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Movies Documentary Features Live Action

The Marbles

The Marbles

Director – David Nicholas Wilkinson – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 114m
****

The Parthenon Marbles – were they stolen from Greece, and should they be sent back? – Opening Night Film (World Premiere) Central Scotland Documentary Festival in Stirling, Scotland on Thursday, October 30th; out in UK cinemas on Thursday, November 6th.

This starts with director Wilkinson, who previously made the excellent Getting Away With Murder(s) (2021), writing a letter to the Head of the British Museum asking him for an interview outlining the Museum’s position on the Parthenon Marbles. He never receives a reply.

The historical and legal background is helpfully unpacked by Alexander Herman, a historian and legal expert who has written and spoken widely on the Marbles controversy, and Mark Stephens, the UK’s foremost Art & Cultural Property lawyer.

The eponymous Marbles were Ancient Greek statues and artefacts removed from the Acropolis in Athens by Lord Elgin in the early part of the 19th Century and brought over to England to adorn his newly built stately home in Scotland. In 1816, following a Parliamentary debate on the matter, they were purchased from Elgin by the British Museum where they have resided ever since, on display to the public.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Escape
from Mogadishu
(Mogadisyu,
모가디슈)

Escape from Mogadishu (Mogadisyu, 모가디슈)

Director – Ryu Seung-wan – 2021 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 121m

****

In the early 1990s, besieged North and South Korean officials join forces to escape from the Somali capital as it descends into lawlessness – out in cinemas and VoD platforms on Friday, March 25th

In 1990, both North and South Korea have yet to have a seat at the United Nations. With many of those seats and hence the UN’s votes being held by African nations, influence in Africa is seen as the key to obtaining a seat. In Somalia, both sides are keen to ingratiate themselves with the ruling Barre military regime in Mogadishu, the capital, with a great deal of subterfuge and hostility between the two rival Korean factions.

However, the regime, which has held power for twenty years, is in trouble. (Barre would be ousted in 1991). As the capital becomes a war zone with government troops fighting rebel militias, the city descends into lawlessness and both sets of Korean representatives need to get out.

If you want a wider picture of the political realities of how all this came to pass in Somalia, this film is not the place to come.… Read the rest