CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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First day nerves
MARIA DUARTE recommends a challenging but honest portrayal of school life and the cruelties of children
A screenshot from Laura Wandel's film, Playground
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
Playground (15)
Directed by Laura Wandel
THE humiliation and abuse children can face as they navigate the dangerous jungle of school life is captured to poignant effect in this brutally raw and honest debut feature by Laura Wandel.
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