The Work
Released on Friday 8th September
In a California jail, group therapy sessions for maximum-security inmates have been running since the early 2000s. Now these anger-purging courses have opened up to curious outsiders. Directors Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous confine the action of their award-winning documentary largely to one room and one course, with the prisoners working intensively with incomers. Be prepared for sound, fury and action: the cameras surge and settle. There’s always a suspicion with filmed therapy that the subjects are grandstanding but it’s hard to detect how the dynamism here could be faked. The prisoners prove the healers, dispensing their hard-earned insights to men who—unlike them—can leave when they want.
Wind River
Released on Friday 8th September
In snow-bound Wyoming, a Native American girl is found dead on a reservation—and no one will talk. This thriller starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen has the narrative style you might expect from screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water. It’s also Sheridan’s directing debut: he won the top first-timer’s prize at Cannes for his skilled handling of action, landscape and emotion, enriched by a political awareness rare in the genre.
In Between
Released on Friday 22nd September
Three attractive young Palestinian women—a lawyer, aspiring DJ and student preparing for an arranged marriage—share a flat in Tel Aviv. Away from their families how do they negotiate contemporary life—drink and drugs, sex, moral compromise? Director Maysaloun Hamoud’s first film is entertaining and modishly designed but it’s her ability to veer away from cliché that makes it so satisfying.
Released on Friday 8th September
In a California jail, group therapy sessions for maximum-security inmates have been running since the early 2000s. Now these anger-purging courses have opened up to curious outsiders. Directors Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous confine the action of their award-winning documentary largely to one room and one course, with the prisoners working intensively with incomers. Be prepared for sound, fury and action: the cameras surge and settle. There’s always a suspicion with filmed therapy that the subjects are grandstanding but it’s hard to detect how the dynamism here could be faked. The prisoners prove the healers, dispensing their hard-earned insights to men who—unlike them—can leave when they want.
Wind River
Released on Friday 8th September
In snow-bound Wyoming, a Native American girl is found dead on a reservation—and no one will talk. This thriller starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen has the narrative style you might expect from screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water. It’s also Sheridan’s directing debut: he won the top first-timer’s prize at Cannes for his skilled handling of action, landscape and emotion, enriched by a political awareness rare in the genre.
In Between
Released on Friday 22nd September
Three attractive young Palestinian women—a lawyer, aspiring DJ and student preparing for an arranged marriage—share a flat in Tel Aviv. Away from their families how do they negotiate contemporary life—drink and drugs, sex, moral compromise? Director Maysaloun Hamoud’s first film is entertaining and modishly designed but it’s her ability to veer away from cliché that makes it so satisfying.
