‘It was the moment I lost innocence’: how a childhood stop-and-search led to the British debut movie of the year

When Imran Perretta was young, he was abruptly pulled by police into a van for questioning. That experience, as well as the death of his mother, inspired him to make Ish, a coming-of-age tale set amongst the British Muslim community. He talks about trauma, designing toilets and making Luton look magnificent Imran Perretta always knew that the title of his debut feature film would be “Ish” – short for Ishmail, the name of the 12-year-old boy from Luton at the heart of his story. Only later did people point out the similarity to other coming-of-age films with three letters in the title: Kes by Ken Loach, and Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy. Now, as the reviews trickle in, the comparisons to Kes and Apu keep coming. Like them, Ish is a poetic film that grabs you by the heart and pulls you into a child’s perspective on the world. The response has been lovely, says Perretta, and a relief. “It’s nice that people have compared Ish to those films rather than Kidulthood. I did worry about that.” Why...

Sick of Myself review – like-chasing narcissist is focus of online fame horror-satire

A strong lead performance can’t save this unsubtle Norwegian film about a woman who goes too far in chasing social media clout

Kristoffer Borgli’s body-horror satire has had some enthusiastic reviews since it premiered at Cannes last year; I found the Norwegian film unsubtle and unrewarding, exhaustingly implausible on a basic realist level, and containing a jarring obviousness which makes its supposed commentary on society and celebrity all but valueless.

It does, however, have a strong lead performance from Kristine Kujath Thorp, who plays Signe, a young woman in Oslo who is in an uneasy relationship with Thomas (Eirik Sæther), an insufferably conceited conceptual artist creating sculptures from stolen office furniture. In her peevish and snippy way, Signe is toxically jealous of Thomas’s status and prestige; she resents her own subordinate position in their friend group as his girlfriend and her humiliatingly lowly job as a coffee shop barista. There is a weird echo here of Joachim Trier’s incomparably superior The Worst Person in the World, and Sick of Myself features a droll cameo from Trier’s key player, Anders Danielsen Lie.

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