Shocking, racially motivated fires – arson – in Germany in 1993 resulted in the death of five Turks. More than 30 years later, Mehmet Akif Buyukatalay’s clever satire Hysteria – the centrepiece of the German Film Festival – fans the flames of discontent. Buyukatalay’s second film focuses on a movie being made about those real-life…
Set in Tehran, this Oscar nominated film for Best International Feature is a distressing, but compelling watch. For the past 20 years, lawyer Iman (Missagh Zareh) has worked for the authoritarian regime in Iran. Now, to the delight of his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), he has been rewarded with an upgraded position as an investigator…
A young employee, Eli (Oliver Tapp), is sacked from his sales job for his intimidatory social media posts outside work to ex-girlfriend Carina. She subsequently reported him to his employer. He is angry and aggrieved and seeks her out for an explanation, but she keeps blocking him. Short of rent money and in a dark…
Oh, Canada is a confessional … a reckoning for a dying man. Writer and director Paul Schrader collaborated with actor Richard Gere 45 years ago on American Gigolo and it has taken them this long to reunite. Gere plays feted Canadian documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife at the end of his life, while Jacob Elordi is…
Is the rock a portal to other worlds, the conduit for transformative magic, which allows people to simply disappear? These are questions raised in playwright Tom Wright’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s classic 1967 Australian novel, which spawned Peter Weir’s 1975 film. As Lindsay originally intended in her book, the theatre production raises important questions about…
Twenty-one-year-old Leo Joseph-Connell (Shiv Palekar) values his independence. He’s fallen out with his mother Jane and is on a cross-country bike trip. The family hasn’t heard from him in weeks and they are worried. Leo lands on the doorstep of his 91-year-old grandmother Vera Joseph’s (Nancye Hayes) apartment in Greenwich Village, dirty and smelly. He’s…
Boys on the Verge of Tears is one of the toughest, grittiest plays I have come across. Having premiered at the Soho Theatre in London in 2023, it is an unrelenting 95 minutes of mainly toxic masculinity, in all its forms. These are boys and men, some grappling with their identity and feeling the pressure…
Strong socially progressive views, music and poetry distinguish Neil Cole’s new play An Audience with Don Dunstan. It shines a light on the South Australia’s premier, who served in the role from 1967 to 1968 and again from 1970 to 1979. The flamboyant and eclectic Dunstan (21st September, 1926 – 6th February, 1999) was born…
Misery abounds in Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters. One hundred and 25 years after he wrote it, it continues to resonate. The three sisters referenced in the title moved from Moscow to a provincial Russian garrison town 11 years ago. It is now the first anniversary of their father’s passing and their mother is also no…
Dark and dramatic comes this contemporary adaptation of Georges Bizet’s 19th-century opera. What choreographer John Inger has done in recreating Carmen is visionary – bold and breathtaking – retelling the tale captured in Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella. Inger has reimagined the classic opera, with its electric score, as realised by Orchestra Victoria, under the baton…
