Syria
Songs We Carry, Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak, Kings Place review - harmony between Arab and JewMonday, 07 October 2024
As the Middle East continues to fragment in hate and horror, a tragic unfolding of events with roots reaching back to the middle of the last century, any sign of love and deeply felt collaboration provides a welcome beacon, and signals the... Read more... |
Nezouh review - seeking magic in a warFriday, 03 May 2024
The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the Syrian war-set movie Nezouh begins with a teenage girl huddled in a tight, enclosed space – perhaps the bunk bed of... Read more... |
The Old Oak review - a searing ode to solidarityFriday, 29 September 2023
Ken Loach has occasionally invested his realist TV dramas and movies with moments of magical realism – football inspiring them in The Golden Vision (1968) and Looking for Eric (2009) – but magical spaces in them are rare. In The Old Oak,... Read more... |
Album: Danûk - MorîkWednesday, 24 May 2023
Danûk are a group of exiled musicians, mostly Kurdish, and Morîk is their very appealing first album. They draw their bewitching songs and instrumentals from Kurdish tradition as recorded on wax cylinders in the early years of the 20th century by... Read more... |
Liaison, Apple TV+ review - tangly Franglais thriller presses some hot buttonsThursday, 02 March 2023
Vive l’entente cordiale! “Despite Brexit” (as the BBC likes to say), Apple TV+ has successfully bridged the Channel to create this lurid Anglo-French thriller, in which Euro-skulduggery rubs shoulders with bribery, corruption and high treason.At... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021
“I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
Limbo review - quiet but volubleSaturday, 31 July 2021
Displacement looms large over every quietly impressive frame of Limbo, writer-director Ben Sharrock's magnetic film about a young Syrian man called Omar (Amir El-Masry) who finds himself biding his time in the remotest reaches of Scotland on the way... Read more... |
Mark Townsend: No Return review - a masterclass in journalismWednesday, 08 April 2020
When Amer Deghayes departed for Syria in a truck leaving from Birmingham, a worker from a youth arts organisation in Brighton had been trying to get in touch with him. She wanted to inform Amer, an intelligent and creative 18-year-old who had once... Read more... |
The Cave review - heroic Syrian hospital workersMonday, 09 December 2019
War crimes are war crimes, irrespective of the victims’ ages, gender, or ethnicities, and no one’s torture or murder is more abhorrent than anyone else’s. Yet because children are essentially innocent and incapable of defending themselves, and... Read more... |
For Sama review - besieged, bombed, and defiant in SyriaSaturday, 14 September 2019
People who idly use the phrase “it’s like living in a war zone” when considering their domestic mess should see Waad al-Kateab’s documentary For Sama.Everyone should see it, in fact. Waad lived in a terrifying war zone – besieged East Aleppo in... Read more... |
CD: Bedouine - Bird Songs of a KilljoyThursday, 20 June 2019
With her timeless vocals and jazz-inflected folk melodies, it feels like a bit of Los Angeles songwriter Bedouine lives in the golden age of Hollywood. It’s a dichotomy she goes as far as to address on “Echo Park”, a woozy Sunday morning wander... Read more... |
A Private War review - Rosamund Pike burns with passion in well-meaning biopicSaturday, 16 February 2019
The Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin lived such a fearless life that it's a shame this celluloid biopic isn't correspondingly brave. Sincere to a fault and bolstered by a blazing performance from an impassioned Rosamund Pike, Matthew... Read more... |
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