Parky At the Pictures (19/6/2026)

FAMILIAR TOUCH.

Given that Sarah Friedland's Familiar Touch won the Best Director prize in the Orizzonti sidebar at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, as well as its Luigi de Laurentis Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Feature. it seems odd that it has taken almost two years for it to reach UK screens. However, its arrival confirms that Friedland has made a remarkable transition from choreography to directing. Yet, we shouldn't be too surprised. As she told Filmmaker Magazine, while reflecting on her grandmother's move into a care home, `We spoke about her as if she were less and less there, but as someone working with movement, she was still so present to me through other forms of sense-making, like touch and through the rhythm of the way she'd rock her body.'

Having fussed over what to wear, octogenarian widow Ruth Goldman (Kathleen Chalfant) makes a special lunch for her date with a younger man whose name has escaped her. Unconcerned by the fact she pops a piece of toast into the dish rack, she prepares salmon and cream cheese on toast with an expertly chopped garnish. The balding, bearded man suggests a run out in the car and she readily agrees, although she's slightly surprised when he slips back into the house to fetch a suitcase.

Following a short drive out of Brooklyn, Ruth becomes confused when she's lead into the lobby of what seems to be a hotel. She's also taken aback when her beau is identified as her architect son, Steven (H. Jon Benjamin), who is holding back the tears as he leaves her at the Bella Vista care facility that Ruth can't remember having visited and approved. Viewing her characterlessly comfortable surroundings with a sense of betrayal, she resists the assistance offered by her new caregiver, Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle), and asks to be left alone in her room. Peering from her window, she sees an elderly man remove a robe and sit in the sunshine.

After a restless night, Ruth can't understand why she's not been offered a menu in the dining room. She has to be coaxed into taking a number of pills, which she insists she doesn't need and looks put out when a plate of eggs is plonked down in front of her when she hadn't ordered them. As the server explains that they can make her something special if she wants it, Ruth notices a woman on her table has a potato chip clip in her hair and gets a snappish response when she mentions it.

Having had her pulse measured by Brian (Andy McQueen), Ruth tells him the recipe for borscht and demands to know why someone who can remember this needs to be in a care home. She rattles through the key details of her past and he reassures her that she's got a Grade A. However, she gets tearful and then demands to know who the hell he is.

She recognises him the next day, when she wanders into the kitchen under the impression she works there. Having congratulated the chef on his new job, she starts slicing up a fruit salad and is delighted when her carefully plated dish is served to the residents. Ruth presents Vanessa with a portion when she comes into the kitchen and orders her to sit at the table and study for her exam. Brian is amused when she tells him to leave Vanessa to her books and Ruth warms to him when he informs her that he had spent a lot of time in his grandmother's kitchen as a boy. Indeed, she confides that she must have done a good job, as he's a decent man.

When not part of a newspaper-reading group in the library, Ruth joins a virtual reality session and gets the giggles with Pearl (Joahn Webb) when they remove their headsets and mimic the hand movements of the others in the circle. During a medical check with Brian, she relishes finding different ways to phrase a sentence about a cat hiding under a couch whenever dogs came into the room. When he asks her to list words beginning with `f', however, she throws in a few `ph' sounds, perhaps because she had been distracted by a poster of two people holding hands.

Blissing out during a session of water therapy in the pool, Ruth hears seaside sounds in her head and, when Vanessa calls her to get out, she mistakes her for her mother. Asking for another minutes, she thanks the `friend', looking upside down at her, as she kneels beside the pool. Still feeling disorientated, Ruth has to compose herself in the shower and later wanders out into the corridor when Pearl goes past on her walking frame (without really knowing why).

The next day, Ruth works on making a card at the table with the others. Back in her room, she asks Vanessa to make a list of the ingredients for her favourite meal. While Ruth is reading them out, Vanessa gets upset because they remind her of her deceased mother and Ruth hugs her. As she changes to go down to the main hall, she offers to set Vanessa up with her brother, who is active in the Civil Rights movement. She declines with half a smile before helping Ruth pull her shirt over her head.

Discovering she has been signed up for a Valentine's Day speed dating evening, Ruth has a panic attack and runs away. She finds her way to a supermarket and takes some fruit and vegetables to the checkout, only to have no money. Vanessa and Brian come to collect her, with the former being cross with her because she needs the job to fund her schooling. Ruth is deeply sorry, but struggles to accept that she will be at Bella Vista for the rest of her life. When Vanessa says it's time to go home, Ruth curses in German that she doesn't know where her home is and she savours the flavour of the peach she had picked from the shop display.

Back at her home, Steven supervises some workmen as Ruth's belongings are packed away. His daughter asks if she can keep a coat from her wardrobe and declares that grandma must once have been a babe. As he sifts through old photos and keepsakes, Steven finds a book filled with handwritten notes and smiles at one entry and decides to keep it. Unaware that she is being erased from her past, Ruth fails to realise that Vanessa is leaving to take up a new post. She watches from the window, as she hugs the rest of the staff, but still thinks she'll see her friend the next day.

Sitting with the others for a birthday tea, Ruth is reluctant to try the cake because it's shop bought. Steven comes to visit and she is thrilled when he gives her the recipe books he had found in the kitchen. She doesn't know how he got them, but she's pleased to see him and dances with him when they play Dionne Warwick's `Don't Make Me Over'. Brian sees them together and Ruth clings a little tighter, as the others join them on the dance floor.

As the film ends, Ruth sits on a chair in her room, as her new carer puts a vest and a shirt over her head. She passively follows the instructions to put her hands through the arm holes and looks up at the kindly woman dressing her. But there's no recognition and we're left with the sad inevitability that the rest of Ruth's time on what Pearl calls `Memory Lane' is going to become increasingly baffling.

Filled with moments of Wiseman like observation, dry wit, and unforced poignancy, this is a film of hugely impressive dramatic and emotional control. Gabe Elder's camera lingers without intruding, as scenes play out in lengthy takes that are deftly woven together by Aacharee Ungsriwong's measured editing. It's hard not to notice that the staff are almost exclusively Black or Hispanic, while only a handful of the residents are not white. But Friedland keeps her socio-political messages discreet and succinct, as she allows the human saga to come to the fore.

Placing her trust in two-time Obie-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant, she is rewarded with a performance of stunning brilliance that merited much more than the Orizzonti Award for Best Actress. Do the people who compile the shortlists for the Academy Awards only watch mainstream films, as Chalfant is every bit as good (if not better) as the Oscar-nominated Julie Christie was in Sarah Polley's Away From Her (2006). The puckered expressions, fixed gazes, and bobbing head movements will remind many of Joan Hickson in Miss Marple mode. But there's nothing mannered about the way in which Ruth refuses to become a victim or patient and seems genuinely surprised when it occasionally dawns on her that things are not quite what they used to be. She doesn't know why and fails to see why she can't continue as before, right up until the moment that the choice is no longer hers to make.

However, Friedland's `coming of old age' script astutely leaks details about Ruth's past with a finesse that means the audience builds up a wider picture as her horizons narrow. She has clearly been a proudly independent woman and this informs her reluctance to allow Brian or Vanessa (both thoughtfully played) to mollycoddle her and her insistence (notably in the superb kitchen scene) on trying to be their older, wiser friend. Where Friedland succeeds the most, however, is in balancing the dread of losing touch with oneself and the unexpected joy of reconnecting with something or someone that/who was thought lost forever.

KILLING ANNA.

Sam Benstead has been making documentaries for over 15 years. Much of his work has been for the small screen, including Congo: War and Peace (2010), Spies Beneath Berlin (2011), Coach Zoran and His African Tigers (2014), Mumbai High (2015; co-directed by Brian Hill), and B Is For Book (2016). Amongst his series work is the Grierson-nominated Inside the Commons (2015), Italia 90: Four Weeks That Changed the World, and Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman (both 2022), which he made in conjunction with Gareth Johnson after having served as cinematographer on Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp's Bobi Wine: The People's President (2022).

Made for Netflix, the three-part Puppet Master chronicled the crimes of con artist Robert Hendy-Freegard and proved the perfect preparation for Killing Anna, which follows a bid to coax a mukhabarat intelligence officer for Bashar al-Assad's regime to confess to his part in a pitiless massacre. Commissioned by Channel Four, this documentary thriller would make for a gruelling double bill with Jonathan Millet's Ghost Trail (2024).

In November 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad clamped down with extreme violence on those responding to the Arab Spring. Seven years later, Amsterdam-based genocide studies professor, Uğur Ümit Üngör, is shown a video of civilians being gunned down and incinerated in a tyre pit. He shows it to researcher Annsar Shahhoud and they conclude from 27 different videos that 288 people were killed in what becomes known as the Tadamon Massacre.

They dub the commander of the execution squad `The Shadow Man', and Üngör explains that he could seem charismatic when not shooting his victims with cold-eyed efficiency. Having isolated the faces of the perpetrators, Üngör and Shahhoud begin trawling through Facebook profiles because so many of those involved in the murderous repression post selfies with their buddies. The task quickly starts to take over their lives, with each admitting to seeing The Shadow Man in the faces of strangers on the street. Eventually, however, they recognise Amgd Yusuf (aka Amjad Youssuf) from the scar on his eyebrow and they decide to offer their evidence to the media, so that he can be tracked down. However, Syria had become yesterday's war and only The Guardian responded to their findings. International correspondent Michael Safi speaks on the paper's behalf, but he's rather marginalised.

In 2018, Üngör and Shahhoud hatched a plan to get inside the mukhabarat cabal by creating an Alawite-supporting character from Homs named Anna Sh, who would use her Facebook page to befriend Yusuf and his ilk. Shahhoud included portraits of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad on the page and established that she was studying abroad before posing for a half-face photo wearing a pendant draping a Syrian flag over a Shi'a sword. Much to their surprise, Anna soon had over 500 friends and became popular with account holders linked to Yusuf because they wanted someone supporting their cause to confide in. Finding images of Yusuf's pink-lit apartment and poetry written in memory of his fallen brother, Shahhoud came to see the human side of barbarous killers and used their vulnerability to gain their trust.

Having become confident in her persona as a both sympathiser and a therapist, Shahhoud made contact with Yusuf, aware that he had been trained as part of the military intelligence force to spot the suspicious and the false. In March 2021, he made a video call and we see a recording of Yusuf sounding Anna out and her using smiles and subservience to coax him into accepting that she was genuinely studying the National Defence Forces in order to make sure everyone knew the truth about their actions during the war.

The conversation is remarkable for its normalcy and the brilliance of Shahoud's performance, as well as for the shifting expressions as Yusuf tries to assess the situation. While it appeared to have gone well, however, he didn't make further contact for several weeks and Shahhoud supposed that he had been spooked.

Needing someone in Damascus to identify the location of the shootings, Üngör and Shahhoud find a young man, who hides his identity behind a white mask with two black tears dripping from each eye. Over drone footage of decimated buildings, he explains how he posed as someone seeking information on a female relation's prospective groom and was soon warned that Yusuf was dangerous. Undaunted, he conducts an interview with a Tadamon survivor, which outlines the tactics used to arrest, isolate, and punish anyone detained by the mukhabarat.

Deducing from their evidence that Yusuf is part of a killing machine sanctioned by President Assad, Üngör and Shahhoud discuss how the regime operates an `us and them' policy that drives people into demonstrating their loyalty, ultimately through acts of violence. Shahhoud reveals that she has been so badly traumatised by the Syrian state that she has a disassociative disorder that allows her to step outside herself to become Anna and she believes that she has weaponised her condition to turn on those who caused it.

Out of the blue, Shahhoud received a video call from Yusuf. She could tell he had been drinking and he tries to flirt before asking about her research. Firmly in character as Anna, she plays him along to talk about his brother and his suffering and this prompts him to confess to killing many as part of his job and in revenge for the martyrdom of his sibling. Shahhoud recognises that he has pain in his life, but she shows no mercy in giving him enough rope to convict himself. And he follows this up by claiming to be proud of his actions when Anna sends him the massacre footage.

Needing to end the operation because being Anna is both addictive and physically exhausting, Shahhoud is reassured that she will be able to kill Anna off once the story has been published in The Guardian in April 2022. Yusuf closes his Facebook page the next day and disappears. Despite the story going global, the Assad regime dismissed it as French colonial propaganda and no punishments were meted out. However, the regime was toppled in December 2024 and journalists flooded into Syria to report on Assad's atrocities. We see the masked informer remove his mask to reveal his face and he speaks of his relief at no longer being scared. But Youssuf goes on the run and rumours spread that he's had extensive plastic surgery. When Shahhoud receives death threats from him, she decides to consign Anna to the past so that she can reconnect with herself. She continues to research into what happened in Syria during the Assad era, knowing that Yusuf was detained in April 2026 and we see his mug shot after several unidentified Tadamon residents give their own harrowing testimony, with one survivor showing the bullet hole in his back where Yusuf shot him and left him for dead.

A compelling story is told with clarity and concision by Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör in talking-head interviews that only hint at the commitment and courage required to undertake a catfishing sting of humbling audacity in the face of imminent danger. But Sam Benstead's documentary seems intent on trivialising the risks and sacrifices in order to lace his 76-minute account with a sense of unbearable suspense that is both irrelevant and inappropriate.

It's the done thing these days to slot reconstructions into actualities in order to enhance their visual interest. But Benstead muddies the waters by having Shahhoud play herself in some scenes and by using in others a not very convincing lookalike (Sherine Chalhie). Other shots are plain confusing.

Were the over-shoulder images of Anna skyping with her Syrian contacts recorded at the time (perhaps by Üngör, who was seemingly present during some of the conversations) or have they been fabricated to reinforce the sense of pressure that Shahhoud never gave away during her composed performances as Anna? Also, why does Benstead insist on setting fire to the Facebooking set when Shahhoud and Üngör buried the Anna materials and, according to The Guardian, drew curious looks from a passing dog-walker in the process? If it's simply to photograph the flames flickering in the lenses of Shahoud's glasses, then the effect cheapens what had clearly been an ordeal, even though its outcome had been highly satisfactory.

Offering nothing by way of backstory for Shahhoud or Üngör, Benstead seems primarily concerned with ensuring that everything appears momentous and dramatic, even if it's just Michael Safi walking through the sparsely populated Guardian offices. At one point, Shahhoud shows her findings to a small group of security experts, but we're not told who any of them are, how they responded, or whether they proffered any advice on how to proceed. It's more understandable that the masked infiltrator should remain nameless, even though he reveals his face and beams into the camera. But the cloak-and-daggeriness adds little to the narrative's urgency or intrigue, despite the relentless efforts of Nir Perlman and his obviously ominous score. Indeed, some may find it more exciting (and markedly less manipulatory) to read Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov's Guardian account of the operation from 27 April 2022.

Even though it doesn't cover the cracks where the reconstructions are concerned, Leigh Berezki's expert editing keeps the story moving, although it's not always easy to keep track of when events are happening (and the distance between them), in spite of the use of dating captions. She can't, however, disguise the fact that this is very much a TV film rather than a cinematic release. It's also one that is more interested in Shahhoud's heroics and makes no attempt to discuss why she and Yusuf responded in such diametric ways to traumas inflicted by living in Syria under the Assads.