‘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...

My Fairy Troublemaker review – sweet-tooth animation will be gobbled up by young ’uns

Story of a misbehaving sprite who gets access to the human world, and a fellow rebel, looks good but the story is a little flat

This German-Luxembourgian animation is a passable if unambitious hour and a half for under-10s, heavily in the orbit of Pixar both in terms of visuals and in its central conceit of the business of tooth-fairying as a Deliveroo-esque big-tech courier outfit. But unlike Inside Out and Soul’s pint-sized explainers of the psyche, there’s virtually no philosophical sprinkling on the cupcake here. Not that that will stop the young ’uns from gobbling it up anyway – but they might have enjoyed something more nutritious.

The exam to become a fully accredited tooth fairy seems easy enough. As the would-be disco earworm at the start of My Fairy Troublemaker has it, “Sneak inside, take the tooth, make the toy, and disappear!” Cookie-scoffing, misbehaving Violetta (voiced by Jella Haase) is the only apprentice who fails to make the grade, unlike her swotty mate Yolando (Julian Mau). Stuck in her belief that she’s really “the most special tooth fairy ever”, she steals a gem that allows her access to the human world. But in hijacking Yolando’s assignment to obtain an incisor from city kid Sami (John Chadwick), she finds an ally in his older stepsister Maxie (Lisa-Marie Koroll) when she is trapped in our reality.

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