CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Politically charged prizewinners
The gongs struck for film-makers tackling big issues at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, says RITA DI SANTO
Film first: Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
WITH a focus on poverty and social inequality, Bong Joon Ho’s darkly satirical thriller Parasite carried off the top Palme d’Or prize in Cannes.
It follows the daily battle of a poor family in Seoul today as they scurry around their squalid basement flat and try to earn money with humiliating jobs.
Their situation starts to improve when they begin working for a rich household but when another poor family appears on the scene, a ferocious war among the have-nots begins. Parasite was certainly the best film in competition, demonstrating that Joon Ho is a major talent.
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