Lady – mid-life crisis as a lonely aristocrat descends into nothingness (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 14 August)

Lady Isabella is a woman of a certain age who knows that her public profile – even as a low-level aristocrat – is fading fast. She cuts a lonely figure, rattling around a stately home set on a huge rural estate. Her husband is awol. A housekeeper cooks and cleans but companionship isn’t in her job description.

In a vain attempt to restore her relevance, Lady Isabella hatches a nonsensical plan to win a contest. And she’s hired a documentary team, under false pretences, to profile her attempt at gaining the top prize.

The film Lady begins with director Sam (Laurie Kynaston) arriving up the long driveway to greet Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford, Fleabag’s older sister). The audience watch what’s happening through the documentary’s crew’s camera angles, picking up audio from the lady of the manor and the director who have almost forgotten that they are both micced up. So much of the Lady’s day is spent pouring and slurping alcoholic beverages: soon we’re running through rooms like Anneka Rice on an ice bucket challenge.

Over the 95-minute film, there’s never a moment that Lady Isabella is on screen and she isn’t acting up to the camera. Clifford portrays an exhausted woman who is at her wit’s end. She’s manic and creatively unrestrained, though somewhat unexpectedly, given the large abode, financial worries aren’t on her list of woes. Can her passionate attempt to be seen to matter pay off? And at what cost?

I’ll not spoil the surprise, but a physical manifestation of Lady’s identity concerns soon reveals itself. Samuel Abraham’s feature debut screams out like a giant metaphor but the movie veers off course and explodes without properly hitting this ambitious target.

With Lady Isabella losing her grip on reality, thinly-written director Sam is becoming obsessed with the strain that this vanity documentary project is placing on his reputation. The director’s bonce is permanently adorned with a woolly hat. We quickly learn that it’s keeping his woolly head warm.

As we’re frequently reminded, he was Bafta-nominated but didn’t win. Chronically shy, Sam mostly communicates with his agent via irritating voice notes. The crew’s esprit de corps wears thin and they begin to turn their cameras to capture Sam’s unravelling in parallel with the Lady’s. And it’s hard to feel any empathy towards this second troubled character.

Samuel Abrahams’ script leaves little room for housekeeper Becky (Juliet Cowan, Nikki in This Life) to interrupt the otherwise two-handed scenes between Lady Isabella and her film director muse. Which is a great pity. Meanwhile Ricky the Raven watches over everything that’s happening at Ravenhyde Hall. His presence seems laden with a significance that is never exploited.

The film ends up being an exhausting not-quite-mockumentary rather than a poignant satire about a mid-life crisis. As a piece of cinematic art, Lady is saved by the quality of Clifford’s portrayal of a deranged woman who is not getting the professional help she needs and deserves, and her ability to make you giggle despite the farfetched on-screen hokum.

Lady is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 14 August.

 

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Tony – a queasy insight into Anthony Bourdain’s entry into chefdom cooking a soufflé of lies (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 14 August)

A new film from Matt Johnson, Tony, charts how 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain spent the summer of 1975. Telling his parents and anyone else who asks that he has won a writing fellowship, the clumsy, lying, penniless, disrespectful fantasist travels to the Provincetown, Massachusetts summer resort in pursuit of Nancy, an out-of-his-league girl in the year above him at college.

What follows is a very troubling coming of age tale.

A continuing act of grace – or gullibility – by a Brazilian fish restaurant owner (played by a magnificent Antonio Banderas) lifts young Tony (Dominic Sess, The Holdovers) out off immediate destitution. The big chef takes Tony under his wing and makes him wash dishes in the busy diner. But it places Tony – nicknamed ‘flaco’ (skinny) – in a kitchen of misfits, including drugged-up sex pest Sal (Leo Woodall). As the summer progresses, the newest recruit cooks up a soufflé of lies that threaten to come crashing down.

All the while, Tony chases after Nancy (Emilia Jones) who is portrayed as superficially clean cut with the hint of an edgy undertone. “I want you to take my photo because I like the way you look at me” is just one of a number of lines of dialogue which feel like they could have been directly lifted from Bourdain’s early memoir.

All of this leads up to a climatic evening of fleeting honesty when the heat gets too much in the kitchen, and Tony faces up to the people who have given him a second chance.

In real life, Anthony Bourdain went on to become a famous chef with a significant TV career in the US. He died by suicide in 2018, aged 61.

The feeling that some parts of this posthumous biopic might be true left me feeling like I’d eaten a bad oyster. It’s deeply troubling in terms of Tony’s actions and those around him in the kitchen. (Spoiler alert: while some elements have been rearranged to better suit the flow of the film – the scene with the bride is really the head chef and not Sal – much of it is based on his public recollections of his first summer of two in Provincetown.)

Ultimately, one lad’s lack of self-esteem and unfamiliarity with the truth causes injury – physical, financial and emotional – to so many people, that it feels almost unethical to celebrate or commemorate his entry onto the path to becoming a talented chef. Yet the romanticisation is still enormously watchable.

Tony is being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 14 August. Avoid eating oysters beforehand! (It’s also this week’s Baby Picture screening on Friday morning!)

 

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The Summer Book – grief(s) observed and anticipated (Queens Film Theatre from 7 August)

Fans of Tove Jansson will be aware that her writing extends beyond the Moonins. Her novel The Summer Book has been adapted into a film by Robert Jones and directed by Charlie McDowell.

Three surviving generations of a family have decamped to a wooden holiday hut on the shore of a Finnish island. They are mourning. A daughter (Sophia played by Emily Matthews) grieving for her mum. A recently widowed husband and father (Anders Danielsen Lie) throwing himself into his work as an illustrator. A grandmother (hunched-over fragile Glenn Close with dentures) is also coming to terms with her memories slipping away.

The tranquillity provides space to grieve. But the inner pain each person is experiencing is almost deafening in the silence. A gentle sepia tone places the action in the 1970s. Red clothing contrasts with the beige rocks and dark seaweed. Knitted cardigans add cosiness. When the father sits in front of a broken weathervane, it’s as if an arrow has pierced his heart. We learn that even the moss can die.

Sophia longs to rediscover some semblance of security through the adults. Her grandmother wants to grasp hold of important moments from the past. The father is struggling to process his feelings and support the emotional needs of his daughter. While the story is framed around Matthews’ Sophia, Close’s masterful portrayal of an increasingly frail grandmother provides the most stunning moments. The island idyll is their first opportunity to reconnect with each other.

It’s a gentle film – perhaps too gentle – with the landscape given long sequences to speak without the interference of characters’ dialogue (which is all in English rather than Finnish … even a wooden sign on a neighbouring island is rendered in English).

Grief is observed. Further types of loss are anticipated. But there’s also healing. Though if they keep watering that poplar tree with salt water, they’ll be holding a funeral for it too.

The Summer Book honours the original text though the process of condensing the story into 90 minutes takes away some of the thrills and spills. Instead, we watch great acting matched by superb cinematography (Sturla Brandth Grøvlen) and a score that supports but never overwhelms (Hania Rani). It’s being screened at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 7 August.

 

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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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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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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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Hen – fresh and feathery perspective on a familiar human crisis (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May)

Over the weekend, I had to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in preparation for the recording of an upcoming episode of Banterflix. Harper Lee’s novel wasn’t part of my GCSE English Literature experience: Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie was the book we had to study. Like the original 1960 book, the 1962 film adaptation examines racial injustice in the American South through the eyes of a child. The mixture of naïve and old-beyond-her-years observation feels fresher than any adult procedural storytelling could have managed.

Reacting to the constraints on his normal mode of filmmaking in his home country of Hungary, György Pálfi’s new film Hen uses the perspective of a chicken. Born and reared in a factory farm environment, the unnamed avian escapologist takes advantage of an opportunity to flee from a lorry transporting hens to the next, likely final, stage of their journey from egg to plate. It’s the first of many breakouts, as the leghorn hen travels to her new home where she ‘flies the coop’ to explore the surroundings of a family-owned restaurant on the Greek coast.

Business isn’t good and the owner’s daughter’s boyfriend decides to diversify their income with people smuggling. Despite the feathery perspective, Pálfi boldly makes the hen complicit in events that will shock but not surprise audiences.

The lead role is played by eight chickens: Anett, Enci, Enikő, Eszti, Eti, Feri, Nóra and Szandi. You can find out more about their jumping and running skills in a Guardian interview with Pálfi. The performance of the hens on screen are always real, never CGIed, though their human handler is magicked out of some footage.

What starts out as an almost flippant film about factory farming, switches to tell a somewhat familiar tale of human trafficking. A novel depiction, but hardly a new story? Yet the fresh perspective remains vivid in my mind days after the preview screening.

The tale of a hen determined to break free from her own captors, who stows away and witnesses terrible things along her journey. The parallels are subtle yet significant with the hopes and experiences of the people we briefly see being moved around ‘like animals’.

Hen is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May. 

 

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Midwinter Break – an overly gentle exploration of exile and trauma (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 20 March)

A pregnant woman was caught up in gunfire during the Troubles in what she euphemistically refers to as “as accident” in Belfast. Her baby was saved, but the not-long-married couple quickly quit Northern Ireland for a safer life in Scotland. This cinematic adaptation of Bernard MacLaverty’s novel Midwinter Break catches up Stella (Lesley Manville) and Gerry (Ciarán Hinds) in later life as they head off on a citybreak to Amsterdam and finally confront each other’s needs and coping mechanisms.

Midwinter Break becomes a film about unfulfilled promises that were made with the best of intentions . Stella continues to carry the physical and mental scars of her and her child’s escape from serious injury. (Julie Lamberton makes fleeting appearances as the young Stella.)

Her faith has been a cornerstone to coping with what happened. But this out-of-character weekend in Amsterdam quickly becomes a point of inflection in her life. Early on in the film, a Catholic priest aptly quotes from James 4 v14: “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, Hinds’ Gerry is sullen and withdrawn. His veins are part blood, part whiskey. His signs of affection towards Stella can be replaced with gruff dismissals of her desires. When the pair repeat their refrain of “You and me” / “Me and you” it’s clear that they’re no longer referring to “us” but are really two separate travellers whose lives aren’t as entwined as they once were.

Hinds’ gets to deliver a monologue about Gerry’s backstory to a Derry barman in an Irish pub in Amsterdam. The words he is given to say are flat and unmoving. In sharp contrast, Manville’s equivalent scenes, exploring what’s going on in her head, are so much more stirring and Stella remains the real emotional focus of the story throughout. Although Hinds does get the funniest line in the film when he sums up the state of their relationship by uttering “Cake?!”

The film’s script maintains much of the novel’s familiar texture, but squeezes the essential plot and character journeys into 90 minutes. There’s a lot of atmosphere but the character development – particularly of Gerry – is a bit too subtle. The final scene also lacks the heft to be believable.

Midwinter Break unpacks some of the enduring trauma that people still carry from the Troubles, and also zeroes in on what triggers us to flee certain situations. The unravelling rapport between the two lead characters is well balanced by director Polly Findlay. It’s definitely a film to watch from a comfy seat in a cinema: the opening scenes are so gentle, you’d be tempted to switch channel or get up off the sofa to make a cup of tea if you were watching at home. Midwinter Break is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 20 March.

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Melania – my takeaways from the elegant film that everyone is talking about but few have seen (currently playing in Cineworld and Odeon Belfast)

The film Melania identifies as a documentary and covers the twenty days up to and including President Trump’s second inauguration. Melania’s husband only plays a minor role in the film which keeps her in frame and in focus throughout.

What did I takeaway from the film? 

Melania gives good hugs and is happy to be blessed. She’s very comfortable with silence but can still do small talk.

She’s fond of being caught on camera doing the actions to YMCA. Her favourite song is Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean. It keeps popping up during the film. She can lip-sync to it, describing the singer as “very sweet, very nice”.

There isn’t a scene in this film in which she’s not wearing high heel shoes or boots with a large heel.

She rotates between the White House, the New York apartment, and the family home in Mar-a-Lago (where she has a whole drawer for sunglasses in the same way a rich male billionaire might have a drawer of expensive watches).

Melania seems totally unconcerned at the dissonance between her wealthy lifestyle and the threadbare wallets of less well-off US voters.

Barron Trump is very tall and is seen in this film to have been brought up with good manners. The moment at the end of the inauguration when he reaches over to shake hands with President Biden and Vice President Harris is included in the footage.

The underground car park in Trump Towers needs spruced up as it’s very dowdy compared to the glitz and mirrored glamour up above.

In a similar vein, screen 3 in the Odyssey Cineworld in Belfast is very dirty. The screen the film is projected onto, not the floor and seats which are pristine! Even worse that some of the distractingly filthy Lisburn Omniplex screens.

Secret Service agents look very uncomfortable wearing ill-fitting bow ties and better fitting tuxedos.

Melania’s modelling background is obvious in scenes where she patiently allows her designer Hervé Pierre and his team intimately poke and prod, pin and tuck to take account of Melania’s feedback on the cut of new fashion creations. At no point does is she seen critiquing the fit of her husband’s clothes.

FLOTUS is very hands on when it comes to style and design. Given the opportunity, she can chip in to improve her husband’s speeches (his reference to being “peacemaker and unifier” is her suggested flourish).

Her extraordinary and unending eye for detail means that it is unlikely to be an accident that this 104-minute Amazon Prime documentary of which she had editorial control (and was paid millions of dollars to take part in) keeps highlighting the value of people who have immigrated to the US (including herself – “my journey as an immigrant” – her fashion designer and her interior designer).

Given her presumed level of say in the shooting and editing, it feels of note that Elon Musk is prominent in the pre-inauguration dinner scenes (sitting directly opposite President Trump) and is the only person in the whole film to be seen with a woman sitting on his lap. There’s no attempt to rewrite history and downplay Musk’s role in DOGE.

And there’s a strong sense that love trumps hatred … in contrast with her husband’s actions as commander in chief.

Brett Ratner’s film would be improved if Melania’s narration was simply removed: the pictures would tell their own story. But the client might not have approved of that change. The scenes shot with old cameras on film stock are a constant nod to the First Lady’s father but the transitions are jarring and the footage is unnecessary. The verbose end credits outlining Melania’s contributions to the Trump administration lay it on far too thick.

Part music video, part pitch to be a lifestyle goddess, by the end of the so-called documentary, Melania is still an elegant enigma wrapped up in a very stylish overcoat with beautifully proportioned lapels. A huge question looms over the film. Why did the usually reclusive Melania (who contradicts reality by saying her role as FLOTUS will be “a very public life”) agree to be immortalised and showcased in a puff piece documentary?

It’s hard to believe that mere vanity would be a sufficient driver. The answer may be that her control of this largely propaganda piece means that she can differentiate her legacy from her husband’s. And the alleged multi-million paycheque for taking part could be a useful financial cushion if circumstances change, or a slush fund to invest in new post-White House opportunities as a high-end influencer.

For a Monday evening in a small screen, Cineworld will have been delighted with tonight’s attendance. It’s not a difficult film to watch, but it left me with more questions than answers.

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Nouvelle Vague – a satisfying dive into the world of early French New Wave cinema (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 January)

As the last of his coterie of pals to make the dive into directing, film critic Jean-Luc Godard believes that it’s long past time to bring his own vision of cinema to the silver screen. Over 106 minutes we watch Godard persuade and cajole producer Georges de Beauregard to take a chance on him and then witness the disorganised process of shooting his debut feature.

With only a short film under his belt, Godard (played by Guillaume Marbeck) seeks out advice from numerous established directors, allowing us to see a hint of the genesis of his style of using the first or second take, letting his actors find inspiration in the moment, not overly worrying about continuity, filming guerilla style with passers-by becoming unwitting extras, throwing in jump cuts and liberally crossing the line with camera angles that will never match up in the edit.

While Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) works as a standalone film, for the princely sum of £3.50 any number of streaming services will allow you to watch the 1960 classic À bout de souffle (Breathless) beforehand, or in my case very soon afterwards. It’s widely regarded as a treasure of the early French New Wave movement.

Godard’s vision – if it is even as developed as that – is sustained by the craft of his cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat), a war photographer with a flare for documentary-style shooting. Yet watch out for the fine details, like reflections in an actor’s sunglasses that bring a quality to the storytelling (and match scenes from the original film). The recreated scenes are a fine match for the original.

Aubry Dullin portrays actor Jean-Paul Belmondo who played the petty criminal and accidental cop killer Michel Poiccard in the original. Zoey Deutch stars as Jean Seberg, the actress who played Patricia Franchini, a student journalist selling copies of the New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris, and the romantic interest of Poiccard who he wants to join him in running away to start a new life.

Shot in moody black and white in Academy ratio to match the original film, Nouvelle Vague’s jazz soundtrack adds to the spontaneity of director Godard as he stumbles through an increasingly anarchic shooting schedule (“That’s all for today, I’m out of ideas!”) to assemble the parts necessary to make a film that has a few pages of treatment but no complete script.

Just as Marbeck captures the infuriating nature of the unphased director, Deutch depicts the exasperation of an actress bobbing about in a sea of chaos and reputational risk. Rising like a pillar of calm and preparation, assistant director Pierre Rissient (Benjamin Clery) emerges as the man who creates some of the beautiful touches that make the original film shine.

One character asks the question that is on the tip of every audience member’s tongue: “Are you making up how to direct as you go along?”

It’s only when you watch the original film that it becomes apparent that the crucial choice of hand-held camera and lack of sound synchronisation freed Godard to rearrange scenes and dub the dialogue on afterwards to create a cogent narrative.

Modern day director Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague is a fond look back at a pivotal moment in French cinema that changed so much and made it possible to break so many rules in the name of creating better art. It is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 January.

 

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No Other Choice – a redundant worker spirals down a chute of catastrophe in a bid to regain employment (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 23 January)

When Man-su is fired from the Korean paper mill, the former award-winning “pulp man of the year” is sure he’ll be back in work within three months. Park Chan-wook’s latest feature No Other Choice documents Man-su spiralling down a chute of catastrophe.

Feeling humiliated (at being out of work, heading in to mortgage arrears, and his wife (Mi-ri played by Son Ye-jin) needing to go back to work), Man-su’s desperation leads to him taking ever darker and more violent action to eliminate potential competitors from a job he’s chasing.

This dark satire celebrates the weirdness of job interviews, the virtuosity of his neurodivergent cello-playing daughter, the ineptness of police detectives, and tripping people up on their own bad karma. Two dogs and an endless sequence of well-sculpted scenes will surely make this another classic example of Korean cinema.

The send-up of capitalism easily sustains its tenor over 139 minutes with the satisfying but unpredictable dispatch of colleagues in the paper industry. By the end, we’re aware that while Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been depleting the available workforce, mechanisation and robotics are less dramatically human head count required to do the work he once so ably managed.

No Other Choice will be screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 23 January.

 

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