Last at the Festival with 2017’s rural noir Dark River, a selection in the Platform programme, writer-director Clio Barnard returns to the Bradford, West Yorkshire setting of her earlier films for this tumultuous, fiercely affecting midlife love story.
A bundle of good humour and nervous energy, Ali (Adeel Akhtar) is a British Pakistani working-class landlord who forges close bonds with his tenants. One day, while picking up one of his tenants’ children from school, he offers a lift to Ava (Claire Rushbrook), an Irish-born teacher and single mother of five. They bond almost instantly through their love of music, though Ali favours the high energy of Buzzcocks and hip-hop while Ava takes refuge in the quieter comforts of Bob Dylan and Karen Dalton. Despite their divergent backgrounds, differences in their stages of life, and the colour of their skin, despite the fact of Ali’s failing marriage and Ava’s fraught relationship with her adult and adolescent children, each finds themself irresistibly drawn to the other. But can their mutual desire transcend a barrage of personal obstacles?
Inspired by people Barnard encountered while making her acclaimed features The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, Ali & Ava is a film that feels profoundly rooted in lived experience, blending a tender emotional complexity with an at times bracing depiction of trauma and grief. Akhtar and Rushbrook’s finely hued performances speak to the setting’s cultural diversity and tribal loyalties while yielding a vulnerability that’s alternately heart-wrenching and joyous. Their story serves as a reminder that it is sometimes the least likely connections that are the ones most worth pursuing.
彭昱畅,周也,艾丽娅,陈贤恩,孔连顺,张艺凡,田依桐,林家川,王珞丹,王大陆,马伯骞,孟子义,陈妍希,李嘉琦,张祐维,易小星,滕哲,王天放,沈南,刘昊然,乔杉,赵露思
高桥惠子,中村贺津雄,加贺麻理子
黑川芽以,中村伦也,臼田麻美,田中圭
米罗斯洛·巴卡,马太乌兹·巴纳斯乌克,阿德里安娜·赫勒比茨卡,克里斯托夫·切佐特,艾萨贝拉·达布鲁夫斯卡,托马斯·卡罗拉克,Jacek Knap,Ewa Kolasinska,Monika Krzywkowska,Jaroslaw Marciniak,Helena Mazur,Ina Sobala,塞巴斯蒂安·斯坦齐维兹
安娜·坎普,贾斯汀·查特文,伊莎贝拉·弗尔曼,凯尔·艾伦,凯莉·伯格伦德,罗肖恩·费根,埃文·霍夫,亚历山大·罗伯茨
史蒂夫·卡瑞尔,凯瑟琳·基纳,保罗·路德,罗曼尼·马尔可,塞斯·罗根,凯特·戴琳斯,伊丽莎白·班克斯,乔纳·希尔
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