Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Eternity, Prime Minister, Cover-Up and more

Eternity

(114 mins, 15) Directed by David Freyne; starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner 

This painfully laboured, high-concept afterlife romcom feels like something that was excavated from Charlie Kaufman’s rejected ideas pile back in the late 1990s and has been grinding its way through development ever since. What awaits us after death, according to the film, is a kind of convention centre-cum-holding pen.

The newly deceased are each assigned an afterlife coordinator, who explains that they have a week to choose a realm in which to spend eternity. Options include beach world, mountain world, Studio 54 world and other more niche offerings: smokers’ world markets itself with the tagline that “cancer can only kill you once”.

The catch is there’s no going back. Your decision is final. On the plus side, you spend eternity as the version of you that was happiest, which means that most people are gorgeous, healthy and young.

When Jean (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives in the afterlife, her husband Larry (Miles Teller) is already waiting for her – he choked on a pretzel the week before. Unfortunately, so is her first husband and love of her life, Luke (Callum Turner), a soldier who died young in the service of his country in the Korean war and has been waiting for her ever since.

Who to choose? It’s a quandary that loses some of its potency thanks to the complete absence of chemistry between Olsen and her two husbands, and the fact that both Larry and Luke are utterly uninteresting characters. It’s like being forced to choose between two very slightly different slices of bread. And while it’s a handsome picture – much of the afterlife has an appealing mid-century modern aesthetic – the writing is flat-footed and the jokes, like the characters, are dead on arrival.

Prime Minister

(102 mins, 12A) Directed by Michelle Walshe, Lindsay Utz; featuring Jacinda Ardern 

Idealism, empathy, generosity, kindness: all traits that are vanishingly rare in global politics at the moment. But these attributes, according to this warm, appreciative documentary, characterise former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. Partly composed of intimate footage shot by Ardern’s now-husband, Clarke Gayford, this is a strikingly informal and candid portrait of a world leader. It’s a profile that was clearly dependent on unprecedented access and trust between subject and film-makers, and as such, this could hardly be described as an impartial work.

But, like the subject herself, it does strive to be scrupulously honest. A self-described “crier and hugger”, Ardern is disarmingly frank about her battles with imposter syndrome and her ambivalence towards the top job throughout her tenure. She was dealt an unusually tough hand: she faced scrutiny as a pregnant woman and new mother; she became the face of the nation’s grief after the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019; and she showed strong leadership during the Covid pandemic but faced a backlash from a small but vocal minority of anti-vaxxers and libertarians.

All of which she handled with grace and sensitivity. We need more politicians like her.

Cover-Up

(118 mins, 15) Directed by Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus; featuring Seymour Hersh

Cover-Up is a suitably prickly tribute to a remarkable investigative journalist, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh. Fractious, questioning, curious, it’s also a film about journalism itself, and the kind of principled, tenacious investigations that make history and shape policy. Hersh’s dispatches shook generations of Americans; he exposed the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese villagers by US forces and, decades later, revealed the extent of torture by US soldiers of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

But Hersh has little interest in being the focus of the story: it took him 20 years to agree to the request by co-director Laura Poitras (who made the Nan Goldin documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed) to make a film about his life and work. And he had second thoughts about participating even while it was being made (“In case anybody cares, this is less and less fun,” he says at one point, before insisting the camera is turned off). Poitras and co-director Mark Obenhaus prevailed, however, and the result is a compelling and inspiring portrait of a one-off.

Folktales

(106 mins, 12A) Directed by Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

In the far north of Norway, a residential school offers teenagers a year-long course that helps them navigate the route from childhood to adulthood. The skills and subjects they are taught – husky-wrangling, sledge-driving, Arctic survival, campfire management, Norse mythology – may not seem to have much in the way of real-world application for most young people.

But this wholesome, heartwarming documentary follows a group of adolescents who grow, flourish and find their own ways to negotiate the tricky terrain of contemporary teendom. And, yes, they even put down their phones occasionally. Strikingly photographed and rooted in the earthy rhythms and traditions of the land, this is restorative comfort cinema. that has a kinship with pictures such as The Truffle Hunters and Honeyland. A film to renew the soul.

Dreamers

(79 mins, 15) Directed by Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor; starring Ronke Adekoluejo, Aiysha Hart, Ann Akinjirin

The Nigerian-British film-maker Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor draws on her own experiences as an asylum seeker for her handsome, empathetic feature film debut. Nigerian refugee Isio (Ronke Adekoluejo) is a hunched, defensive figure when she arrives at a hostile UK immigration removal centre. But in a place that initially feels like a dead end, she finds a new beginning: a friendship with her assigned roommate Farah (Ann Akinjirin) that soon matures into something deeper and more significant for both women.

Cautiously, they start to hope for a future together. Gharoro-Akpojotor’s evocative use of colour is particularly effective. She fills the frame with lush, inviting, saturated hues and it’s as though Isio’s capacity for joy is reawakened. But the asylum system is not always kind to dreamers.

Photographs by A24 Films/Magnolia Pictures/Redux