My Top 5 Movies of All Time

The Nine Muses

Directed by John Akomfra

Sharing some thematic and aesthetic ground with his widely-acclaimed gallery piece Mnemsyne, this new film confirms British-Ghanaian filmmaker, John Akomfrah as one of the UK’s most extraordinary filmmakers. In this work, a huge range of archival material is combined with newly-shot scenes to form a series of poems that tell the history of mass migration to post-war Britain. They are immigrants from Africa, Asia and Caribbean, but also recall other migrants and migrations: Irish, Maltese, ancient Greeks. In the largely white and grey landscape appears a spot of colour. Writings from authors as diverse as Shakespeare, Beckett and Eliot are tangled together with music that ranges from popular songs and Indian classical compositions to Purcell and Shubert. Akomfrah compiles a singular and fascinating investigation into identity, memory and myth. A tale of working life and alienation, racism and dislocation, with political engagement of a postcolonial critique, gives a new light to a social history.

Sacro Gra

Directed by Gianfranco Rosi

The film’s title is a pun on the name of Rome’s ring road which references the holy grail in Italian.

Exploring the lives of people living and working on the fringe of the road, Rosi’s discrete and sensitive film takes us from an elderly fisherman’s shack as he comments upon the newspaper to his Ukrainian spouse, then back to the ambulance as a paramedics comfort the victim of a car crash.

An old and distinguished pundit and his college-student daughter share a one-room apartment in a tall modern building along the road and the botanist makes audio recordings of the interiors of palm trees to detect and then poison the insects that are devouring them.

This is a metaphor for the country being chewed up by politicians for the last 50 years, and the film is about a few people who are able to survive in an incredible way in a place that has no hope whatsoever.

The poetic force of the everyday stories told, allied with simplicity, great visual and narrative technique, create something all the more affecting and unique. It is modern fable, addressing social and economic tensions that have enveloped the country. Outstanding.

Stations Of The Cross

Directed by Dietrich Bruggermann

Director Dietrich Bruggermann never condemns religious but makes a sardonic apologue, not only on some reactionary Catholic culture, but also about adolescent ingenuousness and frankness.

Maria is a 14-year-old young girl trapped in her parents’ rigorous religious education that sees her as a religious soldier, to be pure for God. Worried about her little 4-year-old brother who doesn’t yet speak, she thinks of sacrificing herself to save him.

She feels that she deserves her mother strict reproaches, and that temptations and sins are everywhere. But her struggles to fit into her religious strict formula increases. It doesn't help with the arrival of Bernadette, a pious au pair girl.

Maria cannot deny fancying her school mate Christian, who is from a different church and doesn't sing only Bach, but soul music and gospels, a “satanic music”.

Divided into 14 chapters that have the name of the Stations of the Cross, each chapter is taken with a single shot, carrying a rigorous cinematic form relevant for the subject matter.

Containing occasional moments of sharp and grotesque humour, this film is a sublime and honest spiritual journey, a stunning and stern experience.

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Tony Benn: Will and Testament

Directed by Skip Kite

Lighting his pipe, Tony Ben talks with eloquence and passion about his youth, marriage and political vocation.

Through a riveting interview mixed with his personal photographic and film archives, he recalls a vast range of the major social and political events that influenced his life.

From the introduction of nuclear power stations to Britain, his move to the left, following his ministerial career, battling the Tory government during the miners’ strike, his personal fight to renounce his peerage, being a hate figure for the right-wing media, remaining involved in political campaigns until his death last March, aged 88.

Made with imagination and care, this multilayer documentary is an intimate portrait of a politician and a man that has always stuck to his strongly held convictions, one of UK’s most honest, courageous and charismatic political leaders.

Spellbinding to watch and revealing, to ponder long after it ends. Unmissable.

Under the Skin

Directed by Jonathan Glazer Based loosely on Michel Faber’s novel of the same name, it tells the story of a predatory alien, made into human female form, to hunt humans on our world, because we are on her food chain.

She (Scarlett Johansson) drives around the streets of Scotland in a van, looking for men to seduce. Back at her house, where the victims are expecting to have sex, they instead find themselves in another dimension, in a darkness that engulfs them. Their innards are sucked from the skin and everything else discarded.

A feeling of horror and dark humour runs steadily through the tale. The girl has no feeling about what she is doing. She has no relationship with human beings. It is really about sustenance. She just has a hunger which she is feeding. However, the girl’s journey forces her to question her mission and her own identity on Earth. This is the moment when the alien begins to become human. From a solitary state of hunger, she starts to have feelings for the beauty of human relationships. She discovers all the wonder and ugliness in our world, the mess of being human on planet Earth. Glazer uses two distinctive styles, from a documentary observation of our world, to an artificial alien environment, hallucinogenic and mesmeric. It is a movie about perception, watching and hearing. It is an observation of our world through alien eyes. Glazer, who brings intelligence and a distinctive perspective to all his movies, skilfully avoids any clichés and manages to deliver a powerful statement with a beautiful restraint.