Deborah Young - The Film Verdict

Zinet, Algiers, Happiness

Posted by Deborah Young | Dec 19, 2023 | El Gouna 2023, Festivals |

A delightful Algerian documentary about cinema and the Casbah makes a superb companion piece to the newly-restored 35mm print of ‘Tahia Ya Didou’ by cult comic and director Mohamed Zinet.

Q

Posted by Deborah Young | Dec 17, 2023 | Festivals, El Gouna 2023 |

An all-female Islamic sect in Lebanon first ensnares, then abandons a deeply spiritual woman, along with her mother and her daughter, in Jude Chehab’s intriguing but unstructured portrait of her unusual family in ‘Q’.

Seven Winters in Tehran

Posted by Deborah Young | Dec 16, 2023 | Festivals, El Gouna 2023 |

The cruel and gripping story of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 19-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man who attempted to rape her, unfolds like a thriller in Steffi Niederzoll’s documentary recreation, ‘Seven Winters in Tehran’.

Dreaming & Dying

Posted by Deborah Young | Dec 15, 2023 | El Gouna 2023, Festivals |

Magical realism and Far East ghost stories inject a thrilling, if not always crystal clear, element into Nelson Yeo’s fishy tale of an overage and not completely human love triangle, ‘Dreaming & Dying’.

5 Questions for Matteo Garrone

Posted by Deborah Young | Dec 10, 2023 | Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, Interviews & Profiles |

Two African boys who dream of Europe cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean on a heroic journey in ‘Me Captain’. Italy’s Oscar entry from acclaimed filmmaker Matteo Garrone.

Author: Deborah Young

Zinet, Algiers, Happiness

Q

Seven Winters in Tehran

Dreaming & Dying

5 Questions for Matteo Garrone