Film
The best films of the year were all made by women.
Incredible coincidence – will hollywood heed the message?
Umnia El-Neil
Umnia El-Neil is a British-Sudanese culture opinion writer and Shonda Rhimes TGIT Graduate.
Film
🇬🇧🇸🇩When home can only be in the mind, it's time for Green Screen: Khartoum (Documentary Review) | BFI LFF 2025 (English with Arabic Translation)
With humour, unpretentiousness and deep care, five brave Sudanese icons recount their brave escape from the Civil War, and green screen helps visualise the Khartoum they were forced to leave behind.
Film
I have an axe wound: Queens of the Dead (Review)
A campy, tender romp through Zombie conventions, this collection of colourful characters remind us that Horror has always been for the Gworls.
Film
Lush Hyperrealism: 100 Nights of Hero | BFI London Film Festival 2025
Adapted from a queer feminist graphic novel that borrowed from Scheherazade, this luscious experiment in fantasy-as-realism is a true treat for the Ren Faire Romance Set (my friends and collaborators all), and is bound to be a cult favourite.
Film
Tuwaine Barrett & Bradley Banton dissect the process of creating "More Life" | BFI London Film Festival 2025
Set entirely in an Instagram Live, this hangout movie quietly catalogues friendship, identity and performance -- Lead Actor Tuwaine Barrett and Actor/Writer/Director Bradley Banton get into the process with us.
Film
The Chronology of Water (Review) | BFI LFF 2025
Based on the 2011 memoir by American writer Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristen Stewart's debut is more experimental than narrative – and does more to honour than it does to analyse.
Film
Instagram is ✨Cinema: More Life (Review) | BFI LFF 2025
Where theatre meets Instagram Live, you can make cinema, and director Bradley Banton has found a unique angle on the hangout film here.
Film
I saw the Face of God in the Jet Wash (Short Film Review) | BFI LFF 2025
In homage to the short, this review is written in a similar style to how the film is narrated. In 2019 I had decided that Music was evading me, and become too heavy a craft considering it had birthed my career as an Audio Engineer, and was now somewhat badly
Film
I saw this film again and it actually got better: 'The Testament of Ann Lee' | BFI London Film Festival 2025
"This is a story about how pacifism is political. How gender, race, religion are all precursors for violence, and how the denial of that violence is a radical act. However, the story opens up further, like a deep network of roots underground, the more you observe."
Film
Jay Kelly & Boomer Regrets | BFI London Film Festival 2025
Baumbach meditates on sacrifice, career and family, in a way only a man who's old and over the hill can. (Sorry Noah, but it's true.)
Deep Dive
My beef with Yorgos: Why I'm not reviewing Bugonia
In a piece I removed from public view a few years ago, I detail why his type of filmmaking doesn't work for me, and why Yorgos himself has become persona non grata on OBSCURAE despite all of his collaborators being filmmakers I love and respect.
Film
Luca Guadagnino just gets it™ - After the Hunt (Review) | BFI London Film Festival 205
In an intense display of cognitive skill, an old man managed to fool everyone into thinking he was dunking on Gen-Z, and then excoriated his fellow olds.