Plays
The Importance of Being Ncuti
I mean...Earnest!
Umnia El-Neil
Umnia El-Neil is a British-Sudanese culture opinion writer and Shonda Rhimes TGIT Graduate.
Trophy Case
I’m Still Here (TikTok Review)
@obscurae ♬ original sound - OBSCURAE
Opinion
Oh…!: UMNIA’s Academy Awards 2025 Post-Mortem
This is an opinion piece, I promise. So, I slept through the Oscars last night. This was mostly apathy, and the fact that I didn’t want to witness an Emilia Pérez sweep live and in glorious technicolor. The universe seems to have taken mercy on me and given it
The People’s Joker: The hero we need.
It is always so nice to descend on the Prince Charles Cinema and realise you’re surrounded by passionate people. I feel that venues like the PCC are some of the only places left in the modern world where people aren’t pretending to be too cool, or nonchalant -
Reviews
The Wolves Always Come At Night
In our world, storms level dreams, and farmers become construction workers. This was a very emotional film about forced goodbyes, a relocation of the cowboys to the big city, against their will, away from their true loves, divorced from what makes them them. Under the sword of Climate Change, much
Reviews
Can I Get A Witness?
An incredibly ominous premise, executed with incredible style. So, so beautiful, and reckoning with grief in such a unique and confronting way. I was promised a utopia, but this is quite clearly speculative fiction on the side of dystopia, however calm things seem in the now of the story. The
The Definitive Multi-Purpose Valentine’s Watchlist
OBSCURAE brings you a resource you can really use - a veritable Swiss Knife of Valentine’s Recommendations for all of your cinematic needs, for all eventuality and level of existence. Well, almost all. If you’re single and happy about it Hit Man (2023) All that Jazz (1979) Kiss
Reviews
Mistress Dispeller: Tact and Discernment
On the surface, as explained, the film seemed to be a heist movie or a spy thriller. It focused on a woman whose job was to infiltrate and uncover affairs, using social tricks of the trade to reveal the true dramas and dismantle the relationships between husbands and mistresses from
Reviews
The Fire Inside
It is one thing to make a film about Claressa Shields’ back-to-back Olympic gold medals. It’s another thing to make a film about Flint, MI’s Golden Girl. Hiding behind a sports biopic is a deeper look at the inequity and imbalance of the sports industry, and the ways
Opinion
Fantastic Four First Foreshadowing and Forethought, or something.
It is well known that the most beloved and high-ticket Marvel characters and franchises are often the sight of much drama and failure. Being such valuable IP, they tend to be munched on by less-than-understanding studio executives who squeeze the life out of the thing until there isn’t much
Reviews
Her Name Was Moviola: Time moves at speed
I have told everyone i’ve ever met who operated in the Film age how much I do not envy them one bit. I am a kid who knows how to respect my elders - and the work that went in to making a movie back in the day is
Reviews
OBSCURAE’s Most Anticipated Picks for Santa Barbara International Film Festival
UMNIA is the Editor-in-Chief & Primary Festival Correspondent for OBSCURAE, as well as a massive fan of ✨Camp. Mistress Dispeller A messy family doc with affairs and cheating? Camp. Coup 53 Ralph Fiennes narrating the interview an MI6 Agent admitting to plotting the Iranian coup of 1953? Camp. JANE AUSTEN