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With her feature debut “The Teacher,” Palestinian British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi attempts to shine a light on the absurd indignities of living under military occupation. Set in the West Bank — where it was also filmed, over a three-month period — the 2023 Toronto Film Festival selection follows a troubled Palestinian schoolteacher wrestling with his political allegiances at a particularly fraught time for a student he takes under his wing.

Nabulsi’s inter-generational drama is carefully composed, though the movie’s other subplots (concerning its handful of American and British characters) tend to be more stilted. Where “The Teacher” most succeeds is in its deft balance between the internal and external realities of its Arab protagonists, which are constantly forced out of alignment by the violence around them.

With winding shots of English teacher Basem (Saleh Bakri) driving to work, Nablusi introduces us to the movie’s tense but warm and picturesque atmosphere,...

BritBox has announced the start of production of the third season of the multi-award-winning Belfast-based drama Blue Lights, along with the news that Cathy Tyson and Michael Smiley have joined the cast.

Produced by Two Cities Television and co-produced by Gallagher Films for BBC iPlayer and BBC One, the critically acclaimed show also stars returning cast Siân Brooke, Martin McCann, Katherine Devlin, Nathan Braniff, Joanne Crawford, Andi Osho, Frank Blake, Abigail McGibbon, Dearbháile McKinney and Andrea Irvine.

Two years into their jobs as response officers, Grace (Brooke), Annie (Devlin) and Tommy (Braniff) are accustomed to life under the blue lights. But their work will take them into a sinister world hidden behind the veneer of middle-class life, the world of the accountants and lawyers facilitating organized crime.

The old political and criminal order has gone and a new global gang rules Belfast, bringing danger closer to home for our officers than ever before.

Vampire horror is a genre full of expectations and conventions, but several amazing vampire films and TV shows from the 2020s have started to turn the genre on its head. This is in part due to several incredible vampire acting performances, but also groundbreaking writing and design. These stories have begun to chart new paths for the vampire genre, taking a monster well-known by many and putting vampire characters into fresh situations.

The 2020s aren't the only years full of great vampire media, making great changes to a long-beloved genre. The 2000s were full of underrated vampire classics, but the biggest changes seem to have come in more recent years. These changes are most evident in the stories being told, as most vampire media in the past have either portrayed them as static monsters or romantic leads.

Boys From County Hell (2020) This Movie Turns Dracula Into A Local Legend

Your...

The 2024 Galway Film Fleadh on Ireland’s tranquil and picturesque west coast is set to open with one of the noisiest films of the year, “Kneecap.”

A comedy biopic about the real-life Belfast rap group of the same name, the feature became a breakout hit in Sundance (where it was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics) and has since been gathering steam from various other festivals ahead of its August release. The band — who all play themselves in the film — have been amassing fame and notoriety along the way, releasing a new album last month, going on sell-out tours and recently playing Glastonbury to what was described as a “headline-worthy crowd.”

Unashamedly and refreshingly outspoken, the trio rap and talk openly about their desire for a united Ireland, the history of British oppression in the country and the power of the local language in battling colonialism (“Kneecap” is predominantly in...

The BBC has released the trailer for series two of the hit Belfast-based police drama ‘Blue Lights.’

Co-created and written by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson and produced by Two Cities Television, Blue Lights is an authentic, gripping and darkly funny drama about ordinary people doing an extraordinary job.

Series one, which aired in March last year, followed three new Psni probationary recruits as they navigated their way through their first few months in a uniquely complex place to be a response police officer. It was recently commissioned for two more series.

Reprising their roles in the forthcoming second series are Siân Brooke (Grace Ellis), Martin McCann (Stevie Neil), Katherine Devlin (Annie Conlon), Nathan Braniff (Tommy Foster), Joanne Crawford (Helen McNally), Andi Osho (Sandra Cliff), and Hannah McClean (Jen Robinson).

Also set to return are Paddy Jenkins (Happy Kelly), Desmond Eastwood (Murray Canning), Jonathan Harden (Jonty) and Andrea Irvine (Nicola Robinson...

"We can't sit back and do nothing, we must act!"...

Few filmmakers have to experience the very real thing they’re dramatising on camera actually happening around their set. But then few films are set and shot in the Occupied West Bank.

As Farah Nabulsi recalls, while making The Teacher around the city of Nablus, she witnessed the forced demotion of a Palestinian home by Israeli forces and settlers torching Palestinian olive trees, both of which take place in her film.

“On my way to set at five in the morning, by the side of the road was a Palestinian family, a couple with six young children, standing in front of the rubble of their freshly demolished house,” she says. “So yeah, this harsh reality is unfolding around you.”

Premiering in Toronto on Sept. 9, the film follows a school teacher (Palestinian acting royalty Saleh Bakri) precariously trying juggling his dangerous involvement in the resistance movement with his position as a...

When British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi was watching the UK media coverage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, it had a profound impact on her. At the time, Shalit was an Israeli soldier who had been abducted in 2006 by Palestinians (the first Israeli soldier to be captured by Palestinians since 1994). Shalit was eventually released five years later in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of which were women and children.

“I remember thinking at the time that this was such a huge imbalance in the value for human life,” Nabulsi tells Deadline over a Zoom interview from Egypt, where she is attending her stepdaughter’s wedding. “One person in exchange for one thousand others! But I also remember thinking about that on an individual level and that, to that soldier’s parents and loved ones, he would be worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.”

This observation,...

Baltimore — whose title refers to a village in County Cork, Ireland — begins in the midst of a heist, but it’s not a heist film. And its starting point is not just any heist but the largest art theft in history, pulled off by four Ira members led by a onetime debutante, Rose Dugdale. She’s the focus of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s concise and intimate film, and she’s played with a compelling mix of ferocity, focus and conscience by Imogen Poots.

As a few incisive flashbacks reveal, Rose grew up in immense wealth but never quite bought into the entitlement and expectations. At age 10, on her first fox hunt, her sympathies lie with the fox. On a museum visit, the teenage Rose baffles her mother when she’s moved by a painting’s focus on a Black woman; Mum sees a piece of pottery as the...

Dead Shot is a film directed by Charles and Thomas Guard. It stars Colin Morgan and Aml Ameen and features the always grateful presence of Mark Strong.

A film that takes itself quite seriously in a revenge romp with political undertones in Ireland.

Dead Shot Storyline

In the 1970s, a member of the Ira takes over an Active Service Unit in London after his wife is accidentally shot dead in Ireland. The unit’s mission is to cause chaos and destruction, while his personal aim is to hunt down his wife’s killer — an Sas captain, who is also hunting him.

Movie Review

A good opportunity to revisit the thriller genre with a well-constructed cinematic flavor and with intention, characters and a whole story to tell. It has a lot of style thanks to the setting and the climate of instability in which the plot is framed.

Dead Shot knows...

Sky Cinema, one of Europe's leading entertainment streaming services, offers an extensive catalog of content every month. It has been streaming popular films like Dune, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife for some time now, making it easier for European viewers to access these excellent films. It also recently included DC League of Super-Pets, Top Gun: Maverick, John Wick, and a slew of other fan favorites. In May, Sky Cinema subscribers will also be treated to a new action movie, Dead Shot.

Dead Shot is an upcoming British action thriller directed by Charles Guard and Thomas Guard for Sky Cinema. Aml Ameen, Colin Morgan, Mark Strong, and Felicity Jones star in the film, which was written by Ronan Bennett and The Guard Brothers. The film's trailer has gotten fans excited as they find it highly captivating and thrilling. With that in mind, here's everything we know about the upcoming action movie Dead Shot,...

Exclusive: There will be plenty of promising acquisition titles at Venice and Toronto, but here’s an intriguing one that wrapped too late for festival consideration that will be introduced to buyers in the fall market by CAA Media Finance.

The Teacher is a drama inspired by true events, set and shot in Palestine. The film marks the feature debut of British-Palestinian writer-director Farah Nabulsi, who was Oscar nominated and won the BAFTA for her short The Present. She didn’t choose an easy path for her first feature, which she scripted and which stars Imogen Poots, Saleh Bakri, Stanley Townsend, Paul Herzberg and Andrea Irvine. One to watch is Palestinian newcomer Mohamed Abdel Rahman.

Devastated by the loss of his teenage son, The Teacher follows a Palestinian school teacher Basem El-Saleh (Bakri) who struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship...

The pairing of John Hawkes and Logan Lerman as father and son was always going to be an interesting one. Unfortunately, it’s a shame that End of Sentence doesn’t do more with that duo. While both are somewhat playing against type, the film surrounding them is so slight and so slack with its storytelling that it’s hard to appreciate them. A mix of narrative stumbling blocks and lack of notable dramatic conflict make it far too easy to see every turn of the road here. There are some very nice moments, but they don’t add up to make a flick that I can recommend today. The movie is a drama about a father and son attempting (at least on one end) to reconnect while on a road trip in Ireland. Frank Fogle (Hawkes) has always has a tough relationship with his troublemaking son Sean (Lerman). A genial and even withdrawn man,...

Road trips leave indelible memories. Whether good or bad, the experience forges a bond between travelers. End of Sentence is a touching drama about a father and son reaching common ground in Ireland. A journey that begins in grief and anger takes a few unexpected turns. The characters are forced to examine the long buried events that drove them apart. End of Sentence is a realistic exploration of human nature. It shows that the gulfs that divide us can be bridged.

End of Sentence opens at a prison in Alabama. Frank Fogle (John Hawkes) takes his terminally ill wife (Andrea Irvine) to see their incarcerated son. Sean Fogle (Logan Lerman) has nearly completed his sentence for car theft. He embraces his bald and emaciated mother deeply. They both know these are her final days.

Anna Fogle's dying wish is to have her ashes spread on a lake in Ireland. The...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

HBO Max

The latest streaming service has arrived with HBO Max, which pulls together what was offered on the HBO platform with quite an expanded library. While the WarnerMedia platform is certainly the most scattered of its competitors in terms of the range of content, if you dig deeper, there’s plenty of worthwhile offerings. Led by the Studio Ghibli catalog, they also have a Turner Classic Movies channel, featuring Criterion Collection classics, a Charlie Chaplin collection, landmark westerns, all of the A Star is Borns, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Abyss, and more. Happy watching.

Where to Stream: HBO Max

End of Sentence (Elfar Adalsteins)

To...

The first thing you ight notice about Elfar Adalsteins’ “End of Sentence,” , is that it seems to have everything backwards. John Hawkes should be playing the bitter jailbird, and Logan Lerman — who’s almost single-handedly kept the “nice Jewish boy” archetype relevant and appealing thanks to his work in the likes of “Indignation” and Amazon’s “Hunters” — should be the nervous wreck who lets people walk all over him. In a story about the intergenerational echoes of bad parenting, we expect the dad to be the one who’s hardened by inherited abuse, and his kid to be the one who cowers from it. But that’s how trauma gets handed down like some kind of blood-stained family heirloom: If you try to be the antithesis of the man who raised you, it’s only a matter of time before you start to resemble the man who raised him.

Lighter...

There is no family rift so great that it can’t be bridged with a road trip. So the movies tell us, over and over again, and if it’s not necessarily true, the best examples of this subgenre — call it the road-to-reconciliation movie — take enough of a scenic route that we come to believe it. A deliberate, gentle, genuinely caring debut feature from Icelandic director Elfar Adalsteins, “End of Sentence” is built on a premise of sweet, creamed corn: a wayward youth and his estranged, retiring father rebuild their bond as they journey to Ireland to scatter the ashes of their mother and wife. Yet if the vehicle feels familiar, the passengers make it credible: John Hawkes and Logan Lerman, both on very fine form, work enough worn human damage into proceedings that we invest in their joint healing.

Recently premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival, this Irish-Icelandic-American co-production...

John Hawkes and Logan Lerman as Frank and Sean in End Of Sentence. John Hawkes: 'I do feel that Logan and I approach material in a similar way, so far as a way into things. I don't meet that many young actors who have such an interest in the piece as a whole - to kind of go from the outside in' Photo: Courtesy of Eiff Elfar Adalsteins feature directorial debut End Of Sentence – starring John Hawkes and Logan Lerman – had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival last week. Hawkes and Lerman play Frank and Sean, an estranged father and son in this warm and gently observed drama. Sean is in prison when his mum (Andrea Irvine) dies, but on his release, he finds himself on an uncomfortable road trip with his dad to honour her last wish to have her ashes scattered in Ireland, with the pair...

Works-in-progress section featured a slew of English-language films.

The first footage from the English-language drama End Of Sentence, starring John Hawkes was unveiled during the works- in- progress presentations at Iceland’s Stockfish film festival in Reykjavik last week.

Us actor Hawkes, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Winter’s Bone in 2011, stars as a man trying to fulfill his late wife’s last wish, to go on a road trip with his son, played by Logan Lerman, to scatter her ashes in rural Ireland. The cast also includes Sarah Bolger, Andrea Irvine and Trapped’s Olafur Darri Olafsson.

The easy step from bigotry and ideological entrenchments to outright madness gets a timely depiction in David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue at Off Broadway’s Public Theater. Timelier, perhaps, than Ireland or his star Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) could ever have imagined.

Be warned: A child – an infant, in fact – will pay the price for adult madness, and though the Belfast-set drama takes place nowhere near America’s southern border, recent headlines of youngsters caged, literally, in fights not of their making resonate throughout Ireland’s dark allegorical drama.

Cyprus Avenue, directed by Vicky Featherstone and a co-production of the Abbey Theatre and The Royal Court Theater, begins before we, the audience, have a chance to adjust our boundaries, which most certainly is the point. On a lovely, intentionally bland off-white set with a few sticks of the attractive but not overly comfortable furniture of a psychiatrist’s office,...