Parky At the Pictures (1/5/2026)

(Reviews of Wild Foxes; Olivia; Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC; Ada: My Mother the Architect - ALSO; Departures; Surviving Earth; and Ultras)

WILD FOXES.

As a recent BFI Southbank season demonstrated, film-makers have found boxing an irresistible subject. Indeed, cinema owes the sport a good deal, as the Latham brothers invented a loop that prevented celluloid strips from tearing in the camera/projector (and, thus, enabled longer films), in order to shoot The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897). Although Jean-Pierre Coopman fought Muhammad Ali in Puerto Rico in 1976, Belgium can't lay claim to many famous pugilists. But it now has a boxing film to shout about in the form of Valéry Carnoy's debut feature, Wild Foxes, even though the setting is France and we should be referencing the likes of Georges Carpentier and Marcel Cerdan.

Already representing France, teenage boxer Camille (Samuel Kircher) attends an elite sports-études boarding school. Coached by Bogdan (Jean-Baptiste Durand), he is keen to stay put, despite offers to go to places with better facilities. However, best friend Matteo (Fayçal Anaflous) is on a final warning for disciplinary issues and pals LPF (Jef Jacobs), Nasserdine (Hassan Alili), and Coreb (Salahdine El Garchi) try to keep him on the straight and narrow.

They know nothing, though, about Camille and Matteo's habit of stealing meat from the kitchen and feeding the wild foxes in the forest that abuts the school. Camille is so thrilled by witnessing a young fox jumping up to snatch the cuts dangling by strings from a branch that he insists on following it into the woods. He finds himself on a rock ledge and slips after spotting the fox in the undergrowth. Unable to hold on, he falls several feet and Matteo has to carry him to the nearest hospital, where he requires emergency surgery on a deep gash on his forearm.

Lucky to have survived with such minor injuries, Camille rushes back to training at the school. But he feels pain in the arm while sparring with Caleb during a trial for an inter-schools tournament and he's not selected. Matteo asks if he's okay, as he seemed spooked in the ring. But he insists he's fine, even though he has a nocturnal panic attack and calls Boulers the caretaker (Raphaël Thiéry) because he's scared. Refusing to take time off, he's back in the gym the next day, but has an argument with Matteo when he quits a bench pressing session and he has to reassure Bogdan that he's still got his head in the game.

Having noticed taekwondo student Yas (Anne Heckel) in the canteen, Camille follows her when he sees her sloping off into the woods. He discovers she plays the trumpet in secret and she lets him listen in return for seeing his scar. She shows him one on her calf and he admits the one on his knee was caused by his abusive father. They agree to meet up again, but Camille doesn't tell Matteo, when he accompanies him for a doctor's check-up. As there is no physical reason for the continued pain, the medic suggests an appointment with a psychologist and Matteo warns Camille that Nasser and LPF reckon he's lost his edge since the accident and is using the injury as an excuse.

Having forged a note saying he has tendonitis, Camille asks Yas if she's ever had pain without an injury while showing her how he feeds the foxes, but she doesn't get his meaning and asks if he's talking about feeling sad. During a track session, he gets lapped by the others and tells Bogdan he feels sick. However, he has to rush off to stop a brawl among the others and he feels embarrassed that Matteo had been forced to defend him against LPF's taunts. They sit together in Matteo's room that night and listen to a sentimental song that his father had liked. But, when he wins his bout in the schools competition, Matteo is too caught up with celebrating with the others to bump hands with Camille at ringside.

When he's coaxed into a locker room ritual to smash a stone into his forehead, Camille draws blood when the others mock him for fearing injury. As he staggers out, he sees a fox rootling through the bins and empathises with it for being an outsider forced to survive as best it can. He's upset when it's found dead on the playground the next morning because someone living near the school had killed it and Dr Blanchard (Yoann Blanc) announces that there will be a hunt in the coming days, during which students will be confined to their rooms.

Angry with Camille for deleting the phone footage of his fight, Matteo tells Bogdan that he faked his doctor's note and he is forced to do extra training to prove he still merits a place at the school. Resentful at being ostracised from the group's table in the dining hall, Camille waits until Matteo has finished boasting in the showers about his sexual conquests to reveal that he was a virgin before his uncle paid for him to visit a prostitute. Seeing Camille with Yas, Matteo and LPF follow them along a corridor and she head-butts the latter when he teases her for wearing eye make-up. She gets slapped back and has a cut lip when Camille videos her playing through pain and tears on the school roof.

Camille had been feeling bad about taking Matteo's spot in the inter-schools tournament. But he has to prove to Bogdan he's ready for the upcoming European championships and he's winning before he allows himself to be unsettled by his opponent getting a nosebleed. Quitting at the start of the next round, Camille is bawled at by LPF for throwing the fight and he goes into the woods that night and scuffs his knuckles punching a tree. Returning to find the others have trashed his room and urinated on his bed, he asks Yas if he can sleep in her room. She reassures him that he's the best boxer in the group and could go far if he put his mind to it. But she backs away when he tries to kiss her, although she pulls his arm over her when they squeeze into her single bed.

On the day of the hunt, LPF and the others grab Camille and drag him into a sideroom. They order Matteo to shatter his arm with a baseball bat, but he can't bring himself to do it. Turning the tables, Camille lashes out at them and Matteo and LPF chase him into the woods. They're caught by one of the huntsmen and Matteo is expelled and LPF suspended, while Bogdan pleads for Camille to stay. Distressed by online footage of Matteo getting drunk with friends, he knuckles down to prepare for the Euros.

At the championsips. Camille is losing on points when he hears Matteo urging him on from the crowed. Having won by a knockout, he dodges the medal ceremony and has Matteo drive him to the train station in his cousin's Mercedes. Waving in relief that their friendship has survived, he thinks back to an interview he recently did, in which he reveals that he had started boxing at eight to defend himself against his father and had met Matteo at his first lesson. Recognising that boxing could still be his future, Camille feels more positive about life.

Following the shorts, Ma planète (2018) and Titan (2021), and having won two prizes at Cannes, the 39 year-old Carnoy can take his place alongside other compatriots who have recently considered the unique difficulties of growing up in the post-millennial world, including Lukas Dhont (Close, 2022), Anthony Schatteman (Young Hearts), Leonardo Van Dijl (Julie Keeps Quiet, both 2024), Cecilia Verheyden (Skiff), and those old masters, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne –(Young Mothers, both 2025). Drawing on his own experience of a juvenile injury and a punishing period at a sports training camp, Carnoy took advice from his young actors to ensure that their dialogue and costumes were as authentic as possible.

Played with conviction and sensitivity by Samuel Kircher (the 21 year-old son of Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher), this is more a rite-of-teenage-passage than a boxing saga, with its focus on such themes as insecurity, self-realisation, and acceptance. But the notion that sport offers an escape route for many with limited life options is key to the motivation of Camille and his classmates. Carnoy also examines Gen Z attitudes towards masculinity, competitiveness, and violence, while also using the group's exchanges with Yas to expose the effect that the manosphere is having in a world in which many youths are left to fend for themselves after having been raised by an abusive or absentee father.

The adults here are rather stereotypical, while Yas (the assured Anne Heckel) is eased out of the scenario too early. The hunting sequence is also clumsily crammed in to reinforce the vulpine symbolism and show how society deals with those who don't easily fit in. But Kircher and Fayçal Anaflous feel like old friends striving to retain their bond in the face of peer pressure and their individual ambitions. Carnoy keeps Arnaud Guez's camera close to them to suggest the intensity of the scrutiny they're under at the school and the struggles that they have to retain their identity in a place where discipline and dedication enforce conformity. It would be nice to know how Camille and Matteo fare in the future. But the best stories always leaves you wanting more.

OLIVIA.

Having made the shorts Reminiscencias (2019), Alone Sleeps the Water, Frozen She Awakes, and Passing Place (both 2021), Sofía Petersen makes her debut feature with Olivia, a mood piece filmed over 45 days on 16mm Kodak Ektachrome with a crew of six and over 40 non-actors. Continuously making demands on the viewer, this is a study of what exists `between being here and not being here, between death and life, between sleeping and death, between light and darkness, between the sun and the moon'.

Opening on a close-up of an eye staring into some flames, the action follows Olivia (Tina Sconochini), as she returns at dusk to the triangular house she shares in a remote part of Tierra del Fuego with her father (Dario del Carmen Haro Santana), who works at the nearby slaughterhouse. Following a breakfast conversation about their dreams, Olivia hunts down a beetle to add to her collection of pinned insects. However, she doesn't have the heart to kill it and her father chides her for neglecting her chores when he returns home, with blood on the toes of his white wellington boots. They share a simple baked potato supper and discuss whether the world will end by fire or ice. although the father hopes that they are both long gone before this happens.

A prolonged sequence follows, as a calf goes through a series of metal gates before being stunned and slaughtered. Graphic shots of blood being washed off a concrete floor are accompanied by the noise of clanging machinery echoes on the soundtrack. Back at the house, Olivia panics when her father doesn't respond to knocks on his locked bedroom door and she takes an axe to the wood, only to find him missing. Running out into the gathering storm, she goes to the abattoir and finds herself in the race area. Mari (Caroline Tejeda) sings a lullaby, as she mops the bloodied floors and Olivia reaches out to touch her long black hair through a gap in a metal door. Suddenly confronted with some incoming cattle, she panics and rushes through the narrow corridors until she finds an exit.

Bursting into the sunlight, Olivia sees Maria driving away in the passenger seat of a lorry and spends the rest of the day wandering the site in the hope of finding her father. Coming across three men warming themselves at a brazier, she realises she doesn't know her father's name when she tells them she is searching for him. They take her inside, in case she can spot him. As she has badly cut her leg, however, she is taken to the restroom to have it stitched. Staring at the wall to take her mind off the pain, Olivia sees her father in a group photograph.

She points to his face and one of the workers removes the picture from its frame to discover that the man is called Dario. However, the picture was taken after the first slaughtering in 1917 and one of the men tells her that it's best to let the past lie. Concerned for Olivia, the men escort her to the bus stop and serenade her before reaching their destination. She stays on board until the sea front and wades into the water after spotting a boat bobbing in the distance. A man calls to her to come back to shore and she helps him search for the wedding ring he had thrown away after his wife had left him. Olivia picks up a pebble and the man tells her that the sea erodes everything until it all looks the same. She spots what she thinks is her father's hat in the sea, but it's too far out for her to reach. Instead, she joins the end of a procession that is silhouetted against the darkening shy, as some men take a triangular shrine to the top of an incline. They open it to reveal the photograph of a woman and Olivia joins the others in lighting a candle.

Someone calls for her to help push a stalled car, but it drives off without her and Olivia wanders into a sparsely populated bar. She dances beside the pool table to a song on the jukebox and follows Maria home at closing time. Tentatively, she ventures into a backroom, where Maria is dyeing clothes black. Olivia sobs on shoulder before she undresses and tosses her red woollen jumper and white slip into a bowl. Lying on the bed, she turns to face Maria and run her fingers through her thick tousled hair. Leaving next morning, Olivia collapses on the road and is found by a young woman walking her dog.

Quite what this or anything that has gone before signifies will remain a mystery for most viewers, as Petersen is more concerned with figures on a landscape than in telling a story. She even considers Olivia to be more of a body or an essence than a character and offers no explanation for either her living arrangements or her somnambulistic demeanour. The fate of her father (or whether he is a ghost) is also left unexplored, as Owain Wilshaw's camera follows doggedly in Olivia's wake, using saturated colours to convey an oneiric atmosphere and contrasts between confined spaces and open expanses to suggest her sense of disorientation and unease.

Incorporating wild natural elements, industrial cacophony, and cavernous silences, Pietu Korhonen's sound design also reinforces Olivia's solitude and confusion, although Petersen also exploits Sconochini's wide eyes and lithe movements to make her seem both feral and fragile. However, she overuses Utsav Lal's music, as some scenes would have worked better with just the ambient sounds to reflect Olivia's emotions. The odd still life can also feel self-consciously portentous. Nevertheless, Petersen has made an accomplishedly audacious debut, as she skirts cinematic convention to present a very personal vision. She borrows the odd bit of business, such as the potato scene from Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse (2011), the door smashing from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), and the silhouetted procession from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). But this is a highly distinctive work that earns the effort it demands from the audience.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: JOHN & YOKO IN NYC.

Linked to Ron Chapman's Revival69, The Concert That Rocked the World via Kevin Macdonald's One to One: John and Yoko, Simon Hilton's Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC completes the cinematic record of John Lennon's post-Beatles gigging career. There's still a guest appearance with Elton John at Madison Square Garden waiting in the wings, but no one seems to have filmed that. Making adroit and often split-screened use of footage filmed by Steve Gebhardt in 1972, this compelling concert film has been produced by Peter Worsley and Sean Ono Lennon and hits theatres for two days on the back of Sean releasing the three-disc Love (Meditation Mixes) on Record Store Day. For Fabs completists, it's a must. But even those who have become inured to the legend of St John the Imaginist will be taken by the insouciant charisma and effortless musicianship, as well as his besotted devotion to Yoko Ono and her distinctively avant-garde take on pop music.

The reasons for the two benefit shows for Willowbrook State School at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972 were outlined in One to One. So, we shall plough straight into the opening number, `New York City', which was easily the best track on the double Some Time in New York City album that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had released on 12 June. As Elephant's Memory had played on several tracks, they were already on the Lennon wavelength, with drummer Jim Keltner joining Richard Frank, Jr. in providing the backbeat for Wayne 'Tex' Gabriel (lead guitar), Gary Van Scyoc and John Ward (both bass), Stan Bronstein (saxophone), and Adam Ippolito (keyboards).

After the driving start, Lennon slips into the riff-driven `It's So Hard' from Imagine and laces the lyrics with a few double entendres. But he's content to stay on rhythm guitar rather than take any leads and he backs away from the microphone to avoid drawing focus, as his bandmates play their solos. `Welcome to the rehearsal,' he quips, after asking if the music is too loud. The screen splits to cover the musicians when Lennon is singing or show the appreciative audience, whose ranks included Kurt Vonnegut and Allen Ginsberg. They're not shown, however, as Yoko belts through `Move On Fast' from her 1972 album, Approximately Infinite Universe, which is accompanied with rocking vigour.

As Yoko returns to her keyboard, Lennon counts the band into `Well Well Well' from Plastic Ono Band and puts his voice through the ringer, as he screams out the chorus (although, admittedly, not to the raucous point reached on the album track). This version came from the evening concert, but we're back to the matinee for Yoko's `Born in a Prison', which she had written for Some Time in New York City. Her large black sunglasses and his blue-tinted granny glasses come together when the share her microphone for the chorus, but Yoko takes centre stage and gives a dramatic rendition of a song that had lost not relevancy over the intervening decades.

Joking that he hopes the choir comes in on time because they're all alone up here, Lennon sits at an electric piano and invites the audience to join in with `Instant Karma'. The Beatles were still together when this single was released in February 1970 and a sax solo brings a jazzy vibe to the pounding rhythm, although Lennon mumbles, `We'll get it right next time,' after the afternoon version didn't quite hit its straps. Dating from the same year, but from the Plastic Ono Band LP, `Mother' is one of Lennon's most deeply personal songs and the drum and piano fills between the lyrics and the film's use of a tight close-up give it a funereal intensity that suggests Lennon's pain at his relationships with his parents had not eased over time.

`Hope you recognise them,' Lennon sneers at the end of the song, as this is about the majority of parents, `living and half-dead'. He steps to one side for Yoko to do another Some Time in New York City track, `We're All Water'. She loses her way at one point and Lennon has to count her back in, while Bronstein and Gabriel provide a distraction from the screaming that had disturbed Chuck Berry when he and Lennon had duetted on `Memphis, Tennessee' and `Johnny B. Goode' on The Mike Douglas Show in February 1972 (a stint that was recalled in Erik Nelson's fascinating Daytime Revolution, 2024).

Delighting the assembled by venturing back into `the past', Lennon picks his way through the complex lyrics of `Come Together' and jokes at the end that he nearly got all of the words right (although `hairy arsehole' hadn't appeared anywhere on Abbey Road). However, he tells the band that he'll have to stop writing such weird words, as he's getting too old to remember them. The screen splits in three during the fade out, with the audience in the central section, waving the little tambourines that had been given away free.

Returning to the piano and retaining his chewing gum, Lennon performs `Imagine'. Having joked about making sure his finger was on the right note, he put on a funny voice to say `Go in to John, he's starting it and then you can spread it, alright.' But he sings the lyric with due seriousness, as he wouldn't do during his list live performance on The Salute to Lew Grade at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on 18 April 1975, when he also did "Slippin' and a Slidin'" and `Stand By Me' from his Rock `n' Roll album. Yoko sits beside him playing her own keyboard and she smiles when he kisses her shoulder at the end of the song. They kiss again before moving centre stage for Yoko's `Open Your Box', the B side of `Power to the People' in the UK, as Capitol had refused to release it because of its suggestive lyrics and `Touch Me' from Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was used instead.

After an impassioned performance (complete with an elaborate keyboard solo), Yoko walks calmly back to her seat, as Lennon asks the audience if they opened it just a little bit. He does some effective screaming himself during the withdrawal section of `Cold Turkey', which he had also performed in Toronto in 1969. Ringo Starr had played drums when Yoko recorded `Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For a Hand in the Snow)' for the B side. But Eric Clapton didn't look particularly enamoured when he jammed on it in Toronto. However, this is a much gutsier and tighter version and it certainly went down with the crowd.

Another song reprised from Toronto would wind up proceedings. But Lennon first paid homage to Elvis Presley, with a cover of `Hound Dog', Wearing a white hard hat, Yoko joins in a thrashing rocker which afffords several band members solos before Lennon shouts `Elvis, I love you', during the last stretch. As he dons a red hat, Yoko reads from a speech calling for drastic action to end chaos in a nation. A reggae beat thrums in the background, as she reveals that the author of the description of a situation that doesn't sound unlike the United States in 1972 was Adolf Hitler. Lennon intones, `Law and order, law and order,' to mock President Richard Nixon's approach to keeping control. From this, he leads everyone in a rousing rendition of `Give Peace a Chance', Dispensing with the tongue-twisting verses, Lennon lets an unseen choir and Yoko do much of the singing. Then, borrowing an idea from when The Beatles did `Hey Jude' on Frost on Sunday (just four years earlier), Lennon allows guests to wander on to the stage. Some, like Stevie Wonder, take the vocal strain, while the likes of Phil Spector simply milk the applause. For the record, the others joining in include Wonderlove, Melanie Safka, Allen Ginsberg, Sha Na Na, Geraldo Rivera, Edith Vonnegut, Bernard Carabello, and David Peel's Human Voice Choir. With the audience busy star-spotting, Lennon slips away and Yoko follows, leaving Bronstein to clear the stage and lead Elephant's Memory through the last knockings.

As footage alongside the closing credits shows some Willowbrook children enjoying themselves at a big outdoor party, `Imagine' gets a reprise and details scroll past of those involved in the impeccable restoration of the original footage and the engaging way it has been presented to both show the band in full flow and the audience enjoying them and to capture one of the rare live appearances that actually enjoyed. He scarcely looks or sounds like a Beatle and he's far more assured on stage than he was during the eleventh-hour show in Toronto. Yet he'd hardly gigged in the meantime and it looks and sounds as though he had found his solo feet (albeit with Yoko as his close collaborator).

Opinion will always be divided about her contribution. But she's on fine form here, as she doesn't feel as though she is in John's shadow because his love for and gratitude to her prevents him from hogging the limelight. There are a few flubbed lyrics along the way, but neither seems to mind, especially as the playing of Elephant's Memory is of such high quality. Gebhart's original film had been released on video and failed to persuade critics that it was one of the great concert movies. But John and Yoko trusted him after meeting him during the making of Ten For Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally (1971) - which should also be made available on disc - and the producers owe him a huge debt for the directorial decisions he made during on 30 August 1972.

Another song was played at both shows and it's telling that it has been removed. The only single from Some Time in New York City, it had been airbrushed out of the Power to the People boxed set because of its title. Yet, its sentiments remain pertinent and a little imaginative use of AI might have allowed us to hear `Woman Is the Scapegoat of the World' or `Woman Bears the Burden of the World', which is an altogether less contentious refrain. Surely Sean can think of something for, as his father said at the time, `it's something Yoko said to me in 1968 and it took me until 1970 to dig it'. The precise phrasing has dated horribly, but this will remain a message for the ages until society does something to change things.

ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT.

Having helped Nathaniel Kahn make the Oscar-nominated My Architect (2003) about his father, Yael Melamede brings the focus closer to home in Ada: My Mother the Architect, which traces the life and career of Ada Karmi-Melamede.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1936, when it was still part of British Mandated Palestine, Ada Karmi was the daughter of architect, Dov Karmi, who was an important figure in building a new country. She remembers being carried on his shoulders during a rare heavy snow fall and feeling protected by him. Switching between Hebrew and English, Ada also remembers growing up in an optimistic time when the buzzword was `lehagshim', which means `to fulfil'. It saddens her that this is not a characteristic of modern Israel, whose glass towers she considers boring because they are not rooted in the land on which they are erected. As they have no connection, they could be located anywhere, which is something she abhors.

Ada and Yael go for a walk in Tel Aviv and she picks out some of the buildings that her father had designed. As we see a portfolio montage, Ada is dismayed that one design has been defaced by air conditioning units. Yet it retains the blend of heaviness and lightness that made Dov's work so distinctive. While driving, Ada admits that Israel has always felt like home, even though she and husband Amos Melamede moved to New York in the 1960s to raise children Michal, Gur, and Yael. During a 14-year stay at Columbia University, she impressed students like urban designer Doug Suisman, who sings her praises and shows a folder he has kept from his student days. Architects Kenneth Frampton and Frank Gehry remember her with fondness and admiration, but concede that it was hard for women to succeed back then and Frampton needs to be reminded that Ada quit after not getting tenure because she felt insulted.

Mother and daughter (who is also a trained architect and designed Ada's apartment) visit the Neot Hovav Museum during construction and Ada complains about some of the details and admits that some aspects of the design didn't turn out as she would have hoped. She speaks about `a route' needing a beginning, a middle, and an end when it comes to buildings and she discusses the different impacts of short and long routes and how change erases memory. When they return two years later, the building has been completed and gleams in the light that floods through (which is a recurring feature in Karmi-Melamede buildings).

Sometimes, Ada frustrates Yael because she insists on doing things on her own terms and evades a lot of her more personal questions. When they discuss why Ada left for Israel when Yael was 14, she declares that she needed to work and felt she would have better options collaborating with her architect brother, Rami, rather than staying and being a stereotypical Jewish mother. She says Amos doted on them far more and, when Yael protests that he was often away working, she suggests they were self-sufficient kids and she felt sure they would be okay when she pursued a career that would keep her busy and sane.

Working with Rami was a challenge, however, as he was five years her senior and he always saw her as a pesky little sister, even when they worked together. Yael interviews her aunt, Rivka Karmi (Rami's fourth wife and also an architect), and Moshe Safdie about her motives, but gets few answers. Arthur Fried and Aharon Barak are more effusive when discussing the Supreme Court that was jointly designed by Rami and Ada after they saw off some serious talents to win a state competition. They wanted a person to enter without feeling intimidated by grandeur and took inspiration from the Bible and the writings of Aharon Barak to ensure this was a place that enshrined the importance of justice and truth. As each contributed their own ideas, there were frequent arguments and Ada admits that it was tough being overruled so frequently and that she often had `wet eyes'.

Yet, she also saw that the conflict led to better decisions being made (although it was their mother who suggested the shiny floors because they looked so clean) and she remains proud of the building. At the inauguration in 1992, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reminded the audience that the Jewish people has always been at its strongest when it adheres to justice and has suffered when it has not. In his review of the building, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote: `A nation that has shown little architectural leadership has produced a building that can stand as an example to the world of the potential for public works to reflect a culture’s highest aspirations.' However, he laments that such liberal democratic principles are no longer part of the ruling mindset (given Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to reset the judicial system).

Deciding to go solo, Ada had Yael design her office and we see her looking through her mother's archive before Ada discusses the merits of pencil sketches over computer images. Asked about whether she ever considered returning to New York and her family, she claims she was too wrapped up in the challenges of the work to consider much else and, over time, she realised she had taken root. She explains that she is quite self-contained and rarely turned to Amos or others for support or opinions because she knew she had to go her own way.

In the next section, Ada reflects on light and explains how she was inspired by the Pantheon in Paris. She notes that the intensity of the light in Israel and how it needs to be tempered. But former student, Sharon Harari, recalls Ada saying that light is the cheapest building material, although respect for the environment influenced the design of the Ramat HaNadiv Visitor Centre (a memorial to Baron Edmond de Rothschild), as Ada wanted to preserve the trees in the designated area and built low to avoid the walls competing for attention on the skyline. She sits with Yael to watch shadows forming over the walls and garden features and she confides that it's much nicer when there are no people around.

Having refused to discuss the death of her husband in 1994, Ada shares that loved ones never leave your side completely. She muses upon time and how there is chronological time when one walks though a building and associative time, which refers to the memories the building evokes. They visit the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and she explains how she had to blend in to a site of spiritual and arcaeological significance. Asked about her relationship with her mother, she provides the barest details and avoids contemplating about how her decisions split her family because she thinks such introspection is pointless. At another point, when Yael asks about love, Ada becomes impatient and ends the interview.

Three months later, during a video call, Yael reads Ada a letter she wrote years ago with a drawing of a cat. She confesses to being at a low ebb in a bad dream and wishes everyone was together again. But, while the message causes Ada to dab an eye, she is surprised she wrote such sentiments and in such good English. Recovering her poise, she sighs that she is living in another bad dream, as we see footage of her watching an anti-Netanyahu demonstration and hear her regret the deep split in Israeli society. Yael asks how it feels as the designer of the Supreme Court building to see its powers under threat. But Ada says this isn't about her and finds a way to make a swift exit from the call.

At 89, Ada Karmi-Melamede is evidently used to being in control and she makes it clear from the outset that she is not going to lured into areas she does not wish to address. But 58 year-old Yael Melamede displays something of her mother's tenacity in persisting with lines of questioning, even when she's being resisted. Some will find these mother-daughter power plays hard to watch, as it sometimes feels as if we are eavesdropping on unresolved issues that impinge upon lingering regrets and resentments that neither woman can wholly reconcile. Yael's love and admiration for her mother is never in doubt, but her efforts to ger Ada to say what she wants to hear are mostly counter-productive, as she has long since learned how to bottle up her emotions in order to focus on her vocation.

One wonders whether Yael tried to get siblings Michal and Gur involved in the film or whether they opted to steer clear, as their input might have been revealing. Instead, she includes a lot of one-shot talking heads, who rather clutter an already dense documentary that doesn't even touch on such other key commissions as the Life Sciences Building at Ben-Gurion University, the Beit Avi Chai cultural centre in Jerusalem, and the gateway to Ben Gurion airport. Ada is given room to make philosophical and aesthetic statements, but the focus never feels as sharp as it was in My Architect or in Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry (2006) and Carlos Carcas and Norberto López Amado's How Much Does Your Building Weigh Mr. Foster? (2012). She also makes few concessions for those not au fait with Ada Karmi-Melamede, her work, and its significance to modern Israel.

Having previously directed Dishonesty: The Truth About Lies (2015) and Floyd Abrams: Speaking Freely (2023), Melamede consistently finds fresh ways to film her mother, her sketches, and her buildings. She probably overdoes the split-screening and might have included a bit more objective analysis of Ada's oeuvre. Yael also shares her mother's reticence when push comes to shove. But she is also tactful and dutiful and adept at getting Ada to disclose her passion for architecture and her guiding principles.

ALSO:-

Apologies for these not being accorded the usual treatment. But, sometimes, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Departures - Providing an ideal companion piece to Harry Lighton's Pillion (2025), this queer anti-romcom has been written with self-deprecatory insight and directed with cinematic panache by Neil Ely and Lloyd Eyre-Morgan. Opening with the caption, `This film is inspired by all the dickheads that fucked us over,' Departures is the former's fifth feature after Dream On (2013), Celluloid, Three in a Bed (both 2014), and Outings (2016). He also excels as Benji, a Mancunian who keeps picking the wrong men and can't get over the one who treated him the most egregiously.

Benji acts as our narrator, as he explains how he stumbled into a relationship with Jake (David Tag) after their paths crossed at the airport while awaiting flights to Amsterdam. As he had no better offers, the submissive Benji had spent the weekend at Jake's apartment and agreed to hook up again the following month after enjoying being pampered and pummelled in equal measure (after Jake had kicked things off with a prostitute).

The problem is, while Benji begins to develop feelings, Jake (a wealthy personal trainer for top level footballers) insists he is solely interested in a fling on his own terms, as he is only 30% bisexual. Benji's mother (Lorraine Stanley) tells him to get a grip, while he keeps his friendship with Kieran (Liam Boyle) platonic because he still hopes to convince Jake that he can't live without him.

Deciding to take a solo trip to Amsterdam to try and exorcise his demons, Benji has a dangerous liaison with an abusive Dutch top and feels lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed. This encounter reminds him of Jake's distress after a spin-the-bottle episode after bumping into macho mate Ryan (Tyler Conti). Efforts to make contact between trysts are rebuffed, but Jake reacts badly when Benji tries to break things off because their assignations are messing with his head. Yet when confronted in the front seat of his car over his romance with the pregnant Vanessa (Kimberly Hart-Simpson), it's Jake who has to face up to his feelings.

Strewn with on-screen scribblings that complement and counterpoint the action and switching effortlessly between the present and flashbacks in two different time frames, this is a slickly scripted and deftly edited (by Stephanie Singer) comedy that is also dotted with serious points about the macho mentality, sexual risk, and emotional commitment. The reminiscences involving the young Benji (Olly Rhodes) and his Aunt Jackie (Kerry Howard), as well as the young Jake (Jacob Partali), prove revealing. But the Dutch humiliation sequence feels a tad unnecessary, even though it highlights the perils of dating when control is sacrificed.

Eyre-Morgan makes a splendidly diffident anti-hero, while Tag invests Jake with enough vulnerability to justify Benji's inability to walk away from what most would see as a toxic situation. The directorial tone shifts neatly from playful to profound without jarring, while Paul Mortlock's camerawork feels suitably skittish. The odd flashback can seem overly busy, while the use of strobe lighting in the nightclub sequences feels a bit passé. But this confirms that Ely and Lloyd Eyre-Morgan make a splendid team and one can only hope that the forthcoming Chatlines also gets a release.

Surviving Earth - Drawing on her own father's battle with addiction, Thea Gajić makes a notable feature debut in chronicling the slow slide into despair of Vlad (Slavko Sobin), a veteran of the Yugoslav Wars who divides his time between counselling fellow addicts, playing harmonica with his band, and striving to make amends to Maria (Olive Gray), the artist daughter from whom he became estranged after breaking up with her mother, Michelle (Ann Ogbomo).

Ignoring a problem with Bristol council over an unused bedroom in his flat, Vlad becomes obsessed with staging a Balkan Express concert to showcase himself and pals Misko (Stuart Martin) and Duncan (Peter Coonan) because they're tired of supporting other acts. The pressure of learning new material and providing money for his family back in Serbia impacts on him, however, and he starts to unravel after a harmonica that had belonged to his grandmother gets trampled on the dance floor when he gets tipsy after a gig.

With Maria no longer returning his calls after she sees him the morning after, Vlad has to find new accommodation after he's evicted. Goaded by promoter Zlatan (Toni Gojanović) during rehearsals and accused of forgetting his roots by brother Miloje (David Vujanić) during a video call, Vlad teeters on the brink. Duncan calls him `a self-sabotaging bastard', although couselling client June (Antonia Rita) recognises the haunted look in his eyes. Not even the responsibility of minding a dog for a homeless friend can prevent Vlad from making a fatal mistake in scoring some heroin and a grieving Maria wonders whether he didn't love her enough, as she lights a candle at the Orthodox church where they had so recently come to remember his beloved grandmother.

This last sequence is one of several Loachian touches that undercut the stark realism employed so confidently for much of the film. Vlad being found dead with a stuck record playing beneath a `Choose Life' poster is another detail that's a bit too on the nose. They might have been more effective if Gajić (a Londoner who had impressed with her 2016 short, Run) had revealed a little more of Vlad's backstory, so that his flaws don't emerge so unrelentingly in a downward spiral that would feel more melodramatic were the director's intentions not so integrous and Croatian actor Slavko Sobin's performance so potent, as Vlad loses sight of his mantra (`something love, do, look forward to') and goes from charismatic, if volatile maverick to trauma- and guilt-stricken wreck.

Olive Gray leads a solid supporting cast with touching sincerity, while cinematographer Olan Collardy's makes evocative use of interiors and exteriors alike. Hugo Brijs's score is also a key element, as lays bare the bitter realities of an illness that is often depicted on screen, but rarely shown with such evident appreciation of its effects upon both the addict and their loved ones.

Ultras - Ultra culture is divisive to say the least and Ragnhild Ekner's study won't do much to shift opinions one way or another. As a die-hard supporter of IFK Göteborg, the Swedish documentarist considers belonging to a fanatical cadre of football fans represents something more than a mere outpouring of partisan passion and pride. In her narrations, she states: `I see it as an act of resistance, an uprising against loneliness. A defiance of logic: to expend your energy on something that is not absolutely necessary. It's driven by something else. It's the intoxicating power. It's the greatest consolation. It's the only constant. It's the best security. It's the ultimate euphoria. It's the strongest companionship. It’s the radical happiness.'

Those interviewed in the course of her global survey agree, with some insisting that their terrace companions are like family members at a time of increased rootlessness and alienation. It's certainly true that a hardcore of local fans impacts the atmosphere at grounds where the owners and players often have little connection with a club's history and socio-cultural identity, let alone the grassroots fans who have been priced out of attending games by the introduction of safe seating at the larger stadiums and the influx of football tourists who are prepared to pay exorbitant prices in order to see their heroes in the flesh rather than on subscription television channels.

Ekner unearths plenty of contradictions while on her travels, as female fans of Atlético Nueva Chicago from the Mataderos district of Buenos Aires find it liberating to dispense with jewellery and make-up to join the boys in the home end, while the hijab-wearing women of the Ladies Curva Sud at Indonesia's PSS Sleman relish being cooped in a special section of the stadium to attend games from from which they would otherwise be disbarred. Hearing such enthusiasm and the credit that the fans of Raja Club Athletic of Casablanca take for the Arab Spring uprising in Morocco makes one wonder how the founding fathers of ultradom at the Italian clubs, Torino and Bari, would feel at learning that 74 Al Alhy supporters were killed in the Port Said riot of 1 February 2012 during a clash with bitter rivals Al Masry because so many cops at the stadium resented their role in the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.

The footage captured inside the grounds has been potently edited by Sofie Steenberger to capture the noise and emotion of being one of the gang, whether ultras are spending a small-fortune on giant homemade tifo banners or taunting rival supporters with calculatingly composed chants. Amidst the machismo, there are lighter moments, such as the visit to The Saffrons, the home of Eastbourne Town of the Isthmian League South East Division, whose a little gaggle of ultras make as much noise as they can with a drum, especially when playing against local rivals like Whitehawk FC. It's also still amusing to see the Lech Poznań crowd pogoing up and down with arms linked to celebrate a goal (eat your hearts out, you Etihad arrivistes).

Yet, while Ekner cogently makes her points about the unifying aspects of the ultra phenomenon and the opportunities if offers for rebellion at a time of conformity and oppression, she conveniently ignores the connections many cabals have with populist and/or extreme right-wing political movements, as well as paramilitary groups. Given how matches are regarded by the unscrupulous as recruitment opportunities, this feels like a major abnegatory weakness in an otherwise intriguing survey that took seven years to make.