ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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Film round-up
Reviews of Young Ahmed, An American Pickle, Perfect, The Snow Queen: Mirrorlands and Flash Gordon
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KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
Young Ahmed (NR)
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
★★★
HOW does a studious, video game-loving Belgian teenage boy turn into a radicalised Muslim, hell-bent on killing his teacher? Can a blossoming friendship with a girl his own age who challenges his fanatical beliefs be enough to bring him around?
Those are the questions posed by this very powerful and slow-burning drama from writer-directors the Dardenne brothers.
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