Q review – freedom, lies and transgressions in emotional fallout from a secretive Muslim women’s movement

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Jude Chehab turns the camera on the maelstrom – and slow liberation – after her mother’s expulsion from controversial group al-Qubaysiat Opening the Pandora’s box of her family secrets, Jude Chehab makes a complex and moving documentary debut that unfolds both as an investigation and as a kind of intergenerational therapy. For decades, her mother, Hiba, was devoted to al-Qubaysiat, a highly secretive female Muslim order that operates in Lebanon and Syria. Chehab’s grandmother Doria had also been a follower, and the film-maker herself was initiated into the group as a young girl. For the two older women, this all-female religious movement inspired feelings of solidarity and freedom, yet al-Qubaysiat also demanded absolute submission to the leader, known to followers as the Anisa, or the Teacher. And when Hiba was expelled for unclear transgressions, her world fell apart. In contrast to other documentaries on controversial organisations, Chehab’s film doesn’t sensationalise the tactics...
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Hugh Hudson: smash-hit pop classic Chariots of Fire director was a hero of British film

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Hudson brought an ad-man’s eye to the brilliant 1981 drama about athletics and bigotry, as well as directing the hilarious Cinzano commercials

As the 1980s dawned, British ad director Hugh Hudson took on his first feature film and made it a legendary hit: an inspirational story which supplied a sugar-rush of patriotism and a swoon of nostalgia which hit the spot both sides of the Atlantic. It somehow brought off the trick of being about the underdog and the victim of bigotry and religious discrimination – and yet also being a resounding endorsement of the status quo which could, on grounds of decency and meritocracy, always accommodate the outsider. This was the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and the ethos of success for the hardworking and the deserving.

The film of course was Chariots of Fire, the true story of the 1924 Olympic runners Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross), a Jew who ran to defy prejudice, and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a devout Christian who found a creationist glory in his speed. It was the destiny of so many involved to be forever associated chiefly, or solely, with this smash-hit pop classic: certainly Cross and Charleson never again found roles to match Abrahams and Liddell. And maybe Hudson himself never again had a triumph like it: though he was no one-hit wonder, later directing the Oscar-winning Tarzan drama Greystoke, and later Revolution, an epic about the American revolution starring Al Pacino which was derided but then grew in acclaim, giving his Hudson his own misunderstood masterpiece moment.

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