SUSAN DARLINGTON applauds a one-man show that navigates racist barriers to tell the story of the black pilot, boxer and jazz musician
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An error occurred while searching, try again later.Palestinian heartbreak
MARIA DUARTE recommends a rare and timely drama that explores brilliantly the agonised life lived under Israeli occupation in the West Bank
JOHN GREEN recommends that rare thing, a British novelist who is politically aware, entertaining and who writes to the moment
RITA DI SANTO picks the best films from a festival that adopted a ‘neutral’ political position, despite the looming presence of the AfD
MATTHEW HAWKINS sees past the purple prose to themes of rejection and ageing in the autobiographical fiction of Rupert Everett
New releases from Richard Dawson, Yazz Ahmed, and The Murder Capital
JON BALDWIN introduces a new translation of Karl Marx’s masterwork that is readable, relatable and refreshed
GORDON PARSONS is bowled over by a skilfully stripped down and powerfully relevant production of Hamlet
The Teacher (12A)
Directed by Farah Nabulsi
INSPIRED by true events, Farah Nabulsi’s impressive directorial debut feature takes you on a powerful and emotional journey into the lives and experiences of Palestinians living under colonisation and Israeli military occupation.
The film, written and directed by the Palestinian/British film-maker, follows Palestinian schoolteacher Basem (Saleh Bakri) who struggles to accommodate his commitment to political resistance with his attempts to befriend and provide emotional support to a student Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman) as well as deal with a blossoming romance with an English volunteer school worker (Imogen Poots).
Filmed in the West Bank, it is a slow-burning drama which explores the injustices, and the lack of recourse, faced by Palestinians. When Adam watches his brother Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri who is Saleh’s youngest brother) being shot dead by an Israeli settler who had been setting fire to their olive trees, he is gripped by hatred and the desire for revenge, and even more so when the killer gets off scot-free.
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