#OnTheBigScreen: Djinns, troubadors and classics

Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Dr Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an academic – content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually, she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both.

Acclaimed Australian auteur George Miller, who has been responsible for everything from Happy Feet to Mad Max: Fury Road, directed and co-wrote the screenplay of Three Thousand Years Of Longing, a long-in-development adaptation of The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, a short story collection by A.S. Byatt, that was sparked when Miller’s production company, Kennedy Miller Mitchell, bought the rights to the story in the late 1990s.

“It’s a story that seemed to probe many of the mysteries and paradoxes of life, and so succinctly,” says Miller.

“What happened to us with the pandemic, and other global forces, there’s been a threat to the possibility of us being able to create narratives. We’re getting used to finding a way to renegotiate how we create narratives. Being storyless is not a good place for human beings to be. It is a threat to our mental health. This film is a real opportunity for people to re-evaluate and re-worship story as an essential part of how we work. So, bring on Three Thousand Years Of Longing, to reboot the narrative drive in our systems.” Says Tilda Swinton.

In cinemas from 2 September.

Read more here.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This heartfelt Holocaust drama film written and directed by Mark Herman is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by John Boyne and relates the horror of a Nazi extermination camp through the eyes of two eight-year-old boys.

During World War II, 8-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) and his family leave Berlin to take up residence near the concentration camp where his father (David Thewlis) has just become commandant. Unhappy and lonely, he wanders out behind his house one day and finds Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy of his age. Though the barbed-wire fence of the camp separates them, the boys begin a forbidden friendship, oblivious to the real nature of their surroundings.

On Showmax from 5 September.

Zeros and Ones

In this explosive thriller, Ethan Hawke steps into the shoes of Jericho, an American soldier stationed in post-apocalyptic Rome under a pandemic and war-torn lockdown. After witnessing the Vatican blow up in the night sky, he sets out on a mission to uncover and document the truth for the world to see and stop the true terrorists responsible.

Controversial independent director Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York) won Best Director at the 2022 Locarno International Film Festival, where Zeros and Ones was nominated for Best Film.

On Showmax from 5 September.

The Festival of Troubadours

An unexpected reunion between a travelling musician and his son opens old wounds as the two set out on a long journey to a troubadour festival.

Attorney Yusuf and his ashik father Heves Ali cross paths on their long and perhaps the last journey after 25 years of separation. Father and son try to solve their problems with their past on the one hand and their future on the other. On this touching path to forgiving and be forgiven, to hold on to life again, a journey to the soul of a person woven with regrets.

On Netflix from 2 September.

Read more about the latest and upcoming films here.