Director – Pauline Loquès – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 96m
****1/2
A young man attempts to cope with the news that he has throat cancer in his first weekend following diagnosis – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 19th
There are some films you watch which are so close to parts of your own life that it’s impossible to be objective about them. This doesn’t happen very often to this writer, but it happened on this film. Over a year ago, completely out of the blue, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a UK citizen I’m entitled to free healthcare, and as a cancer patient my treatment is fast-tracked. My initial experience was of being tested for cancer, waiting a week or so for the results to come back, and having the presence of the cancer confirmed. That gave me around ten days to adjust, but it was a terrible shock. Not least because my (mis)understanding was that men didn’t get breast cancer, only women did, so that couldn’t possibly be what I had. And, obviously, it was life-changing.
Cut to the film Nino. A name film, named after its central character. What follows is my own highly personalised reaction as a cancer patient / survivor.… Read the rest