My Memory Is Full of Ghosts review – deeply moving visual hymn for the bombed-out Syrian city of Homs

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Anas Zawahri’s documentary lays heart-wrenching testimony over languorous shots of bullet-ridden ruins and deserted streets The western Syrian city of Homs is only a husk of its former self. Previously a major industrial centre, the region became a key battleground between 2011 and 2014, for Bashar al-Assad’s army and rebel forces. Amid the immense bloodshed, hundreds of thousands of civilians were either displaced or trapped inside their own homes. Filmed in the summer of 2023, this deeply moving documentary from Palestinian-born and Syria-based film-maker Anas Zawahri maps out the collective trauma and sorrow that continue to linger, even after the shooting has stopped. Unfolding in languorous, largely static shots of bombed rubble, hollowed-out buildings, and deserted streets, the film lays bare the startling extent of wartime brutality. A sense of stillness and stagnancy hangs in the air, and almost every wall is riddled with bullet holes, urban scars that mirror the psychological ...
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My Fairy Troublemaker review – sweet-tooth animation will be gobbled up by young ’uns

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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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