Don’t miss! Four films for Thursday 18 October

Yomeddine

Beshay (Rady Gamal) is a leper and the unlikely protagonist of film student A.B. Shawky’s charming feature debut. That Beshay’s physical affliction doesn’t overshadow the film or the exuberance of his character is testament to the filmmaker’s deftness of touch and empathetic approach to portraying one of society’s outsiders. We first see Beshay eking out a living in his leper colony. When his wife dies, he decides to venture out into the world to track down his birth family, who abandoned him at the colony when he was a child. Along the way, he gains the friendship and support of young Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz). A.B. Shawky displays an impressive maturity in avoiding what could have become a cloying essay in sentimentality, while his leads offer up a moving portrait of friendship.

Ali Jaafar

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I Feel Good

Jean Dujardin plays Jacques, a clueless chancer obsessed with finding the project that will make him rich; deciding that the answer lies in offering cut-price quickie cosmetic surgery, he leads his big-hearted, socially conscious sister Monique (Yolande Moreau) on a journey to Bulgaria. She’s den mother of a community where homeless people work at recycling used goods, and part of the film’s originality is that it casts real-life residents of one of France’s famous Emmaüs centres, playing themselves (and sometimes offering off-beat musical accompaniment). Also starring in fine curmudgeonly form as a reluctant associate of Jacques is lifelong stalwart of the European arthouse, Lou Castel. Vividly coloured and brazenly mischievous as ever, I Feel Good is bolshy, celebratory, gleefully surreal – and more than lives up to its title.

Jonathan Romney

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Maki’la

Maki’la has been living on the streets of the Congolese capital for a long time. She spends most of her time with a group of young wannabe sapeurs, who use the street as a stage to display their mostly stolen designer fashions. She is married to Mbingazor, the leader of the gang, who spends his time getting high or drunk. With little-to-no money for food, Maki finds life tough. Her frustration finally sees her coerce other street children to steal for her. When she encounters Acha, a fresh-faced new arrival from a faraway village, Maki not only encourages her to steal but the two become inseparable. Unfortunately, Mbingazor suspects that they are having a romantic relationship. Such rivalry can be deadly, as Bahango’s riveting film shows.

Keith Shiri

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Bisbee ‘17

In 1917, in the Arizona town of Bisbee, workers at a local mine went on strike. What followed remains a shocking yet little-known episode in the history of labour relations in the country: some 1200 men, mostly immigrants, were rounded up and deported to the middle of the desert where they were left to die. A century later, documentarian Robert Greene arrived in Bisbee to chronicle an attempt by the townsfolk to reconstruct what took place. Following on from Actress and Kate Plays Christine, Bisbee ’17 confirms Greene as one of the leading makers of non-fiction in the US. It is a haunting tribute to a forgotten struggle, in which the ghosts of the past engage with the concerns of those living in the present. It’s an astonishing and moving work.

Edward Lawrenson

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