Colossal Wreck

Director: Josh Appignanesi

Year: 2023

What does it take for us to act on the climate crisis – especially if we’re the kind of person who should already be acting? In this funny, relatable portrait, a concerned yet ineffectual dad finds the first step is letting those unbearable feelings of climate anxiety in, instead of pushing them aside. But as he meets others like him, he discovers how oil-backed propagandists funded our denial and paralysis. He sets out to unmask the vested interests responsible, helping raise a generation’s leading authors in a vibrant chorus. MY EXTINCTION is a revealingly honest account of how to feel your feelings, act on your privilege, and get active when threatened with extinction.

Director: Josh Appignanesi

Year: 2018

The Tate Gallery recently staged a retrospective of the surrealist Leonora Carrington (1917- 2011), famously the lover of Max Ernst. Novelist Chloe Aridjis, who knew the artist from her native Mexico, was made guest curator of the exhibition. Set between the real-life curation of the Tate show and something more fantasised, FEMALE HUMAN ANIMAL sees Chloe increasingly disappointed by her milieu - and increasingly haunted by Carrington’s strange artworks. When an elusive, brooding man seems to offer more, Chloe begins to pursue him, but is she hunter, or hunted? Enabled by Carrington’s own defiantly mysterious mythology, she descends into a world of obsession. Shot on a rare '80s video camera with a unique look, and deftly weaving fact and fiction, the film offers a darkly romantic fantasia of a woman who goes beyond societal norms, putting on screen the lurid unconscious of our new sexual politics. Official Selection BAFICI Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival 2018 - World premiere

Director: Josh Appignanesi

Year: 2010

Meet MAHMUD NASIR, London taxi driver, loving husband, doting father and something of a 'relaxed' Muslim. Does the 'F' word occasionally pass his lips? It's hardly worth mentioning. Does he say his prayers five times a day? Of course! Well, usually. Does he fast every day of Ramadan? Who’s counting anyway? He may not be the most observant, but in his heart he is as Muslim as it gets.   But after his mother's death a discovery turns Mahmud's world upside down. He finds his birth certificate which reveals that not only was he adopted at birth but he's Jewish, and his real name is Solly Shimshillewitz! As Mahmud tumbles headlong into a full scale identity crisis, the only person he can turn to is LENNY, a drunken Jewish cabbie who agrees to give him lessons in Jewishness, which start with how to dance like Topol. Oy vey.