MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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Film round-up: March 30, 2023
MARIA DUARTE reviews of Riotsville USA, God’s Creatures, Law of Tehran and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
MESMERISING: Payman Maadi in Law of Tehran
[Courtesy of Boshra Film]
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
Riotsville, USA (12A)
Directed by Sierra Pettengill
★★★★
SIX years in the making, Sierra Pettengill’s painstakingly researched documentary lifts the lid on the shocking fake towns — or “riotsvilles” — the US military built to militarise the police and train them to snuff out the uprisings and civil rights protest movements of the late 1960s.
Set in 1967-68 and created entirely from archival footage shot by the US military or broadcast on television, the film shows a national psyche hell-bent on maintaining law and order no matter the cost.
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