and her girlfriend Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya).

I normally avoid horror films. For me, there’s no sense sitting through something that leaves your stomach in knots. For lots of other people, they experience that as entertainment. Give me a thran Icelandic tale of sheep or motherhood instead ... though even that country’s film output can turn towards horror!

But if I’d followed my instinct, I’d have missed out on a gem of an example of top-quality Irish filmmaking. There are some great performances from the lead characters: Mila brilliantly needles Shoo into confronting her grief with Bystrzhitskaya showing concern short of nagging, while the constant tussle between Peig and Shoo keeps shifting the balance of power and sanity between the pair.

Narayan Van Maele makes the landscape lush and captures the desolate state of the decaying house. The editing is superb (John Murphy) allowing so many aspects of the emerging story to be heard before being seen. Flitting between timelines is done with a confidence that an intelligent audience will follow what’s happening without needing extraneous clues. And the soundtrack. Oh the clamouring soundscape that Die Hexan has produced is glorious. In long word-less stretches, the music becomes dialogue, loud, multi-layered, with distressed instruments not confined to the string section. Clarke’s screenplay neatly flips the carer/cared-for relationship on its head as the sense of co-dependency rises towards the film’s climax. (The foley team should take a special bow for the squelchy scene with the deadly door handle!)

Fréwaka was a very creepy start to what promises to be a fabulous festival. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Aislinn Clarke’s creation comes back to local cinemas to delight larger non-squeamish audiences who adore folk horror. Belfast Film Festival runs until Saturday 9 November.

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The Vanishing Elephant (Cahoots NI in Grand Opera House until Saturday 2 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF24

The Vanishing Elephant stems from Cahoots NI’s director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney being told about Harry Houdini making an elephant disappear on a New York stage back in 1918. He began to wonder about the life of that Asian Elephant, the circumstances of its birth in Bengal, the human contact it would have had – good and bad – to end up on stage in north America. Frequent Cahoots NI collaborator Charles Way has written a screenplay that crosses continents and cultures, with Aoife Kavanagh and Pallavi MD creating a soundtrack and musical numbers which summon up two sides of the globe.

And so the story of a young boy Opu (played by Adi Chugh) and the elephant Janu (a series of beautiful puppets designed by Helen Foan) was formed. Caroline Mirfin dresses the cast of nine of grey costumes that help them disappear inside the puppets and slip through the porous back wall of the set.

The friendship between boy and elephant is contrasted with a series of adults who – to a greater or lesser extent – exploit and mistreat the animal. The Vanishing Elephant never shies away from pointing out cruelty towards animals and avoids glamorising animals performing in circus settings. As the Elephas maximus ends its long and dark ocean journey, the “Welcome to America, the land of the free” greeting clearly doesn’t apply to grey mammals.

For me, Houdini’s titular trick of making an elephant disappear was secondary to a moment a few minutes before when tears welled in my eyes as the elephant met someone special after a very long time apart. That the elephant is a huge puppet, with somewhere between two and six cast members controlling it depending on its configuration did not seem to matter. The scene had tremendous power in the second half of the production because the emotional connection was established and seeded so successfully in the first act. The company of creatives at Cahoots NI don’t just do magic and olde worlde Victoriana charm. They control exert control over every aspect of the theatre environment to manufacture mood and lift audiences out of their seats and into the time and the world of the story.

The pace is unrushed over the 100-minute performance (including interval). The soundtrack impresses and Philippa O’Hara adds vital live vocals. Cahoots NI premiered this show in New York last year and the international cast features Indian performers who bring a particular authenticity to the eastern leg of the story in the first act. The props and puppets have a grand scale the suits the proportions of the large Belfast stage. Iris Schmid shows outstanding control as the puppeteer most often animating the elephant’s trunk. The tableau with Janu balancing on top of a ball is fun, while the choreography to pick the circus ringmaster (played by Maeve Smyth) up into the air with Janu’s trunk is very rewarding.

While a gently grunting three-month-old baby in the seat next to me was more interested in his feed of milk, older children in the rows around seemed transfixed by the gentle storytelling throughout. The themes of friendship and trust are universal as is the depiction of forced displacement. A passing gag about some sections of society being “invisible” was picked up by the adults.

The Vanishing Elephant finishes its run at the Grand Opera House as part of Belfast international Arts Festival with two final performances on Saturday 2 November. The festival continues until 26 November.  Cahoots NI will return later in the year with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in their Cityside Shopping Centre base from Saturday 7–Tuesday 24 December.

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Universal Language – making the familiar unfamiliar with this dry absurdist comedy (Queen’s Film Theatre on Thursday 31 October as part of Belfast Film Festival) #BFF24

Could there be two more different films to screen on the opening night of 2024 Belfast Film Festival. If you haven’t already sold a kidney to secure a ticket for Aislinn Clarke’s gala screening of Fréwaka in Cineworld, then check out Universal Language at the Queen’s Film Theatre.

Winnipeg is in a dual language region of Canada. But English has been replaced by Farsi (Persian) which now sits alongside French. No explanation is forthcoming, this just is the way things are, and you’ll smile when you spot the Tim Hortons sign. Matthew Rankin’s film delves into the lives of handful of people who are searching for meaning and money in the sub-zero winter environs.

The landscape is a concrete jungle, decorated with snow, and littered with wild turkeys that gobble their way into a surprising number of scenes. The cinematography favours wide shots, though also plays with form and aggressively cuts one conversation between two completely opposing angles.

Two children spot a 500 Piel bank note frozen into the snow-covered lake. Later we’ll discover that the revolutionary figure Piel – after which the currency was named – cared little about money. His grave lies trapped on a traffic island in the middle of a busy dual carriageway. It’s all these little details, once woven together, that create the sense of the location, and the sense that all is not quite as you’d expect in this corner of Canada.

The children hope that the money could be used to buy new glasses for a classmate who lost his to an angry turkey. Their vexed and impatient teacher is refusing to teach anyone in the class until this one child’s ability to read the blackboard is restored. At the back of the classroom, another student is dressed as Groucho Marx. The absurdist nature of this film is well established by this point!

Matthew Rankin favours deadpan humour over obvious laughs: drole, doleful and very dry. Prepare to sit back and endure a trip through Winnipeg’s historic Beige District. The action is glacial, so there’s plenty of time to ponder how an unfamiliar language changes the feel of a normally recognisable Canadian cityscape. And time to realise how even the subtle transplantation of a small number of cultural norms from the Middle East to North America totally turn things on their head, and yet maybe not as much as first expected.

Universal Language is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre on Thursday 31 October as part of Belfast Film Festival. The festival runs until next Saturday with plenty of treats in its programme.

 

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Small Things Like These – Cillian Murphy casts light onto the dark legacy of Irish mother and baby homes (cinemas from Friday 1 November)

Bill runs a local company delivering coal and peat briquettes to homes and businesses. The Good Shepherd Convent is a regular customer. Over successive visits he begins to witness things that alarm him, particularly around the treatment of a young girl Sarah (played by Zara Devlin). It provokes him to reflect on his own upbringing, bullied in school, and growing up with his mother’s surname. Putting two and two together, he is faced with opportunities to intervene.

Much of Small Things Like These plays out in the run up to Christmas 1985. (In case you forget, snow blows around in several scenes to remind you, it’s frosty presence also increasing the feeling of bleakness.) This is a time when the Catholic school children sing carols from a platform in the town square before Mother Superior (Emily Watson) hits the button to turn on the Christmas tree lights. Bill is both bribed and threatened. The folk in Wexford know all too well that the nuns can apply pressure through rumours never mind their control of the local school. So many people are seen to be complicit by their deliberate lack of curiosity: “… if you want to get on in this life, there are things you got to ignore”.

Cillian Murphy is wonderfully watchable playing Bill, a man of many thoughts and few words. At least a third of the film is spent watching him process life. The vigour with which he scrubs his fingers at the end of the day to remove the coal dust indicates his sense of wellbeing. The concern shown in his brow before stopping his lorry to chat to a young lad far from home collecting sticks along the road. Aside from the elephant in the room of how human beings in religious orders could misinterpret or ignore Jesus’ parable around “whatever you did for one of the least of these”, the pivotal questions of the film are whether a man steeped with compassion can intercede, and will it make any difference?

I walked into a screening of Small Things Like These wary of a film centred around a man but telling the story of mother and baby homes in Ireland. There is tremendous power in the words of mothers who were victims of the abuse scandal finally being heard, no longer silenced or shamed. Check out The Sunflower Project Exhibition in The Linen Hall’s vertical gallery from 4–29 November with art, poetry and personal items telling the story of people impacted by mother and baby institutions, coordinated by Sole Purpose Productions.

By the end of 98 minutes, the quality of the storytelling and the portrayal won me over. Murphy’s involvement will bring the scandal to a wider audience. Moreover, the story proffers a challenge to citizens in contemporary Ireland and beyond about whether when faced with evidence of wrongdoing they will speak out and intervene. Sinéad O’Shea’s documentary Pray For Our Sinners (available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and Sky streaming services) is an interesting companion piece, the real life story of two doctors who intervened to help young mothers.

Claire Keegan’s novel won the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Enda Walsh’s screenplay stays true to her narrative, and Tim Mielants’ unrushed direction creates a spellbinding portrait. Crucial scenes set in a coal bunker create a visual metaphor for the dark acts of inhuman behaviour. The lives of tens of thousands of woman and children were affected by the Magdalene Laundries. This film only begins to scratch the surface of what had been happening for centuries.

Small Things Like These is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre as well as Omniplex and Movie House cinemas and Belfast Cineworld from Friday 1 November.

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Aurora: A Modern Myth – trippy story of one woman’s rage against the mining machine (Prime Cut in The MAC as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #BIAF24

Cass has a strong connection to the land, and one tree in particular that gives her strength. A mining company want to exploit the gold that’s been discovered in the area. They lack the rights to the land on which her tree stands. Cass has planned a one-woman live-streamed protest, chaining herself to the trunk. Her catastrophising friend Drew offers support. Then her brother Conn turns up running PR for the aptly named mining company (say ‘Golden Shire’ in a thick country accent and you’ll get the sense of domination at play).

Aurora: A Modern Myth is a story about valuing nature over profit, about one person taking a stand to make a difference, and about the powerful institutions that can crush rebellion.

The cast’s performances are very strong. Meghan Tyler narrates the story, talking into the invisible live-streaming camera that sits with the audience. While the first few minutes of the performance are physically very static, Cass’s commitment to the venture shines through Tyler’s gifted and intense storytelling. Less is more, and director Emma Jordan uses every gesture, every laugh, every eyeroll to enchant and draw the audience in.

Dominic Montague’s play flits between two timelines: the site of Cass’s ongoing protest, and her detention after her protest and an ensuing riot has been broken up by ‘authorities’. Maria Connolly appears on screen as the brilliantly stern and callous interrogator trying to prove Cass’s role in the melee and the subsequent disappearance of a large amount of gold. The black and white capture and tight facial shot of her off-stage delivery is very effective.

Brother Conn (Conor O Donnell) is the character who must switch sides. Corporate lackey making excuses for the mining company at the start (replete with golden yellow tie); fervent supporter of Cass by the end. Drew (Thomas Finnegan) is a steady influence, until the lad loses his cool in a later scene and unexpectedly turns into a raving shaman.

Connolly’s second role steals scenes as a talking anarcho-communist badger. Prime Cut have worked with Ulster University to explore how animation can integrate with theatre. The results are mixed, and the production is somewhat compromised to support the experiment.

The use of gaming technology like Unreal Engine to drive video backdrops in real-time is becoming commonplace in UK touring productions. The Belfast Ensemble used other techniques to brilliantly flood The MAC’s main theatre with projection in their recent restaging of The Doppler Effect.

Ciaran Bagnall’s set consists of a stylised tree and a white box atop a neutral carpet, a canvas onto which projections are mapped. The precision is remarkable, but the graphics don’t consistently excite the imagination. While I was expecting to see squirrels darting about the branches or crows ominously staring down at the humans below, instead any movement was less flashily focussed on the tree sap and the underground gold.

The sweary and spiky badger lip-syncs with Connolly’s live speech – a good technology demonstration – but between the rendering and the projection, the appearance of the animal is quite blurry. With the important surfaces of the set needing to face the front-mounted projectors, the overall effect is to flatten the stage and the blocking, remove the opportunity for more dynamic angles.

The next generation of video and theatre technology will take some time to bed in. Experiments like Aurora are important steps in isolating what works, and in which situations. The actor-linked elements are strong (the remote interrogator and the cute badger) and can be built upon. Perhaps more can be done to mature the tree into a full character rather than a prop.

Katie Richardson’s richly layered soundtrack endures throughout the performance and helps delineate the mood-swings between scenes. Ditching the interval and running straight through for 90 minutes is a good decision that prevents audiences needing to overcome inertia to re-enter the imaginary world after a bar break. Rosie McClelland’s costume choices are sympathetic to the constant projection and are boldly tweaked for the final scenes.

Favourite lines from the sparky dialogue include “Strong password, my hole!”, “Lakes don’t have rights / Hhave you seen the state of Lough Neagh?”, and the catchphrase “Badger, out”.

There’s a strong sense (sadly unseen) of young people uniting to share their wealth and their stories to encourage Cass and help her secure the title to the land over the heads of older capitalist adults. There’s a desire to protect the future, and play a small part in a larger, eternal story. And there’s much (re)connecting with nature.

As ‘modern myths’ go, it’s quite trippy. But the lack of sufficient dramatic tension or sustained peril makes Aurora feel like a play that in its current form is designed to be a conversation starter rather than the full destination. Aurora: A Modern Myth continues at The MAC until 2 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Photo credits: Ciaran Bagnall

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Losing It and In Between – trauma informed dance that makes physical the anguish of conflict (Belfast International Arts Festival at the MAC until Saturday 26 October) #BIAF24

The trauma of our circumstances and situation, not to mention the inherited trauma from previous generations, can affect our bodies, our movement, our minds. Losing It sees Palestinian choreographer and dancer Samaa Wakim move along, around, under and over a long stretch of tape. Her manner veers from being tentative, to being almost giddy with exuberant joy, to being physically fearful.

The soundtrack blends the noise of traffic, emergency sirens, military vehicles and fireworks, all played over a disconcerting bed of pink noise. Intended to be played live by Samar Haddad King, at this evening’s performance the DJ decks and microphone to one side of the stage remained unmanned to remind audiences that it was impossible for Samar to travel to Belfast.

Samaa Wakim’s sense of balance, both at ground level and later in the air – the tape feels like ‘Chekhov’s tightrope’ right from the start – is impressive. Losing It was devised long before the 7 October attacks last year and the subsequent conflict. Some of the sounds were recorded a decade ago, but Samar has continued to remix more contemporary noises into the soundtrack. The symbolism of the movement, and the poignancy of the physical tape representing borders, balance/equilibrium and barriers is heightened by the recent events.

Esam Sultan from the Palestinian Circus School opened the evening with another performance – In Between – that uses a tape. This time it was thicker, tied onto his ankle and secured to a fixed point off stage, limiting the performers locus of free movement. While his freedom was frustrated and curtailed, there was still room for creative expression, cartwheels and headstands. A cry for help and an audience member’s intervention changed the dynamic, yet the very presence of the tape still created a sense of struggle and legacy.

Dance offers a universal language – albeit it one subject to much interpretation and even misunderstanding and head-scratching by reviewers! – that can transcend place, and people and time. Your mind can freewheel as you draw together the visual and auditory elements to construct the story. (Though the post-show chat with the performers – including Samar who joined remotely – reminded the audience that conflict can also crush the urge to create and play.)

There’s another chance to enjoy Losing It and In Between in the MAC on Saturday 26 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival which continues until 26 November.

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The Apprentice – a frightening film to get you in the mood for Halloween (in cinemas from Friday 18 October)

A fictionalised but highly believable study of how fast and loose lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) schooled a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) in the rules of winning – even when you’re clearly losing – before Cohn was consumed by the monster he had created.

Obsessed with image, size and opulent glamour, Trump becomes a master of hyperbole, bluff, nicknames, sexualised language, reshaping the truth, and a violent sexual assault (based on a divorce deposition by his first wife Ivana, played brilliantly by Maria Bakalova).

Yet Ali Abbasi’s movie never comes across as a character assassination.

Overall, a frightening film to get you in the mood for Halloween. 

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Dahomey – a rewarding documentary about the return of plundered loot (QFT from Friday 25 October)

Documentaries only make rare appearances in local cinemas outside of curated film festivals. But they often surprise and linger in the imagination longer than higher-budget flights of fantasy, fictional movies.

Dahomey is unhurried, yet barely over an hour in duration. At times it is almost mindful with a black screen, occasional ghostly narration from ancestral voices, and a great soundtrack. It tells the story of 26 artefacts that were returned from France to Benin.

The West African kingdom of Dahomey existed between the 17th and 20th centuries. Its treasures were plundered. Some ended up in the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, an entire museum devoted to art from outside Europe.

The film, written and directed by Mati Diop, watches as French and Beninese museum curators box up statues of kings and trinkets to securely transport them four thousand kilometres south to their new home. Joséphine Drouin-Viallard’s cinematography offers a mix of CCTV footage, arty static shots looking though layers of objects at COVID-masked museum staff and members of the public.

There are jubilant scenes as people line the streets to greet the vehicles carrying the wooden crates from the airport to Benin’s Presidential Palaces. What were mere museum exhibits in Paris take on the mantle of being treasures in Benin. The moody narration speaks of the objects moving from darkness to light. An animated discussion amongst university students offers differing perspectives. One person’s celebration is another’s cause for continued regret. Some describe a sense of pride and enhanced identity as they celebrate the restitution of the 26 artefacts; others say they are witnessing a negotiated failure with France wrongly praised for their generous return of just 26 out of around 7,000 objects that remain abroad.

Justice is disputed. Is the coloniser benevolent or still holding power over the colonised? Students remark that they are discussing the return using the coloniser’s French, rather than a local language like Fon. The great and the good attend the official opening. Students call for funding to be made available to schools from across Benin can afford to visit and allow children to connect with their culture and history. What use is it simply moving these objects from being locked away in Paris to being inaccessible in Benin?

Dahomey is a simple yet beautifully crafted film that mixes together spiritual, cultural and history. The film offers an insight into unfamiliar history and an unfamiliar culture. Yet the notion of colonising powers looting treasure is sadly universal: the fate of the Elgin Marbles would be just one example closer to home. Dahomey is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 25 October.

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The Tragedy of Richard III – the rise and fall of a king who loses his grip (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 10 November as part of Belfast International Arts Festival) #biaf24

Richard, the Duke of Gloucester has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Rather than feeling depressed, the prognosis fires up his ambition to seize the crown from his brother Edward and place himself on the throne. As Richard hatches plans and his henchman Tyrrel silently dispatches all who stand in his way, the wannabe monarch’s health deteriorates. Ultimately, the wheelchair-using ruler runs out of room to manoeuvre, and the sword Richard has wielded turns against him.

The Tragedy of Richard III is a whip-smart adaptation of William Shakespeare’s second longest play. Oisín Kearney and Michael Patrick have cut down to size the original panoply of characters, with some non-speaking roles even replaced with dress dummies wheeled around the stage by the nine cast members. The essence of the story remains intact, and the humorous tone – at times camp – of the first half perhaps more closely resembles the original performances in London’s rowdy Globe Theatre than worthy productions that exude self-importance.

Michael Patrick plays Richard, returning to the stage in ever more elaborate and elevating wheelchairs as his power grows. Remaining seated in no way limits the portrayal. Scooting about the stage, being trapped by scenery, Richard has a growing understanding of how his illness affects some aspects of his independence. (At some performances, the role of Richard will be played by Zak Ford-Williams.) The speeches and dialogue have the heft of a man on a mission, while the side eye and gesticulations give a sense of the impatience and impertinence of Richard. His older brother Clarence prances around in his Y-fronts with an accent that resembles Daniel O’Donnell. Hardly king material. Loyal servant Tyrrel is played by Deaf actor Paula Clarke. Tyrrel’s use of sign language never seems unnatural, and while the characters take as many liberties with their gestures as they do the spoken word, Tyrrel’s deafness is integral to the role and adds depth to the character. (Though I wish at least one character had been allowed to sign properly with BSL rather than the communication being one-way.)

Patrick McBrearty play’s Richard’s strong ally and strategic thinker. There’s a warmth in their relationship and a playfulness to the way his Buckingham lobs comments and asides into other people’s conversations. A king-to-me apparently needs a wife, and Lady Anne (Ghaliah Conroy) is coerced into marrying Richard, a further abuse from the man who killed her father (King Henry VI) and her previous husband. Pleasingly, Conroy later returns in the role of Richmond to challenge Richard for the crown.

King Edward’s pregnant wife, Queen Elizabeth, senses that she has much to lose as Richard sweeps to power. Charlotte McCurry channels a don’t -mess-with-me spirit as she fills Elizabeth with passion and – at least – attempts to stand up to the bully

Katie Richardson’s score features live percussion: Allison Harding (playing the Duchess of York, Richard’s mother) sounds like she had a misspent youth in a rock band or an orchestra as she beats the kettle drums. The timpani and side drums feed into the military aspect of monarchy and assist the build-up to the epic final battle scene. While the sparse stage with blocky set are almost reminiscent of the story playing out in Minecraft, the method of disposing of bodies, the paramilitary mobs, and the riot police summon up shadows of contemporary society and power struggles.

The first half places Richard centre stage and wittily depicts his bloody rise to the top. After the interval, it is all about him losing control. Richard is struggling to catch his breath and can no longer operate his own wheelchair and is unable to dress himself. He’s losing his grip. The black drapes that created cosy locations in the first half have been removed and the audience can see behind the scenes of Niall McKeever’s set. The levity is gone, and the audience appreciate that Richard has lost his smoke and mirrors. The end is nigh.

A costume change in the final scene signals that Michael Patrick is delivering Richard’s words as an actor rather than the character. It’s a moment that acknowledges that the actor was diagnosed last year with Motor Neuron Disease. His qualification for the role is sobering and heart-breaking. It’s clearly a poignant speech to deliver, and a very emotional moment for the audience to witness. Long may Michael Patrick continue to ply his acting trade on stage. His anchoring of this version of Richard III is a career-defining performance, a remarkable living celebration of his talent and resilience. And long may his award-winning writing partnership with Oisín Kearney continue to bear rich fruit.

The Tragedy of Richard III is a bold production with which to open the Belfast International Arts Festival. It’s very accessible to audiences unfamiliar with Shakespeare: a handy family tree at the back of the programme explains who everyone is, and I kept that page open on my lap throughout the first act. It’s also a testament to how disability can be very naturally and inclusively incorporated into theatre. It can be designed in and nothing is lost. Quite the opposite. There’s a richness to the wider representation and it expands the potential for storytelling.

Shakespeare might not be your thing, but 24 hours after standing to applaud the opening night cast, the story and the performances and the atmosphere is still whizzing around my head. The Tragedy of Richard III is seriously good theatre, and continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 10 November.

Photo credit: Johnny Frazer, Melissa Gordon.

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An Inspector Calls – come to be bamboozled, prepare to be challenged (Grand Opera House until Saturday 19 October)

Before An Inspector Calls begins, the red curtains stretching across the stage are sitting at a jaunty angle. A hint about the out of kilter nature of the lives that are about to unravel on stage. It’s 1912, and an air raid siren wails while rain falls. But those irritations don’t interfere with the postprandial chat of the Birlings as they celebrate daughter Sheila’s betrothal to Gerald Croft.

Ian MacNeil’s set plays with scale and perspective, putting the oversized family in a cramped birdcage of a shrunken dolls house that has been elevated six feet above contradiction. The Birlings’ initial conversation is heard but not seen: it’s important that we get an honest measure of their characters and motivations before judging their posh dress and upper middle class deportment. The maid Edna remains on the ground, technically outside the house, never ascending to the Birling’s level, her mostly silent presence a constant reminder of the us and them classism writ large in J. B. Priestly’s script.

Edna announces the arrival of Police Inspector Goole. His impertinent questioning in connection with the death of a young woman, Eva Smith, gradually reveals the prosperous family’s communal complicity in the circumstances leading up to the tragedy. As the household literally and figuratively collapses, can the Birling family come to terms with their behaviour and take the rap for their unpleasant actions?

Son Eric (George Rowlands) comes across at first as unfiltered and an original thinker before we find out about his much darker, coercive side. Older sister Sheila (a bravura performance from Leona Allen) has a sharp temper in public but is eager to please in private at home, her dialogue at times used to unsubtly reinforce Priestly’s summation of each scene in case the audience were in any doubt. Father Arthur (Jeffrey Harmer) is a bully who has become too big for his britches and craves civic recognition, while his well-to-do wife Sybil (Jackie Morrison) assumes moral superiority over everyone. Fiancé Gerald (Tom Chapman) is a cad, though an honest one right up until the point he constructs a giant Get Out of Jail Free Card for his future in-laws. Inspector Goole (Tim Treloar) drops in like a bomb on a short fuse, bringing the family down to his level, needling each member into admissions of guilt and culpability until they are left lying on the floor, shadows of their former glorious selves.

Priestly – through Goole – lectures the audience about power imbalances, classism, and the danger of letting the capitalists walk over the workers. Premiered in 1945 – in Russia of all places – An Inspector Call predates George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four but deals with the management and manipulation of truth (albeit more mildly mannered). Director Stephen Daldry makes Treloar deliver an almost Messiah-like sermon straight out to the stalls, with Rick Fisher’s atmospheric lighting removed for fullest effect. Despite all this effort, I’m not sure the feeling of personal shame and responsibility quite landed on the Grand Opera House audience.

The sleight of hand at play throughout most of the play is good fodder for reviewers who are also fact checkers. Who do we believe? How do we come to make judgements?

“I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.” sounds like the rantings of an impetuous child … or a modern political candidate. But it’s the part of the modern arsenal of denying uncomfortable facts, doubling down on lies, diverting attention, and manufacturing elaborate explanations to prove why what seems intuitively obvious might not be demonstrably reliable.

And while Priestly’s critique of capitalism has no room for a critique of socialism (or communism), he asks good questions. Who do we protect? Ourselves or others? Do the rich inevitably build their version of morality around not getting caught doing the bad things they’ve done? Do the working class look on like sinless witnesses of the rich people’s depravity without any means of intervention? (That last question might not be one that Priestly intended to pose.)

The twist in the final minute is almost undermined by the sheer amount of doubt that has been spread in the preceding 45 minutes. It’s a slightly disappointing ending to an otherwise tightly written and engagingly staged play that thankfully doesn’t solely rely on a big reveal like other touring mystery plays.

An Inspector Calls continues its run at the Grand Opera House until Saturday 19 October. There’s no interval so empty your bladder. And please silence your mobiles. They didn’t exist in 1912. And a shout out to the community cast who loiter in later scenes and remain upright for the bows at the end.

Photo credit: Mark Douet

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Belfast Film Festival – ten days of homegrown and international cinema (Thursday 31 October–Saturday 9 November)

Belfast Film Festival is back with a ten-day programme that celebrates films and filmmaking, from shorts to medium duration and feature-length cinema. While there’s nothing from Iceland being screened this year (that alone qualifies a film to jump to the top of a must-see list), there are lots of local and international screenings to choose from.

Thursday 31 October

Fréwaka | 19:00 at Cineworld (103 minutes) | Aislinn Clarke’s second feature opens the festival. It tells the story of care assistant Shoo, who rather than confront the death of her mother, takes a job looking after an elderly woman in a large and remote country house. As the two women slowly come to trust each other, events take a turn that mean they are forced to face up to the truth about each other’s lives. This Irish language horror was shot in Carlingford and Ravensdale, capturing an atmospheric Ireland steeped in history, folklore, secrets and religious iconography. [reviewed]

Universal Language | 20:30 at QFT (89 minutes) | If you can’t make it along to the opening screening, then Matthew Rankin’s offbeat absurdist comedy might be a good alternative. What if the Canadian city of Winnipeg, with its constant tussle between French and English speakers, instead adopted Farsi (Persian) as its official language! A satirical invitation to explore culture and community. [reviewed]

Sunday 3 November

Eephus | 12:45 at QFT (98 minutes) | With their pitch facing demolition, Carson Lund’s wistful movie depicts a small, shabby league of mostly middle-aged amateur players in a sleepy New England suburb, bantering and beercanning their way through the last game of the baseball season. A funny-sad-sweet tribute to the unifying power of community activity.

Dead Man’s Money | 18:00 at QFT (82 minutes) | A gala screening of writer-director Paul Kennedy’s latest production. Young Henry works in his uncle’s pub and when Old Henry begins a new relationship with The Widow, Young Henry hatches a plan to secure the inheritance. Matters spiral out his control when shady pub customer Gerry The Wheels gets involved.

Second Chance | 20:30 at QFT (104 minutes) | 25-year-old Nia retreats to her family’s Himalayan holiday home in the dead of winter, to recuperate following a traumatic breakup and a termination. Amidst the icy backdrop, Nia finds a warm and healing friendship with the housekeeper, an eight-year old, and a cute kitten. An intimately observed story from Indian writer-director Subhadra Mahajan.

Monday 4 November

Armand | 18:00 at Odeon (117 minutes) | A six-year-old boy accuses another of unthinkable abuse. The children are never seen. But the incident triggers grown-up bad behaviour from the boys’ parents and teachers, gathered for a classroom conference that spirals swiftly out of control. An unnerving, hot house, shape-shifting debut by Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel.

Tuesday 5 November

La Cocina | 18:00 at Odeon (139 minutes) | Based on Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play, The Kitchen, Rooney Mara and Raul Briones Carmona star in this dynamic and beautifully photographed adaptation that follows the inner-workings of a large and busy restaurant kitchen off Times Square in New York City. One by one we meet the restaurant staff, build up a picture of the hierarchical boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity, language and culture, and the camaraderie of teamwork in a pressurised environment. Sometimes operatic and stylistically bold film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker, Alonso Ruizpalacios.

Rumours | 20:45 at Odeon (103 minutes) | A raucously hilarious skewering of the well-meaning ineffectiveness and gestural rhetoric of the G7 forum, imagined in this film as an international confederacy of dunces, headed by a stiff-backed German chancellor wickedly played by Cate Blanchett. As she and six other world leaders gather in a custom-built gazebo to discuss sundials, the Olympic Games and an unspecified ‘global crisis’ that none of them knows how to solve, a heavy fog sets in, zombie-like beings rise from the earth, and the fun really begins. A corrective to so much political satire that tends towards being clever rather than amusing. An absurd collaboration between veteran Canadian experimentalist Guy Maddin and fraternal directing duo Evan and Galen Johnson on the day of the US Presidential election!

Wednesday 6 November

The Unholylands | 18:00 at Odeon (102 minutes) | Two students living in the Holylands area of Belfast plan for one last house party. Their father finds out and intervenes, forbidding any more parties. Will they risk the family’s reputation and the chance that they’ll be cut off for good. Can they keep control over the event when their father’s assistant is sent monitor proceedings, A homegrown comedy with cameos from Nathan Carter, Tyrone McKenna and James Nesbitt.

The Spin | 20:30 at Odeon (92 minutes) | Two down on their luck record store owners from Omagh take a cross-country road trip to Cork to acquire a priceless record that could save their failing business and save them from eviction from their evil landlord, Sadie. Weaving together the landscape, music and cultural touchpoints of Omagh in this film written by Colin Broderick, directed by Michael Head and starring Tara Lynne O’Neill, Owen Colgan, Brenock O’Connor, Leah O’Rourke, Maura Higgins and Kimberly Wyatt.

Thursday 7 November

Paul & Paulette Take a Bath | 18:00 at Odeon (109 minutes) | A young Parisian who obsessively visits the sites of gruesome historical events and reenacts them is inside the mind of Marie Antoinette before the guillotine blade falls when she catches the eye of a young American photographer. An offbeat love-story brimming with romantic optimism and dark-tinged disillusion. Directed by Jethro Massey, starring Marie Benati and Jeremie Galiana.

Nightbitch | 20:30 at QFT (98 minutes) | Forget childless cat ladies. The real danger to the future of humankind is posed by dog-loving women with kids with Amy Adams juggling her love for her child with her frustration with an absent husband (Scoot McNariy) and her resentment at them both for the way her prior identity as an artist has been subsumed into that of a stay-at-home mom. Darkly humorous.

Saturday 9 November

King Baby | 13:15 at QFT (88 minutes) | A wooden queen comes between a king and a servant in this surreal, dark comedy from English filmmaking duo Kit and Arran. Set in a fictitious kingdom where the sun always shines and the population of two – the king and his servant – live in the open air of a ruined castle until a dream prompts the monarch to command his servant to carve a queen, upsetting the delicate balance of what has gone before. An imaginative exploration of class, hierarchy, gender and power.

Ritz Day – live podcast recording | 14:00 at The Black Box (75 minutes) | Hosts of The Wonder Cinema podcast, filmmaker Brian Henry Martin and cinema historian Dr Sam Manning celebrate the anniversary of the Ritz cinema in Fisherwick Place (later the site of the ABC and Cannon screens, before the building was reconstituted as a Jurys Inn hotel). Bring your memories of the Ritz. Enjoy a slice of birthday cake and marvel at Stuart Marshall’s new model of the cinema.

Housewife of the Year | 18:30 at QFT (77 minutes) | Ciaran Cassidy’s documentary tells the story of a largely forgotten Irish beauty pageant. Weaves together participants’ perspectives on the social norms of the day, the lack of contraception and choice, the Magdalen laundries, and of course the women’s everyday lives and the opportunity to escape the quotidian boredom by being in a pageant.

The Other Way Around | 20:30 at QFT (114 minutes) | Madrid couple Ale and Elex have decided to call it quits on their 14-year relationship. A loopy tale of two people who’ve fallen out of love but not out of like, who are determined to harpoon the ultimate relationship white whale: the pleasant break-up. Neil Sedaka know that Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. But what is doomed can also be noble in Jonás Trueba’s film starring Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz.