Parky At the Pictures (19/6/2026)

(Reviews of Effi o Blaenau; Familiar Touch; Girlfriends; Lesbian Space Princess; and Killing Anna)

EFFI O BLAENAU.\

Since debuting with House of America (1997), Marc Evans has been a leading champion of Welsh cinema. Although he has not focussed exclusively on the Principality, features like Patagonia (2010), Hunky Dory (2012), and Mr Burton (2024), as well as the football documentary, Jack to a King: The Swansea Story (2014), have captured the pride, personality, and passion of the people and he takes this to a new level, with the Welsh-language drama, Effi o Blaenau. Adapting Gary Owen's acclaimed 2015 stage play, Iphigenia in Splott, producer-screenwriter Branwen Cennard

has switched the location from Cardiff to Blaenau Ffestiniog, a former slate-mining town in the neglected north-west of Wales. But she has retained the original's state-of-the-nation feel, which grindingly transcends its setting and appears more pertinent than ever.

Over phone-cam footage of a three-day bender, twentysomething Effi (Leisa Gwenllian) emerges from her bath glad to have made it through half a week. She has a blazing row with Nana Meg (Carys Gwilym) when she calls to give her some money and it spills into the street and drags in neighbour Yvonne (Mared Llywelyn) trying to stop Effi from swearing in front of her young children. Kev (Owen Alun) cycles up with the drink and drugs he has bought after winning on a scratch card and they hide in a train toilet with housemate Leanne (Nel Rhys Lewis) for a night out in Llandudno.

At the club, Effi spots the tousle-haired Lee (Tom Rhys Harries) from across the room and sends the possessive Kev off to the toilets to set up a line of cocaine. She dances provocatively to get his attention and chides him for not joining her. He shows her his crutches and she apologises for being so insensitive. Joining his pals, she goes back to his flat, where she discovers that he lost half of his right leg when his patrol hit an IED. Overcoming her revulsion, Effi listens as Lee tells her about the comrade who cried in the helicopter because he knew he would never see his kids again. Insisting that she fancies him and accepts him for who he is, she spends the night making love, chatting, and laughing.

As she leaves the next morning, Effi wakes Lee to ask for his number. Her phone is dead, so he has to write it in eyeliner and she wanders off to look at the sea before hitching home. Leanne scoffs when she texts Lee while munching a Pot Noodle in her dressing gown. When he doesn't reply, however, Effi suspects he's given her a duff number and she hitches all the way back to Llandudno to ring his doorbell. She leaves a letter in his mailbox and goes to see the sea, only to hear Lee's mates roaring with laughter that she's still hanging around.

Deciding to move on, Effi buys a half bottle of vodka with her loose change. However, she throws up after one sip and Leanne sits with her as she takes a pregnancy test. After leaving numerous messages, she gets an invitation to meet at a bar, only for flatmate Tom (Sion Eifion) to greet her. He explains that Lee had not been able to perform sexually since the injury and he is grateful to her for helping him potentially patch things up with his wife. Unfazed, Effi finds his number on Tom's phone and gets a friend to look up his address so she can confront him. But she sees him with his little daughter and can't go through with it and is too fed up even to drink when she gets home after trudging back inland.

When Kev hears the news, he sells his bundle to raise cash for Effi and pleads with her to let him have a chance at being a dad. He takes the truth about Lee badly, however, and Effi has a row with Leanne when she refuses to drink before she's had an abortion. She moves in with Meg, who persuades her to keep the child and Effi is pleased to discover she's expecting a girl. Kev buys a stroller and Leanne gets her a pair of maternity jeans. But a sudden pain forces her to go to hospital, where she goes into labour at 28 weeks and has to be taken to a special unit at Aberystwyth, even though it's 50 miles away and snowing. With the midwife (Leah Gaffey) being too busy to accompany her, she has to travel with a paramedic, who has to deliver the baby after the ambulance crashes on an icy road. Despite hearing her daughter cry as she's born, Effi has to watch as she's placed in a vacuum bag.

Refusing to leave her bed, Effi endlessly watches her phone recording of an ultrasound. She has a tattoo on her arm before Kev convinces her to see a lawyer so they can sue for compensation. He's thrilled by the promise of upwards of £270,000, but she gets angry when he suggests they go out and celebrate. On being called to the clinic, Effi bumps into the midwife and confronts her over her daughter's death. But she insists that she wouldn't have been able to save her in the ambulance and avers that the shame is that there wasn't a special care bed because the budget wouldn't stretch to one and compensation payouts will only increase the chances of further deaths because the funding has been diverted.

Sobered by these revelations and by a woman's refusal to let her hold her baby at a bus stop, Effi goes to see Leanne. She's out and Effi has to ask Yvonne to buy a bottle of vodka for her because she's been barred from the shop. She has just bought chips from Meg for her three little ones (with no sign of a father) and insults Effi and urges her to down the bottle in one before she realises the pain she's in after not getting to hold her child. As the rain pours down, Effi curls up on the pavement and sobs. Yvonne finds her there next morning and takes inside to wash her hair, with the oldest daughter asking her mum why the nasty woman from over the road is in their house.

Meg babysits young Dani (Non Cynfal Morris) when Yvonne takes the baby to the doctor and Effi tries to talk to her over toast. She shows her a swimming photo from her childhood and is saddened to hear that Dani's mum doesn't take them to the baths because people are mean about her weight. So, having infuriated Kev by refusing to pursue her claim against the NHS, Effi takes Dani to the pool while Yvonne watches and they share snacks and a smile afterwards. As the film ends, Effi tells a story from her childhood about some boys killing a runt kitten. She says it sums up Blaenau Ffestiniog because you have to be tough to survive. In order to prove her sink or swim contention, she jumps into the lake fully clothed and pops out of the water like a cork.

An exceptional performance from Leisa Gwenllian holds together this potent reminder that Broken Britain has never really gone away, as the raw, intense action recalls such kindred pictures as Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank (2009) and Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010). Marc Evans had hoped to entrust this to a woman director, but no one with Welsh language experience could be found. However, he insisted on Eira Wyn Jones being hired as cinematographer in order to remove the male gaze curse from the bedroom sequence and to provide standout shots of Effi looking both small and insignificant and doughty and determined as she strides past a castle-like edifice and a Blaenau slate tip.

Yet, while we see the towering slag heaps and the grey lowering clouds, the odd drone shot and the occasional view along a deserted street, we get no real sense of Blaenau Ffestiniog as either a community or a collection of strangers united by geography and deindustrialised hardship. Compare this to Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards's Y Chwarelwr (aka The Quarryman, 1935), which was filmed in Blaenau and was the second Welsh talkie after C.H. David's Men Against Death (1933), which centred on the Dorothea Quarry near Tal-y-sarn in the Nantlle Valley. Effi is supposed to be an outsider, but from what?

Tim Dickel's sets and Ian Fowler's costumes reinforce the film's sense of authenticity. But how can Effi and Leanne afford such a comfortable house when neither seems to be working? And how far back does their friendship extend, as neither Owen nor Evans seem that bothered about backstories, beside a passing mention about Effi having been brought up by her nan after her parents left? Despite her character's lack of grounding, Gwenllian conveys Effi's rage and recklessness with a mix of stubborn self-reliance, acerbic wit, and involuntary vulnerability that makes it easier to empathise with her than judge her. She might make mistakes, but she learns about herself, those around her, and the way the world works to leave the viewer with the impression that she will be okay in the future.

Sight and Sound shrewdly compared Effi o Blaenau to another Venice prize winner, Barbara Loden's Wanda (1970), which was also set in a mining town. However, Loden's grasp of locale is tighter, while her resistance to contrivance is stronger. An enduring problem of social realism in this country is the tendency to overload the character's situation. Everyone does it, none more so than Ken Loach. Here, Effi getting pregnant following a one-night stand is eminently plausible, as is the father's reluctance to become involved. But does Lee have to be a soldier missing half a leg after war service? Of course, such things happen, but it feels like a melodramatic detail, bearing in mind what's to come as a result of the tryst. This is a minor niggle with a film whose blows mostly land resoundingly. It's good to see another Welsh-language film getting the limelight, as too many of late have not made it across the border. But they are notoriously difficult to see online and something needs to be done so that the likes of Emlyn Williams's Oed yr Addewid (aka Do Not Go Gentle, 2001) get seen and inspire others.

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 continued to make a remarkable transition from choreography to directing after her Movement Exercises shorts trilogy (2017-22). 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 (during which she half expects the man to hold her hand), 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. Her ease with Ruth owes much to her experience of caring for her own parent, but, like Brian, she can't afford the kind of care offered by Bella Vista.

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 the measured editing of Aacharee Ungsriwong and Kate Abernathy. It's hard not to notice that the staff are almost exclusively Black or Hispanic, while only a handful of the residents (many of whom actually live in assisted care) are not white. But Friedland keeps her socio-political messages discreet and succinct, as she allows the human saga to come to the fore through the accumulation of small, but telling moments and movements.

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. Ever alert to hand gestures and the tactility of existence, she doesn't understand 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.

GIRLFRIENDS.

Seven years after recalling her Macau childhood in Sisterhood (2016), director Tracy Choi delved into the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s in Lonely Eighteen (2023). She has since chronicled a boy/girl love story in Promise of Decades (2024). But she returns to the lesbian theme of her 2012 documentary, Right Here, with Girlfriends, a Cantonese coming-of-age drama that unfolds across three time zones.

Five years after having success with her debut film, 34 year-old Macau-born director, Tsui Lok Yan (Fish Liew), has hit a wall. No one in Hong Kong is willing to fund her screenplays without ruinous compromises and Lok finds herself having to teach a film course in order to survive. However, all bar one of her students are inattentive, with one even dropping off during a screening of Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902).

Lok is supported by her long-term partner, Bei (Jennifer Yu), but is reluctant to make a commitment to her. Indeed, she's flummoxed when Bei suddenly announces that not only has she put down a deposit on a house in Macau, but she has also been in touch with a gay couple with a view to contracting lavender marriages so that they can have children. Backing away, Lok thinks about a couple of other pivotal relationships that helped shape her destiny.

In 2010, Tsui Lok Yan was known as Choi (Elizabeth Tang) while studying at university in Taipei. Sporting spikily short red hair, she is involved with an older woman, Qing (Han Ning), but her parents believe they are just flatmates. Frustrated by the feebleness of her colleagues on a graduation project, Choi strikes out on her own. Her choice is supported by Fei-Fei (Emilia Chen), who poses for a series of photographs relating to an aliens theme.

Much to Choi's surprise, Fei-Fei kisses her when she learns that she will be returning to Macau once her course is over. Choi is equally taken aback when Qing announces that she has applied to become a casino hostess in the Asian Vegas so that they can stay together. Having avoided all discussion of their future, Choi feels cornered. However, when her parents (Kin Tak Chan and Candy Man) come to visit her in Taipei, she makes it clear that she and Qing are more than roommates by holding her hand over dinner. Confused, Qing initiates a blazing row that culminates in the pair having passionate sex. Nevertheless, Choi leaves for home without telling her.

Back in 2001, Tsui Lok Yan is called Yan (Natalie Hsu) by her secondary school classmates in Macau. She is about to graduate and has a place lined up at the local university. But she falls under the spell of Faye (Eliz Lao), the older sister of one her friends on the debating team, and keeps engineering ways to spend time with her. Faye cncourages Yan to come out of herself and suggests that she takes the entrance exam to land a college place in Taipei. Unable to control her emotions, Yan kisses Faye, but she recoils and steers clear of Yan until she leaves for Taiwan.

Still pondering her options, Lok returns to Macau to visit her family. She bumps into Faye, who now has a young daughter, and she realises that her film career matters less than her happiness. She heads back to Hong Kong to drag Bei out of the restaurant where she is dining with the arranged marriage couple and proposes to her. When Bei asks about the sudden change of heart, Lok explains that she has come to the conclusion that she could never be happier with anyone else and they embrace.

Involving without ever being particularly intriguing, this is full of carefully observed moments exploring how we treat others when we're feeling emotionally vulnerable. The scenes of Choi coming out to her parents and provoking an argument with Kai Ching are the standouts, but Yan's crush on Faye is nicely done, as is Lok's proposal. But the background stories about Lok's film, Choi's college project, and Yan's school life are as thin as some of the characterisation.

The decision to cast three different actresses as Tsui Lok Yan at various times in her life fails to pay off, as it not only disrupts the sense of narrative continuity, but it also makes it difficult to follow the character's emotional evolution. Fish Liew and Natalie Hsu are eminently empathetic, but Elizabeth Tang has more to get her teeth into, even though the episode meanders while she's making her photo presentation. No wonder she was the one to be nominated for a Golden Horse Award, while also winning the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Newcomer.

Simmy Sin Mei Cheong's photography is slick enough. But, despite switches between shimmering light and bold colours, we don't get much sense of Hong Kong, Taipei, or Macau or the contrasting atmospheres that might be impacting upon Lok, Choi, and Yan's thoughts and actions. Writing with Sebrina Zheng and Lou Shiu-wa, Tracy Choi again demonstrates her commitment to showing the realities facing woman in Chinese society. Reuniting with the Sisterhood duo of Fish Liew and Jennifer Yu, she touches on everything from sustaining parental and romantic relationships to pursuing artistic endeavours and finding work and accommodation. It's just a shame that UK viewers have such limited access to Sisterhood and Lonely Eighteen and will similarly struggle to follow Choi's career in the future.

LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS.

The winner of the Teddy Award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival, Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese's Lesbian Space Princess draws on themes from the debutants' own lives. The graphic style of the animation brings to mind the Terrance and Phillip interludes in South Park (1997-), although those in the know have identified the influence of such cartoon shows as Sailor Moon (1992-97), Adventure Time (2010-18), and Steven Universe (2013-18).

Voted the Most Boring Royal, Saira (Shabana Azeez) is the 23 year-old daughter of Anne (Madeleine Sami) and Leanne (Jordan Raskopoulos), the lesbian queens of Clitopolis. They are too busy enjoying themselves to tend to their introverted daughter's anxieties, which increase when bounty hunter, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) breaks up with her after feeling stifled during a whirlwind two-week romance. A scrapbook of their time together proves the final straw and Kiki doesn't hold back when she gives her reasons for fleeing.

However, she's kidnapped by the Leader of the Straight White Maliens (Mark Bonanno) and his sidekicks, Larry (Zachary Ruane) and Josh (Broden Kelly). They hold her as bait to lure Saira out of Clitopolis because they need her labrys to power up the chick magnet that they hope will have women flocking to them (rather than the chickens it has only managed to attract so far). Aware that her mothers are disappointed with her for failing to summon her labrys (which is a symbol of lesbian power), Saira convinces herself that she will prove her worthiness to receive her labrys if she rescues Kiki. Stealing a Problematic Ship (Richard Roxburgh), she navigates her way past the Safety Bubble (Reuben Kaye), who protects the Gay Z\one from outside forces, and heads into the gaylaxy.

The misogynist Problematic Ship is pleased to get away from Clitopolis, but it isn't happy about having a woman pilot. It tries to drop Saira on a moon with an abandoned crystal mine, where she meets Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a green-haired, non-binary, ex-pop star, who had been trapped in the mine. They enjoy Saira's magic tricks as much as the princess likes Willow's songs and they join forces to take a pink crystal to fire up the Problematic Ship, who is anything but pleased to see them and teases them about their girlish crush by asking how they feel about the sex scene in Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013).

Setting their course for S Club Seventeen, they encounter Blade (Kween Kong), a drag queen DJ who insists on giving Saira makover in an effort to help her summon her labrys. Having given a sobbing girl in the restroom the courage to dump her unworthy boyfriend, Saira returns to Blade, who urges her to be kind to herself. This does the trick and Saira gets her labrys. However, Blade tries to steal it and Willow helps Saira fight back and decapitate Blade.

Back on the Problematic Ship, Willow and Saira have a moment, as Willow sings the princess a love song. She is determined to find Kiki, however, and discovers that she is being held over a vat of homebrew by the Maliens. Having overcome a phallic robot and its deadly emissions, she agrees to give up her labrys in return for Kiki's release, only for Willow to take umbrage at Saira making such a sacrifice for someone who had dumped her. Peeved at being friend-zoned, Willow leaves Saira and Kiki alone. But, while the latter is grateful for being rescued, she still doesn't want to go steady with Saira.

Taking the news badly, Saira sees her labrys start to dematerialise, as she is beset by self-doubt. Detecting that her defences are down, the Maliens try to overpower her. Recovering her composure, Saira puts up some staunch resistance before allowing the Maliens to use the labrys to power up the chick magnet. When it fails to work, the trio reason that they have set too much store by their pursuit of women and decide to become a throuple. Stranding Kiki on the Malien planet, Saira blasts off to Clitopolis feeling comfortable in her single status. A closing caption informs us that Saira now experiences less social anxiety and even accompanies her mothers to family therapy with Blade (who is somehow still alive despite being beheaded). Saira also receives a copy of Willow's hit concept album about her and the film ends with her embarking upon a new adventure with the Problematic Ship, who is now hers to command.

There isn't much cinematic sapphic sci-fi, so we should welcome this wildly idiosyncratic and gleefully scattershot odyssey. Writer-directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese clearly find it all a subversive hoot and that is how it will be received by those on its/their wavelength. But this is very much a niche rite of passage, whose humour is often strained when it's not blatant. The odd throwaway gag lands, with Richard Roxburgh's snarky variation on HAL 9000 relishing the occasional zingers (the Kechine joke is knowingly funny). Shabana Azeez proves equally adept at breezy banter, while also doing a nice line in apologetic self-pity that now and then gives way to swooning lust.

Despite not having to contend with much heteronormative imposition, Saira also has dark memories to contend with and the animation becomes more menacing in these passages. For the most part, though, it's as frivolous and unpredictable as Willow's songs, which are delivered with impish piquancy by Gemma Chua-Tran. A little more subtlety along similar lines might not have gone amiss. But the DIY graphic style, tongue-in-cheek absurdity, and endless torrent of cornball quips and sound gags could well ensure that this low-budget romp becomes a cult favourite.

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.