KHARTOUM***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Khartoum is an evocative name but the capital city of Sudan has been ravaged by its latest military coup.  Apparently, Sudan is a country that has experienced the most military coups of any country in Africa.  In this superb documentary from a group of directors led by Phil Cox, we learn what it has been like for five of the ten million ordinary people displaced by the most recent political violence.

The first and most heartbreakingly brilliantly joyous of the two refugees are orphaned boys Lokain and Wilson.  They are still young but matter of factly describe what it's like to be surrounded by militia with guns. The juxtaposition of this horrific childhood with their more typical boisterous cheekiness is striking and affecting.  We see them now as kids in a Kenyan school, planning how to bunk off if the teacher is boring. But the director of their segment also puts them against a green screen with the other participants in the documentary, where they re-enact the painful events that caused them to flee, but also to imagine their most glorious dreams. It's a powerful technique - both whimsical and perilous - and speaks to the incredible trust the subjects must have had in their directors. 

Next we have mother Khadmallah who has had to flee with her daughter, also to Kenya, but misses lying beneath the trees in her beloved Nubian mountains. Then we have Jawad, who runs food stalls in Cairo with his fellow refugees and fondly remembers listening to music on a bus with a girl who he liked.  Finally we have civil servant and pigeon racer Majdi, who must let his son flee before he too can later leave. 

All of these stories are moving insofar as their memories and desires are so basic and simple: a memory of listening to music or lying beneath a tree. All are melancholy for home. All are hopeful for the future. I loved seeing the gorgeous buddies Lokain and Wilson wonder if their kids will be friends. Of course! They are so full of life it really is a fantastic testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit that they are.  

But under the surface what hope is there? The documentary subjects are other Sudanese people interviewed comment on how fractured and fractious the country is. What even is Sudan but a patchwork of ancient kingdoms. Is their cultural identity African or Arab?  I think this film will prove an educational primer for the European viewer unfamiliar with that history.  And perhaps a provocation for viewers who think of slavery through a European lens. It's really quite shocking and provocative to hear Arab militia tell African residents of Khartoum that they are merely descendants of slaves, and that this is Arab country. 

KHARTOUM has a running time of 78 minutes. It played Berlin and Sundance. It will play the BFI London Film Festival 2025.

SINK aka GHARAQ*** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Debut feature writer-director Zain Duraie's SINK is a beautifully acted film about a perilously unboundaried relationship between a mother and her mentally ill son in contemporary, middle-class Jordan.  They have such a close bond - regularly swimming together, partying together - that she is reluctant to acknowledge the severity of his withdrawal, depression and increasingly antisocial behaviour.  Rather than confront him, or admit to its oddity, she joins him in it, in a very powerful central scene involving a chicken (not as absurd as it sounds written down). The final act of the film sees her finally snap out of this and call for the appropriate help but she acts almost shocked and in grief. There are so many layers behind the performance - does she feel guilt that she enabled his behaviour for so long? Sadness that she has lost the child that she feels closest to? Fear that she did, at some level, enjoy being part of his antics?  The way the film is structured and played, we never truly know.  The mother, Nadia, (Clara Khoury, also starring in THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB) is held at a distance from us, and in the end, that limited my true enjoyment of, and immersion within, the film.  

SINK has a running time of 88 minutes.  It played Toronto and will play the BFI London Film Festival, where it is contention for the Sutherland Trophy. All three screenings still have tickets available.

ISH***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Writer-director Imran Perretta's ISH is a beautifully made and emotionally searing coming-of-age drama, set in contemporary Luton - a shitty post-industrial town an hour north of London. I know it's shitty because I grew up near there, and it comes as no surprise to see that this multicultural town is still facing the same racially motivated policing and tug of war for the souls of its teenage boys as it did when I was growing up in the eighties. 

The movie stars newcomer Farhan Hasnat as Ishmael, or Ish for short, a young teenage boy living in a multi-generational family, dealing (or not) with the death of his mum. He is at that age where, depending on when puberty hits, you can look and sound completely different from your best mate, in this case a much older-looking boy called Maram (Yahya Kitana).  Where Ish is a bit naive and looks younger than his years, Maram is more cynical and world-wise. He wants to hang out with the cool older kids, and is swept up in low-level politics.  Like it or not, world events now infect our country. What happens in Israel has a profound impact on our Jewish and Muslim kids.  For Maram, the "opps" are the "IDF" and he feels his people are under attack.

The film is about two kids being pulled apart.  Partly because Maram is maturing faster, but mostly because he is unanchored by the strong and loving family that Ish is part of.  There's something really beautiful about the relationship between Ish and his grandmother, and this film gives us a depiction of a centring and positive Muslim faith that is all too rare in contemporary British media. By contrast, Maram is left to his own devices by his fierce father, and all too vulnerable to having his head turned.  The motivating device of the film that really seals their separate fates comes about a third of the way through the film, when both kids are picked up by the police in a stop-and-search operation.  The episode is quick and brutal and a real eye-opener for those who haven't seen one of these first hand. 

It's hard to believe that this is a first-time feature directorial effort from Imran Perretta. The film feels so tightly scripted (kudos also to co-writer Enda Walsh -HUNGER) and beautifully captures the liminal nature of being a second-gen immigrant - how language and even names are slippery - and identity gets channeled through shifting patois. I also loved the monochrome lensing from DP Jermaine Canute Edwards, capturing the Luton I knew from my youth. This is a really impressive film and one that people wanting to understand contemporary Britain should watch.  It would pair well with the superb BBC Three series Man Like Mobeen.

ISH has a running time of 89 minutes and played Venice. It will play the BFI London Film Festival where it is in competition for the Sutherland Trophy for debut feature directors. Both screenings are sold out.

THE TRAVELERS aka LES VOYAGEURS***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

In a world where illegal immigration dominates the political agenda in almost every developed market - where undocumented migrants are in fear of being taken off the streets in America - and where even in multicultural London, lamp-posts are draped in St. George's flags - Cameroonian director David Bingong has made a film that drips with empathy, insight, and even joy. I challenge anyone to watch it and not feel greater empathy and even admiration for the young men who risk their lives, fully cognisant of the risks, in order to make it in Europe and send money back home.

THE TRAVELERS is David Bingong's own journey from Cameroon to the Northern coast of Africa, across the sea to Spain.  He made the journey just over a decade ago and documents it with his handheld camera.  He is with a group of twenty or so twenty-something Cameroonians who have to sleep rough in the forest, and then take shelter in safe houses and tents where they find them. At one point we watch them inflate a perilously flimsy dingy for the crossing. It was so flimsy at first I thought they were inflating a mattress for the night.  They worry about nature, the tides, the weather. They worry about the police and army who could shoot them. They face prejudice from the Arab-Africans in the North let alone the Europeans when they land. But throughout it all, this band of travellers are in buoyant spirits, and express their hopes, dreams and fears through a cappella singing.  These songs are infectious and wondrous, but are sharply juxtaposed with the reality of the journey.  One smash-cuts to the news that a group that made the journey ahead of them has all been shot in the water.

I am no bleeding-heart liberal: this blog used to be called "Movie Reviews For Greedy Capitalist Bastards".  But my word, to spend time with these young men is to admire their courage, pluck and entrepreneurial flair. I cannot help but think that if young people with these minerals want to come and enrich our countries, why wouldn't we make an easier path for them?  

I truly hope this doc gets wide distribution. I will not forget its "characters" - or that they are real men, their stories and their drive.  It's so easy to see numbers and get scared. Far harder to see actual human beings and make those same judgments. This is film-making at its most powerful and urgent.

THE TRAVELERS has a running time of 60 minutes. It is playing at the BFI London Film Festival but both screenings are sold out.

SINGING WINGS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

SINGING WINGS is the absolutely delightful debut feature doc from director Hemen Khaledi.  It features the warm and spiky seventy-something matriarch Khadijeh, living with her family in contemporary Iran. She cares for her elderly husband, goes fishing with her grandkids, and stumbles upon caring for an injured stork that cannot join its mates on the great migration.  A local vet gives her advice on her to bring it back to health.  Meanwhile, in a rather on the nose comparison, Khadijah's daughter is trying to migrate too. 

I cannot put a finger on why this film transfixed me so.  Maybe because it's so rare to get a glimpse into contemporary rural life in Iran, as opposed to the cosmopolitan urban life of Tehran. For sure, there was something in the way Khadijah reminds me of my old Asian aunties, even in the way she dresses and cooks. I love the scenes with her husband, alternatively bickering and caring. Despite being so old, Khadijah has a real energy to her, and her need to see the stork migrate is really touching and weirdly involving.  Finally, the lensing is beautiful.  Wherever this film is set, the landscape, mountains and wide expansive skies are quite lovely.

Overall SINGING WINGS is a really affecting, surprising and impactful documentary. I note that all of its BFI London Film Festival screenings are already sold out. I hope it gets a distributor. 

SINGING WINGS has a running time of 73 minutes. It will play the BFI London Film Festival and is competition for the Grierson Award.

ONLY ON EARTH** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

Danish environmental documentarian Robin Petre follows up FROM THE WIDE SEA, with her study of wildfire prone Spain in ONLY ON EARTH, in competition for the Grierson Documentary prize at the year's BFI London Film Festival.

I can see why it was nominated. She beautifully captures the stunning Galician landscape and has an eye for framing the almost alien wind turbines that now  grace its ridges. It is ironic that these interlopers, no doubt earnestly erected to save the environment, have become monstrous invasions of a delicate ecosystem that had for centuries protected Spain from wildfires.  There are lots of shots where we see them looming over the landscape, utterly out of scale with the wild horses beneath, scored with an eery metallic droning audio design.   

The real focus of the documentary is the beautiful wild horses, uniquely designed to feast on the tough gorse of this region, becoming rarer as their inhabit is made more inhospitable. And with no-one to eat the gorse, and climate change creating more and more extreme heat, the area is now prone to the wildfires shown in the stunning photograph above.

Petre tells her story by centring the animals - but also showing us the people who try to live with them and in this environment, whether firefighters, veterinarians or aspiring cowboys.  It feels rather hopeless. The investigative firefighter warns of what is happening and is utterly unsurprised when the fires start. This gives the film a melancholy tone.  But I must admit to have being rather bored during the running time.  How many shots of ominous wind turbines can we see?  I think I would rather have had the stunning visuals as photographs.

ONLY ON EARTH has a running time of 93 minutes. It played the Berlinale. Tickets are still available for all three screenings at the BFI London Film Festival.