Articles by Malcolm Lewis

A compassionate and inspiring film about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s San Francisco.

What if the Germans had invaded the Welsh valleys during the Second World War?

Feature films can tell us much about the cultural background to recent events in North Africa and the Middle East. Malcolm Lewis has been watching some of them.

Director Céline Sciamma doesn’t shy away from harsh realities, yet Tomboy is still a trusting gem of a film.

Malcolm Lewis finds quality beyond Disney and exotic settings…

Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh

Written and directed by Mike Leigh

written and directed by Anusha Rizvi

Directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani

Directed by Dylan Goch

Written and directed by Sebastian Silva

Directed by Haim Tabakman

Written and directed by Claudia Llosa

Directed and co-written by Shirin Neshat

Three Florida sisters with very different lives, all seeking love.

It’s only a feature film, and it’s shot in black and white, but City of Life and Death is an intense, indelible experience.

Trapero looks at the culture in a small Argentinean prison showing life in the moment.

This is a haunting and sometimes upsetting film – with little dialogue but great authenticity and power.

Martel shows the mentality of people complicit in Argentina’s repression and ‘disappearances’.

This documentary raises the bar in not only looking good, but in putting it all in context.

A film about how far we know and trust others, and how other people make us who we are, partly through the stories we hear.

Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels

The best books, music & films of 2009 as reviewed by NI.

In a small village in Germany, just before the First World War, a doctor is severely injured when a hidden tripwire pulls down his horse.

Tulpan is the daughter of the only nearby family and Asa thinks he’s in love with her. Sadly for him, she doesn’t fancy Asa, whose ears, she says, are too big.

An eye opening account of the truth behind the declining bee population

Different in every way: Ramin Bahrani’s brilliant Goodbye Solo.

A film that gets inside the mind and feelings of a young person deeply at odds with the world. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold.

The reality of indigenous life in the Amazon. Directed and co-written by Marco Bechis

At a new age festival in Sweden, a group of people who’ve never met before explore tree-hugging, sweat lodges, shamanism, tantric sex.

A road movie cum Western. Or, rather, it’s a railroad movie and the ‘West’ - where innumerable migrants are headed on railroad wagons - is more accurately the ‘North’, the US.

Directed by Jamie J Johnson, yes, it is about Eurovision, and many of the songs are appalling, but what comes over is the solidarity between the contestants, and how un-egotistical they are.

More than a sports film: Sugar explores the American Dream, competitiveness and simple human values.

This is the first Iraqi film about the American-led invasion. Written and directed by Mohamed Al-Daradji.

The late 1970s. A kitsch television show is looking for a Tony Manero impersonator. Tony who? Horribly, wonderfully real, and incredibly repulsive.

Respectful, real and engrossing: Modern Life in rural France.

An unshowy, very human story, of a man who makes unexpected connections and rediscovers his own life

Written and directed by Aditya Assarat

We get to see a lot of Che’s iconic look in over four hours of film, but sadly, though long on detail, it’s short on insight.

A stirring film, from the first graphic action scenes, showing police attacking demonstrators, and it never flags, never seems staged.

Lorna, an Albanian working in a Belgian laundry, needs money to open a snack bar. The first step is citizenship, so she marries a very sick heroin addict who no-one expects to live very long.

An off-beat LA-based comedy as a solitary, hostile young woman with a porn addiction. Written and directed by Marianna Palka

A horrific and unforgettable film about the 1981 Bobby Sands hunger strike directed and co-written by Steve McQueen

What war does to people’s humanity and how, without trust, touch and intimacy, we’re lost.

An outstanding realistic drama that shows these people’s ordinariness, strengths and weaknesses, and never idealizes or diminishes them.

A beautiful contemplative immersion in the children’s sense of the immensity of time and events. Written and directed by Reha Erdem

A film about the Pope’s toilet. Directed by Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone

A beautifully composed episodic study of Stan, a slaughterhouse worker, his family, friends and community.

Kechiche, like Fatih Akin, the Turkish-German film-maker, shows us how the lives of migrants and their children straddle cultures, and, like Akin’s Head-On, Couscous is passionate and earthy.

Colm Meaney is Tommy, an Irishman in London who plans to kill himself. Directed by Jonathan Gershfield

Why We Fight: It is nowhere written that the American empire goes on forever.

An Argentinean film about a hermaphrodite

Agape orphanage singers from South Africa

Battle for Haditha

The Sea Inside directed by Alejandro Amenábar

Industrialized food production

The new Coen Brothers film

Music, Books, Films

directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

The Witnesses directed and co-written by André Techiné

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash written and directed by Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack

The Yacoubian Building scripted and directed by Marwan Hamed

A Mighty Heart directed by Michael Winterbottom

directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr

written and directed by Deep Mehta

A film taken from a book by a white guy who knew an African leader – sounds familiar?

The business stinks.

Bamako by Abderrahmane Sissako

Ghosts directed by Nick Broomfield.

Apocalypto directed by Mel Gibson.

Container written and directed by Lukas Moodysson

One to avoid… Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno

Rampage directed by George Gittoes

Esma’s Secret written and directed by Jasmila Zbanic

Man Push Cart by Ramin Bahrani

Red Road by Andrea Arnold

Sisters in Law directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi

Shanghai Dreams written and directed by Wang Xiaoshuai

The Death of Mr Lazarescu directed by Cristi Puiu

Little Fish directed by Rowan Woods

Heading South written and directed by Laurent Cantet

AFROREGGAE SPECIAL: Culture Is Our Weapon by Patrick Neate and Damian Platt; Favela Rising directed by Jeff Zimbalist.

Paradise Now directed by Hany Abu-Assad

L’Enfant by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Tsotsi directed by Gavin Hood

World’s Fastest Indian directed by Roger Donaldson

Head-On/ Crossing the Bridge directed by Fatih Akin

Brokeback Mountain directed by Ang Lee

The Sun directed by Alexander Sokurov

Le Grand Voyage directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi

Arakimentari directed by Travis Klose.

The Night of Truth directed by Fanta Régina Nacro

Argentina – Hope in Hard Times directed by Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young

Czech Dream by Vit Viusak & Filip Remunda

Moolaadé by Ousmane Sembène

In Santiago, Chile, 1973, during the Allende Government, an élite fee-paying secondary school, run by priests, offers free education to boys from a nearby shanty town. The priests’ initiative, opposed by many parents, brings together very different worlds

The Edukators by Hans Weingartner.

Aaltra directed by Gustave Kervern and Benoit Delepine

Koktebel directed by Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky.

A Way of Life directed by Amma Asante

Ae Fond Kiss directed by Ken Loach.

Fahrenheit 9/11 directed by Michael Moore

The Story of the Weeping Camel directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni

My Architect directed by Nathaniel Kahn

Songs for a Raggy Boy directed by Aisling Walsh.

Capturing the Friedmans directed by Andrew Jarecki.

SOUTH AFRICA SPECIAL: celebrating the 10th anniversary of apartheid’s end. Keeping His Promise by Enver Carim; Unfinished Business by Terry Bell with Dumisa Buhle Ntsebeza; History After Apartheid by Annie E Coombes; Amandla! directed by Lee Hirsch.

Osama directed by Siddiq Barmak

The Barbarian Invasions. Written and directed by Denys Arcand.

Abouna directed by Mahamat- Saleh Haroun

Anita and Me by Metin Huseyin

Heaven directed by Tom Twyker

Amen directed by Costa-Gavras

The Warrior directed by Asif Kapadia.

Jung (War): In the Land of the Mujaheddin directed by Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Alberto Vendemmiati

Children Underground directed by Edet Belzberg

Closed Doors (Al Abwab Al Moghlaka) directed by Atef Hetata

Otomo directed by Freider Schlaich