A great decision! What spice score did you go for?

Putting it on the same show as the men's match was a mistake in the first place tbh. It shouldn't have had to be either / or.

del Toro: don't worry
del Toro: i'm going to acknowledge byron with a big quote at the end
Shelley:
Shelley: why
del Toro: because, you know
del Toro: he's
del Toro: um
del Toro: i mean it kinda fits?
Shelley:
Shelley: put my fuckin quote at the end
Shelley: i wrote the fucking thing!

Yalla Parkour: a filmmaker charts her long-distance friendship with one of Gaza's brave, bonkers free runners. This was a really touching doc about home, family and diaspora, as well as finding freedom jumping off a bombed-out building and making an audience repeatedly gasp in unison.

The Secret Agent: a mysterious man is on the run from persecution by the Brazilian government. Featuring hitmen, political refugees, one hilarious landlady and an obsession with Jaws: tense, but too long and ultimately unsatisfying.

Hellcat: a woman wakes up inside a man's trailer with no idea how she got there. Cool premise, which turns out to have another cool premise behind it, and then squanders all the potential of both those concepts over the last 30 mins until you're waiting for it to end. They can't all be winners.

Redux Redux: a woman travels the multiverse repeatedly killing her daughter's killer, until she finds another girl in his house. The right level of violent with a nice central relationship, though ultimately it's a cool take on a familiar revenge story with an unsatisfying end.

Rosemead: Lucy Liu stars in a true story about a dying woman who kills her mentally ill son. She's brilliant, but so is Lawrence Shou as a young man struggling with schizophrenia. This was a difficult watch that made me want to scream at everyone to varying degrees.

Celtic Utopia: a mostly delightful doc on the new wave of Irish folk singers. Starring the politics of language, Catholic conservatism, race, the legacy of the Troubles and some fucking hilarious lines. Not sure whether it was trying to 'say' anything, but I had a lovely time.

Pinch: a would-be streamer takes revenge on the man who assaults her and all hell breaks loose. This was by turns funny and infuriating with an excellent central performance. After Sister Midnight last year I'm coming to enjoy my annual "Angry Indian woman refuses to back down and conform" film.

Rains Over Babel: magical realism that loosely adapts Dante's Inferno as a Colombian city's LGBTQ+ community congregate in a club and gamble with Death. When this worked it really worked, but overall it was a bit too knowingly, deliberately 'quirky' for me.

Today would have been unutterably bleak were it not for a couple of great entries in the Fanomenon Shorts competition- The Second Time Around was an unexpectedly gorgeous love story to cap off the lot. A good day at the pictures IMO.

Roqia: Islamic exorcism / possession horror that grapples with Algeria's "Black Decade". This broke my heart in multiple timelines but never lost the tension. Great / brutal stuff.

Tinsman Road: found-footage horror as a filmmaker traces what happened to his missing sister. This was sad, tense, creepy and full of "Don't be so bloody stupid!" moments... and then got grim at just the right moment.

The Voice of Hind Rajab: a dramatisation of the Red Crescent office on the day that little girl's call came in from Gaza. Uses the real audio, which explains why people were sobbing throughout. I had to take deep breaths to relax my muscles enough to stand up.

After the first song tonight, I turned and grinned at George and said "Mate, I fucking love Arch Enemy." It's like being punched in the face repeatedly and then soothed with a guitar solo.

Absolutely fucking incredible.