STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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MARIA DUARTE recommends a harrowing film exploring the traumatic world of forced adoptions
Lucia Moniz and Maisie Sly in Listen
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
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Directed by Ana Rocha de Sousa
ACTOR-turned-filmmaker Ana Rocha de Sousa shines a much-needed light on the practice of forced adoption in Britain in her powerful debut feature about an immigrant Portuguese couple’s tireless battle against the law to keep their three children.
Living on the outskirts of London, cleaner Bela (Lucia Moniz from Love Actually) and her husband — who’s on a zero-hours contract — Jota (Ruben Garcia) are struggling to make ends meet when their kids are taken away by social workers, who fear their seven-year-old deaf daughter Lu (Maisie Sly, star of the Oscar-winning short The Silent Child) is being physically abused by her parents.
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