Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – huge cast prove that ‘teamwork can make a dream work’ (Grand Opera House Trust summer youth production until Saturday 18 July)

An old racing car in bad nick but with an intriguing backstory of sabotage is found in a junk yard. Two excitable children and their eccentric inventor dad who is a grieving widower. Camp spies sent from the far away land of Vulgaria by an evil leader and his lecherous wife. The daughter of a candy tycoon. And a scary childcatcher.

This year’s Grand Opera House Trust summer youth production is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Two years ago, at the end of July 2024, the UK touring production landed on the Grand Opera House Stage. This week, it’s the turn of the 122 young people who have spent the last two weeks under the tutelage of director Tony Finnegan, choreographer Rebecca Leonard and musical supremo Wilson Shields. And they’ve achieved a lot in a fortnight.

The two lead roles are a great advert for Belvoir Players Academy, with Meghan McSorley back playing Truly Scrumptious (Sandy in last summer’s production of Grease) and Ronan McGoldrick as Caractacus Potts. With a warm tenor voice, McGoldrick’s charismatic presence on stage makes him a believable fixer of problems (with just a hint of twinkly eyed Dick Van Dyke) while McSorley’s solid soprano vocals bring a richness to many of the show’s songs. Young Jemima and Jeremy Potts were played on opening night by Sophia Travers and Finley Bell (alternating with Anna Mitchell and Matthew Loughrey).

Comedic input comes in the form of Granda Potts (spoon spanner-playing Toby Ferguson who steals the second act with The Roses of Success performed alongside the brilliantly Tefal egg-headed engineers), the man-child tantrum-throwing sexually-ambiguous Baron (Liam Johnson) and the flirtatious paedophobic Baroness (Emma McLean who totally owns Chu-Chi Face and gets a great laugh from the adults in the audience when she quips “I never should have allowed toys into the marriage”). Hats off to the choreographer for her work to get the ensemble to burst into life for the toe-tapping Bombie Samba.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a story which has stamped its cultural footprint over generations of children and parents through the much-loved 1968 film. The musical legacy of the Sherman Brothers lives on with a big song that every child who’s been in a primary school choir will remember being trained to spit the words out with good diction. But there’s more to the score and lyrics than one ear worm of a song. The overture hints at a sizeable orchestra down in the pit – fourteen in total – with the oboe (Bryan Barr) regularly featuring in songs (notably in You Two) and a strong percussion section. Toot Sweets brings the full cast – visibly – on stage for the first time with a well animated scene in The Scrumptious Sweet Company.

Two bumbling Vulgarian spies (Colby Scott-Baillie and Jude McClelland with Germanic accents) only get one first act song to introduce their characters – Act English which sends up English eccentricities – but bring much mirth to later scenes. A victim of mistaken identity, Grandpa memorably shouts “Help! I'm being abducted by foreigners”: a line that could have been written for 2026 sensibilities but is straight out of the 1968 film.

Neal Mullan’s childcatcher (with winklepickers almost as long as his youngster-sniffing nose) is dark and immediately evil, but the part is woefully underwritten in the original script. Similarly, the Toymaker (Charlie Adams) is quickly relegated to guiding Caractacus and Truly through the castle. And let’s not get started on the book’s convenient off-stage rescue of a Grandpa and his grandchildren to hurry along the finale!

While there are few emotional hooks in the story, there are big political themes at play in Jeremy Sams’ stage version of Ken Hughes’ and Roald Dahl’s screenplay based on Ian Fleming’s novel. The Potts family must face up to the capitalism of the junk yard owner Coggins and Lord Scrumptious. A toy-obsessed self-indulgent Baron is running a Nazi-adjacent country with forced juvenile labour. But none of that is important to the audience’s love of the story! What we really care about is an heiress-in-waiting falling for a hard-working and ingenious inventor … and a car that flies.

One of the dangers of any Chitty Chitty Bang Bang production is that the elaborate props overshadow the characters. Full scale touring productions tend to use hydraulics and controlled lighting to (spoiler alert) make the eponymous car appear to fly as it drives off a cliff at the end of act one. And it turns out that ambitious engineering is also available to less well financed productions. Thankfully, the effort to make the magic happen doesn’t overly slow down the action, though the huge number of bodies on stage does constrain the car’s lateral movement in its final scenes. Another complex prop disappoints with Truly’s motorbike making several underwhelming entrances onto the stage, while Caractacus’ interactions with some of his elaborate machines will hopefully become less hesitant and more charming as the run progresses.

Costuming, chaperoning, line-running, song-teaching, choreographing, blocking, set-building … the list of work to be completed in such a short time is breathtaking. While the principal cast members had a three-day start, the ensemble only began rehearsals on Saturday 4 July! Those leading the production must have nerves of steel.

Since 2011, the Grand Opera House’s summer youth production has been a great testbed for emerging talent. For a period there were even two summer schemes – junior and senior – though in recent years it’s just been a single all-age show. The rehearsals and performances form an important part of the venue’s outreach and investment in the people who make the theatre of tomorrow. Hurray for getting the youth musicians and tech crew on stage to join the cast for the curtain call bows.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang continues in the Grand Opera House until Saturday 18 July with matinee and evening performances on both days. Note that the evening performances begin at 7pm and not the venue’s usual 7.30pm.

Photo credit: Neil Harrison Photography 

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Steel Magnolias – a warm welcome and a listening ear for the regulars in Truvy’s salon sanctuary every Saturday morning (Lyric Theatre until Friday 10 July)

Hair salons can be a bit of a go to setting in theatre for safe ‘third’ spaces where women can gather and support each other. They’re places of community, of conversation and pampering aimed at boosting wellbeing across the sisterhood.

In Robert Harling’s 1987 play Steel Magnolias, chatty Truvy opens up the Louisiana salon attached to her home every Saturday morning, a precious time reserved for just her most regular customers. The audience watch six women spend four mornings in each other’s company.

The chairs in Truvy’s salon create a confessional environment, and she can sense what’s written in your heart by staring at your scalp, although the hairdresser offers polished nails and well-coiffed hair rather than psychoanalysis. Orla Mullan brings warmth and wit to the stylish mother hen whose own family have detached themselves from her love, Truvy’s heart has space for everyone’s complicated lives, particularly if she detects a whiff of romance.

The door onto the street opens and in walks M’Lynn who is long past even trying to temper the activities of her gun-toting husband. She pours all her concern into wanting the best for her daughter Shelby. The mental health counsellor carries so many people’s secrets and weaknesses. Janet Moran plays the character who most externalises her emotions with a quiet dignity and gravitas.

Pink-obsessed but never Barbie-like, Shelby is in her mid-20s. She lives with type 1 diabetes and is reluctant to let it dictate her life choices. Her first entrance into the salon is on the morning of her wedding. She’s finally on the cusp of cutting ties and claiming her independent. Simone Collins gives Shelby grit and determination as she lives with the consequences of her actions.

Meanwhile, town grandee Clairee is searching for meaning and identity amongst the busyness of life following the death of her husband who was the Mayor. Marion O’Dwyer’s Clairee lounges on the salon’s sofa and throws pithy one-liners into the mix, breaking up tension with hilarity.

Ouiser is never first on the scene but the twice-married moaning widow disrupts whatever’s happening anytime she storms through the salon door. Carol Moore is almost (and quite perfectly) typecast in this outspoken role, a spirited presence on stage when playwright Harling finally deems it necessary to deploy the unfiltered Ouiser into a scene. At times, the interactions between Clairee and Ouiser feel like something out of The Golden Girls, a US TV series that playwright Harling could well have been familiar with.

New to the town, Annelle is hired as a junior stylist and Truvy quickly adopts her almost as a daughter. Annelle’s reticence to talk about herself is gradually replaced with a boldness to speak about her flourishing faith as she tries to turn her life around. Early on in the play, Truvy opines to Clairee about Annelle “I think there’s a story here” remarks” … seeding a complete red herring in the dramatic thrust of the piece! Eímhear Jackson blends the slight Annelle into the background as she washes the hair and sets the rollers of customers before Annelle’s confidence rises and she starts sharing her uncompromising opinions.

Costume designer Catherine Kodicek has had great fun dressing the characters in bright colours and busy patterns. There’s a consistency to the Southern accents drilled into the cast by dialect coach Megan McDonnell. While working scissors are out of the question for a show that plays eight times a week, Mullan and Jackson confidently wash and style the salon’s customers in real time as the drama unfolds. Set designer Ronán Duffy sneaks in a couple of levels to the car port extension, using steps up to doors to give characters’ entrances a bit of a lift.

Walking into the main theatre, it was heartening to spot two fans gently spinning above the salon set. Outside the Lyric Theatre, the wind had finally picked up and the temperature noticeably dropped from a very muggy afternoon spent in its café celebrating the launch of arts critic Jane Coyle’s new book – A Better Locksmith – revisiting productions, personalities and turning points that have shaped stages across Northern Ireland.

Steel Magnolias is the latest in what has almost become a 2026 season of shows about strong women – The Human Voice (Prime Cut), Consumed (Paines Plough), Tea In A China Cup, Bold Girls (Centre Stage) – that will finish with a revival of 2024’s Little Women returning to the Lyric stage over Christmas. (Kabosh’s Cuckoo-Land, Tinderbox’s Animal Farm (both in The MAC) and Kabosh’s Mary Ann, The Forgotten Sister which returned recently over at Clifton House also deserve nods.)

After decades of men dominating writing, directing and acting the big roles, it’s good to see a rebalancing. Women in last night’s audience outnumbered men by about 10 to 1 which makes me wonder about whether audiences are driving programming or vice versa. Is the reliance on well-recognised titles (there’s a starry 1989 film version of Steel Magnolias) and dipping into the back catalogue of female playwrights’ older work about bringing commercially viable audiences into theatres? Contemporary theatre seems to be taking an even bigger back seat in these challenging times. Is this the new reality of theatregoing for larger venues in Northern Ireland?

What does an evening spent in a Louisiana hairdressers offer with six white women, talk of shrimp boils (the fishy equivalent of a meaty BBQ), and no mention of racial tensions? There’s a lot of references to acceptance in the play’s second act but the types of diversity are limited.

To be sure, after lots of per-interval exposition, and post-interval jeopardy, the final scene is an emotional roller-coaster that had ugly tears streaming down my face as the women form deeper perspectives on each other’s lives. Hats off to director Emily Foran for avoiding the earlier opportunities to introduce hysteria into the simmering ensemble and only letting things go properly wild at the denouement.

These six women rely on their inner steel to overcome personal and family adversity. They have learned that they can lean on each other through thick and thin. The relationships that they built in Truvy’s salon are not delicate. Once inducted into the Saturday morning club, they’re sure of companionship throughout any storms that hit their lives.

Steel Magnolias continues at the Lyric Theatre until Friday 10 July.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport 

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The Last Viking – Mads Mikkelsen delights in this brutal comedy Nordic noir (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 26 June)

Part horror, part comedy, part Nordic noir, The Last Viking is a hard to pigeonhole film from Danish screenwriter and director Anders Thomas Jensen.

The premise is that when Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) gets parole after 15 years in prison for his part in a heist, he takes his dognapping younger brother Manfred (brilliantly played by Mads Mikkelsen) back to the family’s old rural home to dig up the loot. The property is now run as an AirBnB by Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl minus her Sarah Lund sweater) and her insufferable jazz bore husband Werner (Søren Malling). But an old gang member (an abruptly menacing Nicolas Bro) is willing to torture anyone who gets in his way of getting his hands on the missing money.

On-screen violence veers between cartoonish and horrifying. Anker’s spotless white shirts are inevitable ruined by blood. Then there’s the part where the Beatles is reformed by Anker’s new associate (Lars Brygmann), and some great ABBA covers are thrown in for good measure.

The cast is a Who’s Who of Danish acting royalty. A short opening animation with its tale of false equality sets the bloody tone for the rest of the film. Despite many characters having serious mental health problems – you’ll be an expert in dissociative identity disorder by the end of this two-hour film – no one is as “stupid” as they’re made out to be by the others.

The delightful script casually explores the notion that “everyone is entitled to their unique identity”. It sometimes asks how far any of us would go to protect someone. But mostly it lights a blazing fire and then throws fuel on it in the shape of trauma and greed to see who will get scorched.

There’s a reason that Jensen keeps returning to work with some of these actors: they aren’t afraid to fully immerse themselves in his madness. This will be one of the most memorable films you’ll see in 2026! The Last Viking is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 26 June.

 

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Heart of Hamelin – a well-told musical lesson about paying the piper or else he’ll call the tune (Market Place Theatre until Wednesday 24 June)

The tale of the colourfully dressed piper who lures the rats away from an infested town and then takes revenge when the town renege on their promise to pay him is well known and no stranger to theatrical adaptations. Belfast Ensemble’s operatic take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin with The Musician during Belfast Children’s Festival in 2019 stands out as a good example.

Another new musical version has hit the stage in the form of Heart of Hamelin. Down in Armagh this week, writer/director Pamela Cassells-Totton and composer Jonny McGuinness take audiences back to 1284 with a talented youth cast who sing and act out the tale of local government mismanagement and child kidnapping.

The staging is simple but effective, with good use of widescreen projected backdrops and props that wheel on in swift scene changes that never slow down the storytelling. Pushing some of the sound effects and the piper’s melodies through speakers at the back of the auditorium gives a creepy, other-worldly feel to the emerging nightmare, alongside the long-tailed velvety rat costumes. The ensemble’s collective eyeline is used to steer the audience to focus on areas of stage.

A clever modern epilogue asks if we still find ourselves caught in the snare of the piper … although the contemporary snake oil salesman feels less likely to deliver on his expensive promises than the 1284 rat catcher.

There are strong performances across the talented cast. Eamonn Fleming is a commanding presence as the domineering Mayor, overruling a minority of council colleagues – particularly Elena (Katy Hazard) – who sense that not paying the rat catcher will be a mistake. The council meetings are passionate, and the machine gun dialogue has great rhythm. The townsfolk are suitably weary, then celebratory, then distraught as the rats vanish and an unexpected penalty is paid. Sam Anderson narrates (spoken and sung) aspects of the show playing the old man who can tell a suspiciously good tale!

Musical highlights include Mayor Jacob, wife Miriam (Emma McLean) and wanderlusting daughter Eliza (Sofia Cassells) singing Three World’s Apart. Hans and Ada (Shea Fox and Sarah Reynolds) are a great pairing, offering warm harmonies and joyful choreography in the first act Together and then Nothing Left to Say after the interval. Lame Tomas (Aodhan Fleming) and his mother Adele (Sophie McCullough) are well matched in The Memory Bench which feeds an earlier loss into the growing sense of doom.

“We need to act now to protect our town and our townspeople.”

Reviewing the performance on the tenth anniversary of the EU Referendum vote, there was more than a hint of Brexit woven through the script. Maybe my strong memories of a long sultry night at the Titanic count centre mean that I’m seeing something that isn’t intentionally there. But lines like “we’re always stronger when we’re together” echo campaign slogans. And picking out some snippets from an exchange in a fraught council chamber do sum up some people’s views of the referendum and what followed: “I warned you … no one could have predicted that … I predicted this … we hadn’t signed a contract .. can’t you see this is all of our faults … punishing us to teach us a lesson.”

The well-constructed plotting of the central family groups and council meetings, together with Jonny’s McGuinness’s collection of catchy and lamentful tunes, and the confident cast of 36 drawn from the Pamela Cassells School of Performance (now in its 25th year) who make it look almost effortless, all contribute to making Heart of Hamelin a production that achieves high standards. Heart of Hamelin premiered at Theatre at the Mill back in March, and is being performed in Armagh’s Market Place Theatre until Wednesday 24 June.

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Cutting Through Rocks – an emancipating hustler who tries to push back against the stifling patriarchy (Docs Ireland at Queen’s Film Theatre)

The village councillor elected with the most votes traditionally holds the official stamp to notarise paperwork. That’s the rule in this rural region of Iran. But when a women stands for election for the first time, and tops the poll, the men suddenly insist that the oldest elected councillor – a man – should wield the stamp, not the most popular. Nonsense says Sara Shahverdi.

She’s the sixth child – the sixth daughter – in her family, and her father treated her like the son he longed for. She was taught to ride a motorbike, how to use tools, and to dress as it suited her. Sara was 16 when her father died: her older sisters were already married, and she became the breadwinner for her mother and her three younger brothers.

Cutting Through Rocks is a documentary by directors Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki that offers a rare glimpse of life in rural Iran. The narrative arc quickly establishes that women almost unthinkingly acquiesce to even the flimsiest suggestions of the men around them. Sara stands up to her younger brothers when they try to rob her sisters of their inheritance. She’s a divorced midwife who pleads with girls in the local school to pledge to get an education and achieve their dreams of being doctors and teachers rather than being forced to get married so young.

Fereshteh was one of the 400 or more babies Sara delivered. When she hears that Fereshteh, who was married at 12, is now seeking a divorce, but if successful faces her parents marrying her off for a second time, Sara mediates and gets the parents’ permission for the teenager to live with her. But as the film has already shown in a much more minor matter, parental choice won’t stop other relatives knowing best and violently intervening.

“When you’re ready, release the gas without fear,” Sara tells Fereshteh as she teaches her to ride on wasteland.

While Sara appears to be as strongminded as she is unorthodox – wearing trousers, a hat and scarf to cover herself up and still be able to ride a motorbike – the film shows that the vindictive behaviour of men takes a heavy toll. Overruling her plans for a circular playpark and (re)marking out the land in a square is petty. Rather than attack how she uses her power as a councillor, they instead crudely complain to a judge about her very identity and sexuality. The emancipating hustler who can convince ordinary people to veer from tradition to vote for her, to sign half their property over to their wives, to allow their children to go for a bike ride in public … has limits.

Like so many judicial and quasi-judicial processes at home and abroad, there’s no comeback or jeopardy for those making vexatious complaints and false allegations. A judge suggests that single Sara needs to “get married soon” and “stop helping women as much”.

“To do something unconventional, you have to expect consequences” she muses when a girl is slapped by her uncle for daring to be out on a motorbike. Several times during the 95-minute documentary, Sara allows older men to win arguments over the actions of younger girls. It’s as if even Sara can’t stand up to that tradition.

In the end, facing exhaustion from round after round of push back and attack, her Dad’s empowering influence and hard-learned patience may help Sara accept baby steps over the huge leaps she wants to see in her community.

Cutting Through Rocks is a powerful documentary shown as part of Docs Ireland. Hopefully it will return to the Queen’s Film Theatre in the coming months.

 

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Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World) – the story of how Maurice White steered the band (Docs Ireland at Queen’s Film Theatre)

Maurice White was a kalimba-playing drummer, a lead singer, a songwriter, a producer, and the man who controlled the always vibrant yet quite eclectic genre-spanning sound of the Earth, Wind & Fire band over many decades. Having set sail with a vision for a nine-piece band, he steered their recordings through rough waters of personnel changes, tacking to catch the wind of disco and electronic as audience preferences drifted away from the band’s original sound (which one early reviewer tried to sum up as “Afro-gospel-jazz-blues-rock”).

As well as charting the band’s chart and touring prowess, new documentary Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World) focuses on White’s contribution to their successes … and failures. His concepts overruled the other band members. His financial reward seems to have outweighed their more modest pay packets. His vision for elaborate stage shows and costumes meant that their extensive tours operated at a deficit. And his on the road philandering fathered at least two children that his wife wasn’t aware of. His ego swelled, yet the band had to go to ever more extreme lengths to reinvent themselves as the music market changed around them.

White’s story arc begins with his tough upbringing in Memphis and links his “abandonment” as a child (when his mother left him behind with a friend and moved state to get work … and a whole new family in Chicago) with his decision to abruptly put the band into a three-year hiatus from 1984–1987. His darker character traits are fulsomely acknowledged, though kept clear from the final scenes which allow the band’s legacy to be gloriously celebrated.

Directed by Questlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson), the talking heads of band members and contemporary artists are accompanied by extensive footage from tours, and (far too) prominently bookmarked by contributions from superfans former President Barack and Michelle Obama: EWF were the first band to perform in the White House after Obama took office, playing at the Governors’ Dinner.

Some of the best moments come when fellow artists critique why EWF’s sound was so distinctive. Lionel Richie summed it up: “The funk was the funk, but the chords were jazz, classical. Meanwhile, it’s sitting on this tribal African beat.”

The editing is sharp, intercutting different performances of the same song to add sparkle and energy to less dynamic footage. Though perhaps more groundwork is laid than absolutely necessary in the first third of this two-hour long film that sometimes risks being led by the set list over the story. Maurice White reckoned that “music saved me” from his Memphis experience of poverty and brutality at the hands of the (white) police. This new documentary certainly captures his spirit and his drive. I look forward to a week when Radio Ulster’s Steven Rainey showcases Earth, Wind & Fire on his Sunday afternoon Long Player programme.

Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs That's the Weight of the World) was screened in Queen’s Film Theatre on Sunday 21 June as part of the Docs Ireland festival. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t seem to be getting a wider cinema release and will instead be available on the small screen on HBO Max. Turn your volume up loud if you’re watching it at home!

 

ABCD

Enough is Enough (Trop C’est Trop) – exposing the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo to global audiences (Docs Ireland at Queen’s Film Theatre)

“A window on the world” was how a former radio editor used to describe the Sunday morning slots when I’d find a valid excuse to bring the situation in an oft-forgotten place in the world to the attention of local listeners. Sometimes it was Lebanon (with its fractious confessional political system, failed financial sector, and a much-stalled judge-led inquiry into the port blast) or South Sudan (where it’s estimated that over 80% of the population need humanitarian assistance) or the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the second largest country in Africa and the second or third most populous nation in the continent, the scene of conflict for many decades, and a rich source of valuable minerals).

There are parts of the world where major news organisations don’t always have a permanent bureau and correspondents don’t often pass through. I remember searching for a journalist who could help us cover the fall of the eastern city of Goma from government and UN forces to the M23 rebels last year. English-speaking national newspapers might mention DRC a handful of times each year. The country will usually only merit a couple of sentences in radio news bulletins. 

Elisé Sawasawa was born in 1994 and has grown up knowing only conflict in his country. His first feature-length documentary Enough Is Enough (Trop C’est Trop) explains that “after walking more than 30 kilometres to escape the horrors, my mother gave birth to me in the forest. The crackle of bullets is part of the music that welcomed me to this earth.”

The film is centred around the city of Goma where he lives. Scenes are sustained long enough that audiences can up a sense of the pattern of what they’re seeing: for example, people approaching on foot and bicycle carrying as many possessions and livestock as they can muster, while armoured military vehicles begin to drive against the human flow.

There’s a very large UN mission in the city. That didn’t stop the M23 rebels taking over the area last year. We watch as civilians protest: against blue-bereted UN peacekeepers (who have been accused of not protecting civilians), Rwanda (whose forces provided military support to the M23 movement), as well as general armed forces and police on the street.

It’s often confusing, and quite possibly contradictory, but when no one’s on your side, everyone becomes a target. The film captures dancers, poets and a performance artist: despite the aggression and oppression, people continue to use art and culture to express their feelings.

Around 7 million people in DRC are internally displaced (out of a total population that exceeds 105 million), with several large refugee camps around Goma. Cholera is common. Since the documentary was completed, Ebola has joined the infectious diseases threatening the population.

DRC mines feed into the supply chain global technology and vehicle/battery companies. But the rich (locally and international) are profiting, not the everyday citizens.

Frustration and anger are rife.

Sawasawa documents with handheld footage that is in the throng rather than looking from a distance. Enough is Enough is his raw perspective on experincing the constant conflict that has dominated his life. It’s an eye-opening insight into a city and a country that is so hard to follow from afar.

Enough is Enough was screened in Queen’s Film Theatre as part of Docs Ireland documentary film festival which runs until Sunday 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

 

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American Doctor – three US medics expose the conditions inside and outside Gaza’s Nasser Hospital (Docs Ireland at Queen’s Film Theatre on 17 June and then UK/Ireland release from 25 September)

Three American-born doctors travel to Gaza during a 2025 ceasefire to work in the Nasser Hospital hospital. This isn’t their first rodeo and while they’re comfortable leaving their cosy lives in the US behind to work in a warzone, they’re still shocked by the environment in which their patients are living and undergoing treatment.

Hand surgeon Mark Perlmutter is a Jewish American. He’s outspoken, calling Israel’s action “a genocide”. He wonders if his tax-dollars have paid for the munitions that are injuring the children he’s treating. Trauma surgeon Feroze Sidwa was born the US to Pakistani parents who belong to the non-Muslim Parsi minority. Emergency medicine physician Thaer Ahmad is a Palestian American, born in the US. At first, he is refused entry to Gaza: not all American doctors are treated equally.

Right from the outset, American Doctor pitches itself as an examination of morality. Whether it’s a medic arguing with filmmaker Poh Si Teng about why the bodies of dead children shouldn’t be pixelated, critiquing US news networks who push back on their lived experience of the conflict, or questioning why hospitals – including the one they volunteer in – are targeted by Israeli forces.

Following the three men around the hospital in operating theatres, hospital corridors, and phone calls home builds up a sense of the crazy normal of the Nasser Hospital. Pain medicine is in short supply. Gaza’s health infrastructure has been decimated. Equipment that would offer better patient outcomes simply isn’t available. An ambulance riddled with bullet holes sits around the back of the hospital near a mound of earth on the site of a mass grave burying the dead from a previous attack in the vicinity.

While the camera follows the three Americans (who mostly fail to fall into the “white saviour” stereotype) it lingers on the patients – children and adults – and the local staff who have to live all year around in a region that is under attack.

With foreign journalists banned from entering Gaza, the doctors are happy to talk to the media to relay what they’ve seen and experienced. They face presenters on the big US networks who default to an IDF-believing/Palestinian-sceptical stance. Everything the doctors say is questioned and challenged. Yet everything Israeli sources state in press releases seems to be taken as gospel. Senior American politicians receive the doctors politely in Washington DC corridors of power, but don’t seem to be sympathetic to their perspectives.

The doctors question why civilian hospitals are being attacked in what they see as a breach of Geneva Conventions. They see no evidence of secret tunnels under the buildings in which they work. When Israeli forces break the ceasefire and bomb the hospital’s second-floor male surgical ward (justified as targeting someone on the ward who is deemed to be a terrorist), one doctor is forced to operate again on a patient he’s already treated.

Some audiences will swerve this film, believing that the IDF are totally justified in targeting Hamas terrorists and that nearby innocent civilians, medical staff and facilities are necessary ‘collateral damage’. They’ll deem American Doctor to be pro-Hamas propaganda without even viewing it. Nothing to see here.

But if you want to judge for yourself the many moral questions for Israel, Gaza and big nations like the US that are raised in this film, you can catch a screening at 18:15 on Wednesday 17 June in Queen’s Film Theatre on day two of Docs Ireland documentary film festival. American Doctor will also be released in UK and Irish cinemas from 25 September. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

It’s also worth noting that earlier this year – after filming had completed – Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) suspended its work at Nasser Hospital for three months. Extracts from the MSF FAQ explain:

On 13 April 2026, MSF resumed core medical activities at Nasser hospital. This resumption comes after we initially suspended non-critical medical activities on 20 January. We had made the difficult decision to suspend non-critical activities after our colleagues witnessed a series of incidents, including the presence of masked armed men, others engaging in intimidation and carrying out arbitrary arrests of patients, and one incident that involved the suspected movement of weapons, all of which are completely unacceptable.

MSF raised our concerns regarding the management of the structure, the safeguarding of its neutrality, and security breaches to the relevant authorities. We have continuously engaged with Gaza’s Ministry of Health since and have determined that the concrete improvements taken by the relevant authorities, such as measures to restrict the entry of weapons, provide the minimum conditions required for our teams to work safely and in line with our working principles ...

Nasser hospital is a critical lifeline, and one of the last remaining, partially functioning Ministry of Health hospitals in Gaza. It must be respected and protected as a civilian medical facility, in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Our calls shouldn't be instrumentalised. We have seen Israel obliterating the health system in Gaza with the justification that they are being used as command centres or for military purposes, which we never witnessed. The hospital must be spared from Israeli attacks, and it must not be used for any military purposes by Hamas or any other armed groups. The lives of countless Palestinians depend on it. Hospitals must remain neutral, civilian spaces, free from military presence or activity, to ensure the safe and impartial delivery of medical care.  

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Displace: The Battle For Dublin – a story of rebuilding community in the midst of precarity, planning and protest (Docs Ireland at An Cultúrlann on Thursday 18 June)

Ireland’s housing crisis is multifaceted. Displace: The Battle For Dublin documents buildings lying derelict, landlords choosing to ‘no fault’ evict families on their sixth anniversary renting flats, artists being thrown out of their studio spaces despite being long-standing tenants, pockets of land that service communities being redeveloped for profit.

The lack of accommodation (affordable or not) is argued to be a result of commercial overdevelopment, exploitation of poor renter protections, and underinvestment in initiatives that could heal fractured communities.

James Redmond’s gentle pacing introduces the audience to people living precariously, unsure if their poorly maintained accommodation will ever be repaired (there’s an example of a large landlord taking nine years to fix a broken window), people wondering whether they’ll have a home to live in this time next year. We are introduced to individuals who are organising neighbours to form tenacious residents’ groups that can stand up to their wealthy landlords. And we see when lobbying and meetings turn to last ditch street protests.

There’s a quick lesson in ‘asset urbanism’, the concept of the rich making decisions about the urban landscape, using it as a playground for making money, with home owners and small commercial and cultural renters pawns in a bigger game of wealth extraction. Pockets of land become instruments of investment rather than habitats for humans to live and thrive.

Dublin is not alone in having a housing crisis. Locking people out of the city in which they grew up is common. Local government enabling commercial companies to delay redevelopment is not unusual. But despite the Celtic tiger, despite Dublin being the European home to so many multinational tech giants, it’s particularly chilling that there is such underinvestment in community-building that would benefit citizens in this city.

In Belfast and elsewhere up t’north, the derelict buildings tend to mysteriously combust at night, sometimes making it more necessary to be demolished. It’s hard to watch the film without wondering what a thriving North Street Arcade would be like and why the poorly-named Tribeca Belfast project had been allowed to stagnate for so long. Maybe the scenes about the ‘blandmarks’ walking tour will inspire a Belfast version being developed.

Displace: The Battle For Dublin carries a sense of lament throughout its 100-minute essay on the accommodation crisis. The sense that hope is being lost is strong. But its humanisation weaves in moments of celebration and appreciation amongst the sequences of communities being pulled apart or squashed.

Throughout the film the character of buildings pops out from the screen with gorgeous black and white cinematography. Good people look tired. Protests look earnest. The final credits list contributors like a roll call of saints.

The last sequence suggests that a minor victory might be around the corner for one community. Yet the very fact that so many people need to move off the site for a number of years leaves the lingering worry that the redevelopment could still be delayed or dropped. It feels like a cake-fuelled ending that may yet have to fade into a title card that says “six years later, none of the residents were back living on the site”. Hopefully that’s not the case …

Displace: The Battle For Dublin is being screened as part of the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 19:00 on Thursday 18 June in An Cultúrlann. Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

  

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Previewing Docs Ireland 2026 - six days of documentary delicacies (16-21 June)

Documentary film festival Docs Ireland is back for the eighth time with a smorgasbord of films.

The majority of screenings are Pay What You Want.

Amid the myriad of shorts, talks and screenings, here are a handful that caught my eye from the chunky programme.

Tuesday 16 June

Steal This Story // 18:30 at QFT // The festival’s opening night gala spotlights the work of independent US journalist Amy Goodman who has been telling stories neglected by larger networks and holding the powerful to account for over three decades. Goodman will be present for a Q&A after the screening. SOLD OUT

Wednesday 17 June

American Doctor // 18:15 at QFT // Three US physicians return to Gaza during a ceasefire. Their work in operating theatres and hospital corridors is documented before they return home and take what they’ve seen to the corridors of power and the US Congress. (REVIEWED)

Thursday 18 June

Once You Shall Be One Of Those Who Lived Long Ago // 12:00 at QFT // A northern Swedish town is slowly collapsing into the iron ore mines beneath it. Prosperity goes hand in hand with disappearance. A melancholic, humorous and absurd look at a settlement in its dying days.

Now We’re Talking: Michael J Murphy and Sam Hanna Bell on screen // 13:00 at PRONI // Celebrating two important local cultural voices – folklorist and playwright Michael J Murphy and producer/author/editor Sam Hanna Bell – whose personal archives have been donated to the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland and have been catalogued and curated. A TV profile of Murphy being interviewed by Bell will be followed by a radio interview with Bell reflecting on his writing life, finishing with a film created by Drumintee Primary School inspired by the work of Murphy. (The same programme will also be screened in the shadow of Slieve Gullion in Tí Chullainn in Mullaghbawn at 19:00 on Saturday 20 June.) [You can find out more about Michael J Murphy in the Nerve Centre podcast series I helped make earlier this year with a group who explored his archive.]

Displace: The Battle For Dublin // 19:00 at An Cultúrlann // Gorgeous black and white cinematography and remarkable community building shine a light on the multi-faceted housing crisis in Dublin. Asset urbanism is stripping money out of areas along with the communities that enlivened them. But can citizens meaningfully fight back? (REVIEWED)

Ghost in the Machine // 20:30 at QFT // Vlerie Veatch’s documentary pores over the history of Artificial Intelligence and its ties between governments and private equity. Can we trust the people fashioning the regulation and holding the purse strings?

Friday 19 June

Trop C’est Trop (Enough is Enough) // 18:15 at QFT // The enduring conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo rarely makes it to news bulletins or newspaper reports. Elsié Sawasawa’s film bears witness to the Congolese people trapped in the endless fighting as the Congolese army protecting a regional capital are overpowered by rebels in just four days.

Lesbian Lines // 18:30 at QFT // Director Cara Holmes explores the hidden history of the underground network of lesbian helplines that operated across Ireland, mixing fear with fun and a celebration of togetherness as women who felt trapped found a chink of light. (REVIEWED)

Saturday 20 June

Desert Passages // 18:00 at QFT // Look after your water sources and waterways before it’s too late. With the 1,450 mile long Colorado River being diverted to new settlements and industry along its path down form the Rocky Mountains, the borderlands of the US and Mexico are experiencing drought. A brooding documentary with gorgeous visuals. (REVIEWED)

Cutting Through Rocks // 20:15 at QFT // Sara is the first elected councilwoman in her Iranian village. The complexity of Iran is displayed as she challenges patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages. (REVIEWED)

Sunday 21 June

Earth, Wind & Fire // 15:00 at QFT // Tracking the fractious yet fructuous history of the experiment band who started out as afro-gospel-jazz-blues-rock and would go on to define disco sound with songs like Let’s Groove Tonight. (REVIEWED)

Magilligan // 18:15 at QFT // The festival’s closing night film (preceded by the festival awards ceremony) presents a portrait of Ryan, a teenager imprisoned for a violent offence who finds purpose working on the prison farm but upon release finds his past hard to shake off. After the screening, Belfast director Ross McClean will be interviewed about his feature debut by Myrid Carten (director of last year’s closing film A Want In Her).

The full programme can be viewed on the Docs Ireland website.

Lesbian Lines – the network of helplines that offered connection, protection and solidarity (Docs Ireland in the Queen’s Film Theatre on Friday 19 June)

Quite a number of LGBT organisations across the island have recently been sifting through their archives and reflecting on many decades of support and advocacy. In parallel, a number of cultural productions have been documenting the early days of these groups. Kabosh staged Dominic Montague’s Callings (2022) looking back at Cara Friend helplines. Kabosh and Montague were also responsible for the electrifying A Queer Céilí at the Marty Forsythe (2019)

Films like Rebel Dykes (2021) give a sense for the lesbian scene in London in the 1980s and 1990s. Cara Holmes’ new documentary Lesbian Lines hears from women involved with the network of lesbian helplines that ran – and continue to run – across Ireland. What starts off as a celebration of the almost underground community offering connection, protection and solidarity then examines key moments of lesbian visibility in Ireland, before acknowledging some of the darker calls the helplines received.

Back in 1980, 26-year-old Joni Crone appeared on The Late Late Show. Host Gay Byrne asked “What would compel a girl like you to appear on a programme like this and blow as it where her cover?” Later Byrne in the interview would refer to lesbians as “these people”. The host adopted a patronising tone throughout, but Crone kept her cool – perhaps aided by the backstage vodka someone in the production team recommended to calm her nerves! – and explained what it was like to live as a lesbian in Ireland.

Cinematographer Aidan Gault uses shadows and dim lighting for the interviews that sustain the storytelling. It’s almost like the women are sitting in a closet. There’s a mix of testimony, dramatic reconstruction and conversation.

Outburst Queer Arts Festival director Ruth McCarthy is among those interviewed. And there’s a snippet of archive from Free Presbyterian minister Rev David McIlveen to remind viewers of the opposition to homosexuality. Footage of the security search barriers on Royal Avenue grounds the film in a period of history which will seem alien to younger audiences but remain all too vivid for some of us oldies.

Last year’s Docs Ireland festival screened the Housewife of the Year documentary (which Holmes edited) about the now-jarring pageant of domesticity. Lesbian Lines opens a door onto another side of how society in Ireland slowly changed.

Responsible for the clamouring soundtrack of Irish folk horror Fréwaka, Die Hexen sensitively allows scenes to breath: there’s no sense of urgency, and when the mood dips, the music fades as more sombre and tragic moments are remembered. A volunteer recalls a woman ringing up in a distressed state before being cut off when an angry man comes into the room. Beaten up by her husband, she dials back the next week from hospital. Another volunteer remembers callers contemplating suicide.

Voiced up conversations based on the extensive phone logs give an insight into the vulnerability of those moments, and intimacy of people feeling safe enough to open up to a stranger and remove their mask.

Like another Docs Ireland screening – Displace: The Battle for Dublin – Lesbian Lines is a film about a silenced section of society nurturing community, allowing people to find their voice and find their tribe. Considerable fear is mixed in with fun and a celebration of togetherness as women who felt trapped find a chink of light.

You can catch Lesbian Lines at the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 18:30 on Friday 19 June in Queen’s Film Theatre. Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

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Bold Girls – facing up to the unpalatable whole truth and choosing how to move on (Centre Stage at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 14 June)

Bold Girls is located somewhere in and around the Falls Road/Anderstown Road in west Belfast in the late 1980s. Cassie lives with her mum Nora and kids across the road from Marie. These women are rich in ambition, poor in pocket, and they’ve been hiding secrets from each other and possibly from themselves. Phil Jennings’ simple maroon-themed kitchen set floats above the Lyric’s Naughton Studio stage, a dias for teal-spilling and dealing with the past.

An early question “Do you believe in ghosts?” sets up the non-supernatural appearance of Deirdre (Annie McIlwaine), never not dress in white, who lurks in the vicinity of Marie and Nora wherever they go.

Director Michael Quinn freezes the action – aided by Jennings’ sharp spotlighting – as characters deliver thoughtful monologues to the audience. An episode of ITV’s Blind Date plays in the corner, emphasising the neighbours’ vacuum of romantic relationships and their lust for love.

Rona Munro’s dialogue excels at allowing the lively women to speak at cross-purposes, with three people often conducting two different conversations in beautiful harmony. An unseen washing machine is an early source of humour. But this play is no comedic sitcom.

Caroline Curran sports a brunette wig and plays Marie with warmth and wit: a feeder who welcomes even the stranger into her kitchen and can knock up a sandwich in the middle of the night. (The rest of the cast had better like Curran’s sandwiches as there’s a lot of eating on two show days!)

The first act sets Marie up as a cheerful single mother who idolises her dead husband. Bold Girls asks whether any of these women can make their own decisions and escape the orbit of their men folk, who are either dead or incarcerated, and remain absent from the stage. Can they truly run away from their past and other people’s past actions?

Marie’s steady attitude is knocked in the aftermath of a trip to the local nightclub when her more sporty neighbour Cassie (played with engaging vigour by Hannah Carnegie) opens up and shares a succession of pieces of distressing news. Throughout, dream-stealing Deirdre loiters with unsure intent.

Anger bleeds into Curran’s happy-go-lucky portrayal of Marie as the young mother pushes back on other people’s legacy. Meanwhile Cassie’s mum (played by Mairead McKinley) is waking up to the fact that other people are denying her nice things. The most powerful scene comes when the women – all of whom should know better – take the side of heinous men against their kith and kin.

The characters are well drawn, the laughs keep rolling, and 36 years after its première, Rona Munro’s script still has much to say about this conflicted society where can women be left to suffer the cost of their partners’ actions. It’s a simpler yet at least as effective companion piece to the Lyric’s recent production of Tea in a China Cup.

Centre Stage’s revival of Bold Girls finishes its sold out run at the Lyric Theatre on Sunday 14 June. 

Photo credit: Rebecca Jane Windsor 

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Desert Passages – brooding documentary about a disappearing water source (Docs Ireland in Queen’s Film Theatre on Saturday 20 June)

Snow melting in the Rocky Mountains provides up to 90% of the water flowing down the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River. It’s all but dried up by the time it reaches the ocean. Desert Passages is a gently told story of decline. There’s less snow to melt. Water is evaporating from reservoirs faster than before. Population and agricultural growth along the flow means that water is being “diverted to people as opposed to moving people to water” as one contributor explains.

Beautiful cinematography serves up striking vistas. Red stone contrasts with concrete dams. A drone camera flies low over the water like a modern recreation of a scene from 1980’s Air Wolf. Tide marks along the side of rock faces show the huge change in high water level.

The contributors are thoughtful rather than angry. There’s a stoicism that talks of adapting to the new reality of drought rather than voluntary or forced displacement of populations to land that can better support them. Towns in Arizona truck water in. The landscape becomes increasingly barren as the river almost impotent in its final hundred mile stretch into Mexico. Homes and habitats have changed forever. Climate refugees are on the rise but have no protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Desert Passages is a brooding documentary that places layers of similar detail on top of each other like a papier-mâché construction. The quickly established premise that access to water isn’t evenly spread and made worse by human decisions is almost diluted by repetition. The visuals distract from the oral duplication that stretches the film out to 77 minutes.

The film’s many moments of silence will give time for Northern Ireland audiences to consider the plight of Lough Neagh. While it’s a story of pollution from agriculture and sewage, exacerbated by arising summer temperatures that allow the blue-green algae to bloom, Jan Carson’s latest novel Few and Far Between imagines a populated archipelago in the lough, created by a government programme to reduce the water level. The residents face an existential threat of a flood to tackle the algae bloom in this fictional universe. (Just one of a number of threats the author conjures up!)

Look after your water sources and waterways before it’s too late. That’s the message of Kevin Brennan and Laurence Durkin’s new film that is being screened as part of the Docs Ireland documentary film festival at 6pm on Saturday 20 June in Queen’s Film Theatre.

PS: Watch out for the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.

Docs Ireland runs from 16 to 21 June. (links to my festival preview and the full programme)

  

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