ALSO SHOWING
The White Tiger (15)
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Ramin Bahrani’s lively adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Indian-set Man Booker-winner functions as something of a playful but pointed riposte to the optimism of Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
Owing more to Goodfellas than Bollywood, it slyly exposes a complex, murderous system of repression, one that keeps the majority of the population in a state of fear so internalised that it manifests itself in the excessive politesse of a servant class taught to smile away the daily indignities heaped upon them by the monied elites. Accordingly, Bahrani (Man Push Cart, 99 Homes) uses his stylistic – if sometimes overbearing – nods to the aforementioned Goodfellas to echo the awakening consciousness of his protagonist, Balram (Gourav), a young servant on the make who gradually realises the degree to which his own perspective on the world has been contorted. It's a neat trick, one aided by Gourav's charismatic lead performance, which subtly tracks the hardening of Balram’s heart as he realises how ruthless he’ll need to be to escape the societal cage he’s been forced to live in all his life.
Netflix
76 Days (12) ✪✪✪✪
Providing a frontline view of the Covid-19 pandemic as it took hold in the Chinese city of Wuhan, this documentary offers a raw portrait of the inner workings of a hospital's ICU over the course of the titular lockdown imposed on the city’s 11 million residents. Eschewing context for in-the-moment immediacy, the film has the ominous feel of a found-footage horror film, but far from being an endurance test; it's an at-times heartening testimony to the everyday heroism of healthcare workers and their astonishing ability to hold on to their own humanity in the face of so much suffering.
On digital demand
Quo Vadis, Aida? (15) ✪✪✪✪
A collective loss of humanity is at the heart of this powerful drama about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, one of the worst of atrocities of the Bosnian war. Directed by Jasmila Žbanić, the film dramatises the immediate run-up to the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by filtering it through the eyes of Aida (Jasna Djuricic), a local woman working as translator for the ineffectual Dutch military guarding this supposed UN safe zone. The film takes on the urgency of a no-nonsense thriller, but it's the elliptical conclusion that gives it real power. Curzon Home Cinema
The Exception (15)
Revolving around a quartet of women who work in a Holocaust research centre, this Danish thriller uses its setting to explore the capacity for evil in ordinary people by charting the mistrust and paranoia that sets in when some of the team start receiving threatening e-mails relating to their work on a Bosnian war criminal. Though the film is quite absorbing when functioning as a kind of a modern-day riff on Henrigeorges Clouzot's 1943 masterpiece Le Corbeau, it can't sustain the air of unease. Sidse Babett Knudsen stars. On digital demand
Baby Done (15)
Following a young couple (Rose Matafeo and Harry Potter alumnus Matthew Lewis) as pregnancy forces them to confront the fact they haven’t done any of the things they wanted to do before starting a family, this New Zealand comedy could have used a bit more of executive producer Taika Waititi’s sly wit. Alas, as it tries to wring laughs out of its characters’ reluctance to embrace the supposed joys of pregnancy, it falls back on groan-worthy jokes and sitcom-style performances.
On digital demand