Riz Ahmed

Review: iLL Manors

Being middle class, I am of course far too terrified to set foot on a council estate. No doubt I'd be set upon by a gang of toughs who would make off with my pocketbook and timepiece. And the trouble with British council estate dramas made by people like me is that they always focus on one character's dream of escape, in the belief that he deserves to transcend his environment because he is good, while everyone around him is bad. (Eddie Marsan, who is far more qualified than I am to do so, said something similar in the Metro the other week.) I've seen a million of these films. But until Plan B's iLL Manors, I hadn't seen one that had no interest in pandering to my middle-class sensibilities, and focused on documentary, not deliverance.

Review: Four Lions

"Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five a side football teams," states director Chris Morris. It is this dynamic that he brings to Four Lions, his debut feature film about a group of young men from a city in the North of England planning to blow themselves up. In many respects Morris' protagonists could be planning the ultimate stag night or trying to win their five a side league; they just happen to be talking about suicide and murder.