Little Trouble Girls review – monstrous choirmaster spikes a sublime Catholic coming-of-age tale

Utterly absorbing Slovenian debut reinvents the cliched idea of a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening, and proves that no teacher can be as cruel as a music teacher This elegant and mysterious debut from Slovenian director Urška Djukić, with its superb musical score and sound design, reinvents the cliched idea of a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening. It’s also proof, if proof were needed, that no teacher in the world can be as cruel and abusive as a music teacher. We have already seen JK Simmons’ terrifying jazz instructor in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and Isabelle Huppert’s keyboard monster in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher; now there is Slovenian actor and musician Saša Tabaković playing a demanding, yet insidious choirmaster in charge of a group of talented, vulnerable teenage girls. The film incidentally has a lesson for any teenage person watching: if a music teacher asks you to sit next to them on the piano stool with no one else in the room and murmurs “You can confide in me” … ...

Antidote review – ayahuasca tourism film lauds hallucinogenic tea’s healing powers

Is the vogue for the Amazonian drink a beneficial driver of tourism – or a form of capitalist exploitation? This film lacks the rigour to find out

Often mocked by standup comedians and sitcom writers – a sure sign of its ubiquity – ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic tea, has brought an influx of western travellers going on healing retreats to the forests of Peru. Focusing on its medicinal properties, Marc Silver’s documentary aims to dispel certain misconceptions about the psychedelic brew.

Among Indigenous people, rituals involving ayahuasca have been practised for millennia. Made from vines and other plant extracts, the concoction relieves patients of physical and mental traumas. The cure also carries a ceremonial aspect; the taking of the medicine is at times accompanied by songs and chants.

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