‘I painted myself blue – but got skin problems’: how four Edinburgh stars created their weird characters

Festival theatre, Edinburgh The choreographer combines a homophobic killing from 2012 with a remembrance for his father in an often rapturous show about healing In 2019 at the Edinburgh international festival, the Swiss director Milo Rau staged an intense theatrical investigation, La Reprise: Histoire(s) du Theatre (I), recreating a homophobic killing in Belgium. The murder of Ihsane Jarfi, seven years earlier, had made headlines and the news disturbed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui who was just a little older, also gay and had a Belgian mother and Moroccan father like Jarfi. Cherkaoui now arrives at the same festival with his own act of remembrance, every bit as engrossing as Rau’s, yet more expansive. It pays tribute, too, to the choreographer’s father who died 30 years ago and whose past is interwoven with Jarfi’s death. If that raises any qualms, Cherkaoui’s larger point is about the interconnectedness of all lives and his characters morph into each other. He takes his cue from the victim’s first name, which essentially means “benevolence”, and counters the production’s disturbing flashes of violence with a floating lightness, whether in breakdance or traditional forms, and by presenting ideals of harmonious joy and kindness...

Led by a stellar cast of gen-Z newcomers, Alex Ullom’s directorial debut is an expertly crafted nightmare about a road trip gone wrong Time loops often feel like the movies’ favorite zany stylistic trick: Bill Murray plotting to win Andie MacDowell’s heart, a college student solving the mystery of her own grizzly murder, or as a ruse for Anne Hathaway to face off with a T rex. The excellent new indie horror film It Ends takes a different approach with its nightmarish depiction of a carful of friends stuck in an endlessly repeating day. It’s less of the moony japes of Groundhog Day or Palm Springs than an arthouse spin on the Prometheus myth, with the unfortunate souls of the film cursed not with death but with the torture of eternal life. After helping their friend move into a new apartment, a crew of aimless twentysomethings take a late-night drive to get food, but after GPS leads them deeper and deeper into a desolate forest, it’s clear that they have lost their way. When they pull over, they are set upon by a group of people that look eerily similar to them – young people who are dressed like they stepped out to the corner store and couldn’t find their way back. “They look scared,” one character says with a pained expression. “Why are they scared?”..

From feelgood romances to heated interactions, here are the films that best capture the seasonal moment Let’s begin at the end. 2 September 1962: the final night of the summer vacation; one last big blowout before adult life intervenes. George Lucas’s rambunctious salute to footloose youth paints vivid vignettes of Modesto, California, rocking around the clock with its loose-knit gaggle of characters. But this has one eye on the meter and knows that time is running short...