Author: Jack Hawkins

Stray

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Never before – to my knowledge, at least – has cinema verite been applied to the lives of stray dogs. Filmed in Istanbul from 2017 to 2019, Stray gives you a unique perspective of the city, one that is approximately 20 inches high and liable to be petted. That is because the camera, operated by director, producer and editor Elizabeth Lo, follows the furry subjects from their point-of-view as they wander along the streets, beaches and building sites of Istanbul.

It is an unsentimental ode to man’s best friend, referencing Greek philosophers such as Diogenes, one of the founders of Cynic philosophy, who believed that ‘dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.’ This preference for dogs can be found in today’s cynics and misanthropes, of course.

The focaliser is Zeytin, a sturdy, tan-coated bitch. She serves as our eyes and ears of the city, bringing smiles to those she meets, even those unsure of her. She also eavesdrops for us, catching everything from idle chitchat to contentious rows. Humans come and go, offering petting hands and sometimes food. A few of them stick around, though, namely a group of homeless Syrian refugees who stake out various doorways and building sites. They’re all kids, some of them barely teenagers, and they spend their days sniffing glue and scouring for food. Zeytin is also embraced by a group of older homeless men as they warm themselves around a small fire.

It is here that Lo’s film draws parallels between stray dogs and, for want of a better word, stray humans. They’re united in their nomadism and alienation, forgotten or ignored by wider society. Like Diogenes on the streets of ancient Greece, these people are often the most charitable to Zeytin and her friends Zazar, with whom she fights for discarded bones, and Kartal, a precious black and white puppy. They’re certainly more charitable than the Turkish authorities, whose attempts to exterminate Istanbul’s strays have been reduced, through public outcry, to the occasional boot or water cannon.

We see Zeytin navigate this milieu day and night, giving a tangible insight into the margins of Istanbul society. One may wonder how a dog’s perspective could sustain a 72-minute running time, and Stray can feel longer than it is. However, Elizabeth Lo’s meditative debut feature remains an absorbing, novel piece of work.

Stray showed at the BFI London Film Festival 2020, when this piece was originally written. On Netflix on Friday, April 1st. Also available on other platforms.

Shadow Country (Krajina ve Stínu)

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

It begins much like The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009), with a parochial village captured in arresting monochrome and coiled by pre-war tension. The border village of Vitorazsko, we’re informed, has always been a no man’s land, neglected and apparently stolen from by both Austrian and Czech officials. In 1938, the villagers’ dilemma is caught up in Hitler’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, sending their fate in a most terrible direction.

What emerges from this struggle is a film about identity, ideology and groupthink. About how individuals will turn against others within their group in order to survive or merely control. One woman, Marta (Barbora Polakova), becomes a quasi-brown shirt by 1939; emblazoned with a Nazi lapel pin and a smug look on her face. Before that, in 1938, a hateful little man named Otto intimidates a Jewish shopkeeper, pressuring him to sell his shop before the Germans arrive. You can identify Otto’s Nazi sympathies by his moustache and side parting, features that he removes in 1945 as his thuggish allegiance shifts in an instant.

Some villagers aren’t so venal. Karel, for instance, is a pragmatic family man. When a portly bureaucrat visits him to register their nationality, he reasons with his family that they should declare themselves German, as only Germany will provide land subsidies. He does not realise that this decision – made with practical foresight rather than any kind of patriotism – will have the gravest consequences.

Soon, the narrative progresses to 1942, where we see that Josef (Csongor Kassai), the husband of a Jewish wife, has become a member of the resistance, raising funds for Nazi victims and procuring firearms. He is a noble, brave character at this point, yet he will become a shameful figure by 1945 – the very kind of authoritarian he despised, fixing armbands on his enemies and imposing summary punishments. It is his story that is at the centre of Shadow Land’s morality tale of power and hive-mindedness.

Upon his return from a Nazi labour camp, Josef implements the expulsion of Germans from the village. It is a microcosm of the forced exodus of Germans from the Sudetenland in 1945 – 1948, answering the call of President Edvard Beneš for a ‘final solution of the German question’. In Vitorazsko, this sees National Socialist groupthink replaced by tyranny in the name of the republic, bringing out the same sadists who branded swastikas in 1938.

Otto, the hateful opportunist who had exploited anti-Semitism, can be seen cheering the Stalinist forces, waving his arms and baring his teeth. He is the worst kind of partisan – an individual utterly without principle, apart from that of self-preservation and promotion. He and other boorish thugs round up the Germans, relishing every opportunity to bludgeon and humiliate not out of righteous anger but spiteful enjoyment.

The film’s broad scope is a reflection of the 14 years Ivan Arsenjev spent on the script, perfecting his astute cautionary tale. Fortunately, director Bohdan Slama transferred this story to the screen with no flaw of note, perhaps no flaw at all. Shadow Country is a subtle yet very deliberate excoriation of groupthink in an age where it is rampant, causing this Czech epic to be necessary viewing.

Shadow Country has just premiered at the BFI London Film Festival.

Bulletproof

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

The main criticism of this film has been that it is derivative – a knock -off Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001). This issue is compounded in the UK market by the decision to rename it Bulletproof, a meaningless non-title. In the rest of the world it is known as Crown Vic, a reference to the V8-powered Ford Crown Victoria that carried police officers for some twenty years.

The Crown Vic, or ‘black and white’, is an almost holy place to Officer Ray Mandel (Thomas Jane), a mustachioed hardhat assigned to break in rookie Nick Holland (Luke Kleintank), “There’s a world inside this squad car, and then there’s everything else outside of it”. However, despite appearances and a few stern moments as they load up for duty, Ray proves to be reasonable – firm but fair. The men share their stories and philosophies of the job as they patrol their area, building a quiet rapport that’s familiar yet credible.

Within 10 minutes of their beat, a foreign object strikes the Crown Vic, sending Nick on foot to apprehend the petty criminal bolting down the street. This is followed by a night of events – drink driving, robbery, car fire, domestic squabbles ­– that bring excitement, suspense, and even levity.

There is a touch of cinéma vérité to how the film unravels. Large portions are without narrative; we simply observe Ray and Nick on the job, meeting a cross-section of society often at their worst. This docudrama aesthetic, combined with Thomas Scott Stanton’s photography of a tenebrous Los Angeles, gives a strong sense of time and place. You feel absorbed in the officers’ job and almost need your own Styrofoam cup of coffee to keep up with their nocturnal prowl.

The danger of the men’s beat is foreshadowed by the film’s opening, which sees a pair of heavily armed bank robbers blast their way through police in a style reminiscent of the North Hollywood shootout. The robbers remain at large and are described by Ray as ‘deadstick men’, hardened criminals who will not hesitate to kill. Their reappearance, it seems, is just a matter of time.

The explosive opener is brief but punchy, bringing to mind Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) and Heat (Michael Mann, 1995).But that is the problem with Bulletproof – it is shackled by its influences. We have seen the rookie cop and the roguish veteran countless times and we know all the moral quandaries that come with them. Yet the realism and strong performances go some way to skirting its triteness. Jane, perfectly cast, assumes his role with just the right cantankerousness, while Kleintank is suitably earnest and straight-laced; they’re both grounded, believable performances. There’s solid supporting work, especially from Josh Hopkins in the role of Jack Van Zandt, an obnoxious plainclothes officer wired on steroids, women and wanton violence. He’s just another misfit in the shadowy wasteland of Ray and Nick’s overnight patrol.

Alas, the fluid pace of our protagonists’ beat is interrupted by a side story involving Ray’s druggy former lover and her abducted child. It is a distraction that breaks with its docudrama energy and sees Ray behave with improbable corruption in the company of a rookie partner he neither knows nor trusts.

Critics may be lukewarm or even outright negative about Bulletproof, but I suspect its competent, nuts-and-bolts quality will earn Joel Souza’s debut a healthy following.

Bulletproof is available on VoD Monday, September 7.

Around the Sun

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Ever wonder if things may have turned out differently? Would a pithy remark with that boy or girl at the bar have changed anything? This is the power of first impressions, and it is a central notion of Around the Sun.

The film’s lean 89 minutes follows Maggie (Cara Theobold), an estate agent, and Bernard (Gethin Anthony), a film scout, as they walk and talk in a decrepit French chateau. They’re strangers to each other, yet they waste no time with small talk. Their wandering conversations mention everything from ex-partners to existential struggles, but their main topic is Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, a French author who penned Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds while a resident at the chateau.

As Maggie explains the book’s plot – which is a series of celestial conversations between a philosopher and an aristocratic woman – it becomes clear that life is imitating art. Indeed, Maggie and Bernard’s dynamic is reminiscent of Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995), and this conceit has a share of strengths and weaknesses.

The immediate problem lies with the performances; Theobold and Anthony’s dynamic just feels unnatural and scripted, especially when one or the other squirms to point out they meant no offence. However, the quality is redressed as the multiversal narrative unfolds, which splits and reimagines the story several times, presenting the characters with different traits and energies. This redrawing of Maggie and Bernard sees the actors’ performances come into their own, bolstering our hopes for their romance.

After all, these are characters of resonant, empathetic detail. They’re both wanderers without a calling: Maggie is far too learned for her job, while Bernard dropped law school to pursue a career with the meretricious hope of travel, “you can never just be in a place, you’ve always got to pay attention”. When their dynamic is at its strongest, we have a pair of urbane yet rudderless souls, and whether they will finally elope depends on the audience’s careful viewing of this detailed, erudite romantic drama.

Around the Sun is on VoD on Tuesday, August 4th.

Guest of Honour

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

With Guest of Honour, filmmaker Atom Egoyan reaffirms his penchant for the investigative drama. His last film, Remember, spun a mad yarn about a senile Holocaust survivor crossing the US to wreak vengeance against his former oppressors, in what critic Richard Roeper described as ‘a mash-up of The Terminator, Marathon Man and Memento’. It was an outrageous premise that only got sillier as the conspiratorial plot unraveled, but its excesses were bound by the strength of Christopher Plummer’s endearing performance. This is repeated in Guest of Honour, whose questionable dramatic content is anchored by the presence of its lead, David Thewlis.

Thewlis assumes the role of Jim, a cantankerous food safety inspector who scrutinises without mercy, looking down his nose at local restaurateurs as he crabbily explains their noncompliance. After a long day of dorky hectoring, he returns to an empty home where the only company is a big white rabbit and a glass of red. This is because his wife is dead and his daughter imprisoned.

His daughter is Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a young music teacher jailed for ‘abusing her power’ after pulling a salacious prank with her students. The conviction is unjust and unfair, but she accepts and even encourages her fate owing to what she considers an original sin concerning Jim’s adulterous relationship with her piano teacher.

This mystery and its non-linear delivery pique your interest somewhat, but by halfway it all becomes overwrought and unconvincing; especially a central plot point in which Jim’s occupation allows him to coerce one of the boys involved in the case. The matter isn’t helped by the unlikability of Veronica, either. She has this insouciant, po-faced smugness about her and is always ready with some smart-alec response when Jim tries to understand her.

Thewlis, however, proves to be the film’s buoy when it risks tanking, revitalising Egoyan’s turgid script with real pathos and empathy. This is especially true when Jim becomes the titular guest of honour, going far beyond his customary glass of red and pouring his heart out to a bewildered restaurant audience. It’s a fine piece of inebriated acting, showing all the cracks and vulnerabilities in Jim’s psyche with perceptive nuance. Alas, much of this is undone in the film’s closing moments, which target the heartstrings but miss entirely, in what is ultimately a second-grade melodrama from Atom Egoyan.

Guest of Honour is available now on Curzon Home Cinema.

The Final Wish

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

There’s a reason many couples – typically new and loved up – choose horror on a movie night; it is the genre most likely to draw them together, causing grips to tighten and heads to nestle. However, no such experience will be had watching The Final Wish, a scare-free effort that trades on Lin Shaye’s B-movie charisma.

Shaye’s schtick is a good fit for unhinged matriarch Kate Hammond, who she commands with a blend of psychosis, senility and the supernatural. Michael Welch also proves capable as her son Aaron, a bewildered everyman trying to make it as a lawyer. Regrettably, everyone else is a stock character – Jeremy the stoner friend, Derek the brutish local sheriff, Lisa the vapid love interest.

Even worse than the characters are the woefully constructed scares. It’s a reheated medley of creaky floorboards, possessed household items and characters’ reflections screaming at them in the mirror – all of which occur in a rickety old house with inexplicably poor lighting… why is it so dark in there?

And of course, this litany of tropes is amplified by a generic score that does two things: assaults you like a cattle prod during its irritating jump scares or counterfeits the tortured strings of The Shining. Even more annoying is the trailer, which uses that almost dubstep-inflected crescendo of synthetic drumbeats and screaming noises that audiences are just sick and tired of.

There is a plot, something about a haunted urn and seven wishes, but it’s so trite that it doesn’t bear repeating. Ultimately, this is just another rehashed horror movie. Aside from the competence of Shaye and Welch, the only praise one can eke out goes to the gaffers and set designers, who mock up some neon-kissed diners that have a charming air of Americana about them. Otherwise, there’s barely a shred of flair or creativity.

The Final Wish is on VoD from Monday, May 25th.

Talking About Trees

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Sudan has been in a near-consecutive string of conflicts since its independence in 1956. The deadliest of these was the Second Sudanese Civil War, which raged from 1983 to 2005 and ended with the creation of South Sudan, which would have its own civil war from 2013 to February 2020, causing a further 383,000 deaths. This miasma of death and dictatorship crushed infrastructure and erased culture that wasn’t overtly Islamic. Consequently, Sudan has been without a film industry since the military coup of 1989.

Amidst this narrative of chaos, however, has been the Sudanese Film Group (SFG), led by four retired filmmakers – Shaddad, Suliman Ibrahim, Eltayeb Mahdi and Manar Al-Hilo. They’re an affable, insouciant bunch whose bond has seen – as they humorously catalogue – ‘three democracies and three dictatorships’. The true soul of their friendship, though, is an existential passion for cinema, and Talking About Trees documents their struggle to share it with the Omdurman community.

To do this, they aim to host a series of free public film screenings that, after consulting the locals, will kick-off with a showing of Django Unchained – a solid choice. Their venue is dusty, gutted and decrepit, but the old pals’ easygoing stoicism very much subscribes to the maxim of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”; until, that is, they notify the local government, which is a hive of venality, incompetence and Islamic fundamentalism.

The men’s quiet struggle is observed rather than investigated. Director and cinematographer Suhaib Gasmelbari steps back from his subjects, framing shot after beautiful shot with an almost tableau effect; the only life in them coming from the men’s energy and ambition.

Despite the injustice of it all, Talking About Trees isn’t here to appeal or campaign. It is an unassuming work with an organic, engaging humanity. Alas, thanks to a mindless, authoritarian regime, it seems the Sudanese Film Group will struggle to move beyond their dark, dusty storeroom trove of 16mm cameras and Bunuel tapes, and the locals, who have a combined literacy rate of 47%, will continue to be failed by their government.

Talking About Trees is available on DVD and VOD on Monday, April 27.

Bad Guys

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Roger Corman, the pope of pop cinema, once said: “The worst thing you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That’s when you end up with very bad work.” Happily, with a nano-budget of just £200, indie filmmakers Jack Sambrook and Will Unsworth are well aware of their limitations, and Bad Guys is all the better for it.

Corman learned the ropes with trashy horror movies, but this Brighton duo have drawn inspiration from the kitchen sink flavours of the British indie scene, namely Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Down Terrace. As a result, the film’s influences are worn on its sleeve, but this is all part of the Corman philosophy – watch a load of movies, understand how they work, and turn this knowledge into your own cineliterate, nuts-and-bolts feature.

The story, which is a road trip-cum-crime caper, follows Gaz (Sambrook) and Cal (Unsworth), a pair of lowly debt collectors operating in a grey and gloomy Brighton. The dynamic is one you can imagine – Gaz is aloof and stand-offish, while Cal is loquacious, reckless and prone to violent outbursts. When Cal’s temper kills a man, the young men are ordered to drive the body north and bury it in the countryside.

The film’s bleak tone is framed by Rowan Holford’s striking cinematography, which combines long static shots and handheld work that skilfully balances rawness and fluidity. Particularly absorbing are the driving montages through Britain’s bypasses and winding, canopied B-roads, deftly capturing the motion and sensation of travel. Indeed, there is an elemental streak that runs throughout Bad Guys, which is complemented by Matt Unsworth’s orchestral, Carter Burwell-inflected score.

The real draw, however, is the chemistry between the leads. Sambrook is appropriately crabby as Gaz, making the rules as he goes along in an attempt to control Cal, who chinwags with anyone who’ll listen. Gaz does lighten up, though, and their exchanges consider everything from petrol station confectionary to a revelatory discussion of the female urethra. The dialogue never feels contrived and no wisecracks fall flat, which is a reflection of the leads’ performances and their collaboration on the script.

Another merit is a small but marked flair for suspense, which is ratcheted in a bathroom encounter between Gaz and a faceless, ominous stranger. It reminds you that these young men, barely into their twenties, are in a grave situation with some very dubious people.

We love indie film here at DMovies, so it is always a delight when an accomplished nano-budget feature like Bad Guys appears on our radar. Sambrook and Unsworth will have more cash for their next film, no doubt, but this won’t mar their grounded, kitchen sink sensibilities – it will bolster them.

Bad Guys is available on Amazon Prime in the UK now.

The Painted Bird

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

The title of this film – and the novel it’s based on – refers to a moment in which a peasant catches a bird, covers it with paint and releases it to the flock circling above. When the bird rejoins them, its altered appearance causes the group to swipe it to death. Meanwhile, the peasant observes with a gruff chuckle, amused by his casual sadism. This is the grim metaphor of The Painted Bird, a Holocaust film that meditates on prejudice, cruelty and just about every negative human instinct one can think of.

The story, allegedly autobiographical, follows a young boy leading a nomadic existence in a slew of Eastern European backwaters during the Second World War. Separated from his parents, he meanders from village to village, hissed at and beaten by almost everyone he encounters. Whether he’s cursed as a gypsy, a Jew or even a vampire – the boy is always a painted bird.

For Czech filmmaker Vaclav Marhoul, this relentlessly harsh story has been an 11-year passion project, and this shows in the quality of his grueling three-hour adaptation, which he wrote, directed and produced. It is a work of genuine auteurship that brushes shoulders with the likes of Ivan’s Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962) and Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985).

What is most impressive about Marhoul’s film is how it captures the novel’s pace and brooding tone. The reticent first-person narrative has been adapted into a film of visuals and diegetic sound rather than dialogue, absorbing you with Vladimir Smutny’s stark, monochromatic camerawork. Indeed, it is quite uncanny how Marhoul presents Kosinski’s imagery just as you imagined it, capturing the sense of wilderness and base instinct that makes the novel so engrossing.

The narrative is chaptered according to whose guardianship the boy falls into: Marta, Olga, Miller, Lekh & Ludmila, et al. He experiences some mercy with these people, but it proves fleeting as wicked ulterior motives emerge. After all, he is traversing a war-ravaged landscape with little centralised authority, where the mob rules and order is maintained with arbitrary beatings.

Naturally, this violence begets violence, and there are shades of Bad Boy Bubby (Rolph de Heer, 1992) in how the young boy vents his anger. He is bottom of the totem pole wherever he goes, but with animals – namely a goat – he can exact savage revenge against his miserable existence. Soon, the boy graduates to humans, following the only moral instruction he is given during this hellish odyssey, “Remember… an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This commentary on the cyclical nature of violence is one of the most interesting features of Marhaul’s film and Kosinski’s book. It is the most twisted coming of age tale imaginable, depicting how abusers have often themselves been abused. After the litany of sadism and death the boy endures, it doesn’t bear thinking about what sort of man he will become.

It’s been 55 years since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird was published in the United States. Kosinski would go on to befriend Peter Sellers, write the screenplay for Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979) and give a memorable supporting turn in Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981). But it is only now, thanks to Vaclav Marhaul’s dogged passion, that the late writer’s Goldingesque morality tale has been realised on the big screen.

The Painted Bird is out in cinemas on Friday, September 11th.

First Love (Hatsukoi)

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

From Ichi the Killer (2001) and Visitor Q (2001) to The Happiness of the Katakuris (2002) and Ninja Kids!!! (2011), Takashi Miike is amongst the most eclectic directors on the world stage. He is frequently described as bizarre and extreme, yet First Love is a mediocre headache of a film.

Much like Free Fire (Ben Wheatley, 2016) – that exercise in naff banter and dreary combat – First Love has a stale mix of harsh combat and pantomime comedy that fail independently and intertwined. Both films have a litany of swaggering, hollow characters who are so charmless and unlikeable that you just will for them to kill each other so you can leave the screening and get on with your life. Some compared Wheatley’s film to the quips and wisecracks of Quentin Tarantino, but it wasn’t even on par with Guy Ritchie – and neither is this frivolous nonsense from Takashi Miike.

There is a story to First Love, something about a drug deal gone wrong and a petulant young boxer called Leo (Masataka Kubota), whose fight scenes, it must be said, are filmed quite well. Anyway, the angsty boxer crosses paths with Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a young girl forced into prostitution due to her father’s debt to the Yakuza. These two, who apparently share the titular first love, become entangled in said drug deal, which involves so many parties it’s not worth repeating.

This is the main problem with First Love – it is a convoluted mess. Screenwriter Nasa Nakamura throws hordes of pinstriped Yakuza into the story and fails to make any of them interesting, and the performers’ wacky shtick only makes it worse.

It is here that a comparison to Tarantino is actually called for, and it isn’t favourable. True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993) is, as the trailer pithily summarises, a story of ’60 cops, 40 agents, 30 mobsters, and a few thousand bullets’. However, there’s one thing they missed in that summary – the chemistry of Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette). Their relationship proves befitting of the film’s title and acts as a binding agent for the dynamite energy of Tarantino’s script and the ensemble of fantastically dirty performances from Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman.

Alas, First Love is just adolescent carnage with no heart, no soul and originality; it’s one of those films where you spend the running time wishing you were watching an old favourite that did it so much better.

First Love is in cinemas Friday, February 14th. On VoD in March.

#AnneFrank: Parallel Stories

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Josef Stalin is reputed to have said, ‘one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.’ Now, quoting a brutal dictator may seem dubious in the review of an Anne Frank documentary, but Stalin’s aphorism contained an unpleasant truth; it is much easier to empathise with the death of one or several individuals than the slaughter of millions, and the Holocaust was the greatest slaughter of them all – where does one begin to comprehend the suffering?

Primo Levi would echo this sentiment years later: ‘One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows.’ With #AnneFrank: Parallel Stories, filmmakers Sabina Fedeli and Anna Migotto seek to bring this tragically human facet of the Holocaust to the social media generation, especially young women.

This objective is highlighted by scenes of a young girl (Martina Gatti) visiting the sites of Anne’s life and the wider Holocaust, documenting her travels online with the handle @KaterinaKat. A shallow gimmick, some may think, but there’s a good chance it will resonate with its target audience.

The bulk of Parallel Stories is steered by Helen Mirren, who provides narration and readings of Anne’s diary. Mirren’s status lends sizeable heft to the documentary’s profile, but her recitals can be overly thespian. In fact, the film is best when it steps back from Anne Frank and its star narrator and documents the testimonies of five fellow Holocaust survivors: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci.

These ladies recount terrible hardship and suffering, but they do so with strength, defiance and even humour. They have beaten their oppressors and led long, fruitful lives. Especially characterful is Sarah, who has such a cheerful energy that she breaks into song on one occasion. The only strain of sadness running through these interviews is that Anne Frank would be the same age as these ladies if she was here today.

#Anne Frank: Parallel Stories contains no revelations, but it is compelling enough to be procured by teachers and museum curators. It is out in UK and Irish Cinemas from 27th January to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day. On Netflix in July.