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How Movie Trends Are Encouraging Eco-Friendly Product Use — Every Movie Has a Lesson

by Nancy Fernandez

In the past decade, the intersection of pop culture and environmental awareness has grown increasingly prominent. As the entertainment industry embraces storytelling with deeper social messages, environmental consciousness has found a strong foothold in modern cinema. Today’s movies are no longer just about captivating visuals or heart-stopping drama — they’re becoming powerful tools for shaping consumer behavior, including a growing trend toward eco-friendly product use.

One of the most noticeable ways this shift is occurring is through the visual and narrative inclusion of green habits and sustainable lifestyles. From post-apocalyptic films that highlight the dire consequences of environmental neglect to futuristic utopias powered by renewable energy, movies are influencing how audiences think about the planet. This influence extends beyond the screen, driving demand for environmentally responsible products, including fashion, food containers, and even sustainable vitamin packaging — an innovative solution that blends wellness and environmental care.

Eco-Conscious Themes in Modern Storytelling

Films such as WALL-E, Avatar, Interstellar, and Don’t Look Up have been instrumental in planting seeds of environmental awareness. WALL-E gives a haunting look at a world overwhelmed by waste and abandoned by humanity, urging audiences to reflect on their own consumption patterns. James Cameron’s Avatar blends stunning visual effects with a story of ecological balance and the dangers of exploiting nature. These narratives stir empathy and urgency, encouraging viewers to be more mindful of their environmental footprint.

Furthermore, documentary-style films and series — such as Our Planet, Seaspiracy, and Before the Flood — have gained massive popularity by educating viewers on the real-world consequences of pollution, climate change, and overconsumption. The result? A more informed audience that’s eager to align their purchasing decisions with their values.

Celebrity Endorsements and Green Branding

The influence of Hollywood celebrities in shaping consumer behavior is well-established. When actors and filmmakers adopt eco-friendly habits or launch sustainable product lines, they create a ripple effect among their fans. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Emma Watson, and Mark Ruffalo have used their platforms to champion sustainability, often tying their advocacy to the movies they produce or star in.

Take, for example, the red carpet appearances featuring gowns made from recycled materials or organic fabrics — these not only challenge fashion norms but also spotlight sustainable options for mainstream audiences. As celebrities tie their personal brand to eco-friendly causes, companies are quick to follow suit, knowing that green branding is no longer a niche marketing strategy but a mainstream expectation.

Product Placement with a Purpose

One of the more subtle yet effective strategies for encouraging eco-friendly product use lies in purposeful product placement. When characters in popular movies are shown using reusable water bottles, biodegradable packaging, or electric vehicles, they’re setting a precedent for what is “cool” or “responsible” in modern society.

Filmmakers are increasingly collaborating with sustainable brands to integrate these products into their stories. This seamless inclusion allows viewers to subconsciously associate these items with desirable lifestyles. For instance, seeing a beloved hero opt for an eco-friendly gadget or vegan meal can significantly influence fan preferences and spark conversations about better choices.

The Rise of the Eco-Conscious Consumer

The generation that grew up watching environmental cautionary tales is now stepping into adulthood with a firm commitment to sustainability. Gen Z, in particular, is known for prioritizing ethical consumption and demanding transparency from the brands they support. Movies that echo these values resonate deeply with this audience, strengthening the cycle of awareness and action.

This has created a feedback loop where the demand for sustainable products fuels more eco-conscious media, and vice versa. The result is a new cultural norm where being environmentally responsible is not only expected but celebrated. Brands that offer biodegradable, compostable, or refillable options — from skincare to cleaning supplies — are finding favor with these emerging consumers.

Hollywood’s Influence on Industry Shifts

Major studios are also taking action behind the scenes. From adopting green production practices to setting sustainability goals, Hollywood is trying to lead by example. The Producers Guild of America’s Green Production Guide provides resources for sustainable filmmaking, helping studios reduce their carbon footprint without compromising artistic quality.

Moreover, large-scale films with sustainability at their core are often supported by environmentally focused promotional campaigns. These may include collaborations with NGOs, eco-friendly merchandise, or awareness drives that encourage the audience to take real-world action.

For instance, promotions around nature-themed films might include tree-planting partnerships, ocean clean-up donations, or limited-edition packaging made from recycled materials. These efforts further bridge the gap between on-screen inspiration and real-life impact.

A New Frontier for Brand Innovation

As moviegoers increasingly expect eco-conscious narratives and aesthetics, brands are finding creative ways to align themselves with this trend. Innovative packaging solutions — such as those made from mushroom mycelium, recycled ocean plastics, or biodegradable polymers — are gaining traction. These not only reduce environmental harm but also tell a compelling brand story that fits within the green ethos of modern cinema.

For example, companies that produce health and wellness products are reimagining their packaging to minimize waste. By adopting sustainable vitamin packaging, brands can appeal to the health-conscious and environmentally aware consumer — a demographic heavily influenced by lifestyle portrayals in films and series.

Conclusion

The powerful blend of storytelling and visual influence that defines cinema has always shaped societal values. Now, as the climate crisis becomes an unavoidable part of the global conversation, movies are stepping up to reflect and reinforce eco-friendly behavior. From the stories they tell to the products they showcase, films are nudging audiences toward a greener future.

As consumers continue to take cues from their favorite movies and celebrities, industries must respond with genuine, sustainable innovation. Whether it’s through eco-conscious product placement or behind-the-scenes green production methods, the film industry is becoming a vital player in the shift toward more responsible consumer habits. And in that shift lies an exciting opportunity for brands, creatives, and viewers alike to rewrite the script on sustainability.

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22/07/2025
Marcello Mastroianni: A Life Lived Beautifully

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “la dolce vita”? If, like us, you’re a fan of Italian cinema, chances are one of the first images that will spring to mind is of a man dressed in a tailored black suit and sunglasses, leaning back in a café chair, feet resting insouciantly on a crisp white tablecloth. We’re talking, of course, about Marcello Mastroianni.

Wrapping up our La Dolce Vita partnership with Disaronno for their 500-year anniversary*, we commissioned ace video editor and regular LWLies contributor Luís Azevedo to create a special tribute to Mastroianni — an actor who, over the course of his glittering film career, always seemed to epitomize the notion of a life lived beautifully.

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In Marcello Mastroianni: A Life Lived Beautifully, Azevedo explores how, as the go-to leading man for some of Italy’s most revered filmmakers — most notably Federico Fellini, for whom Mastroianni was as much alter ego as he was artistic muse — Mastroianni became the defining face of Italian cinema during its ’60s and ’70s heyday. Indeed, his breakthrough role in Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita introduced audiences to a romantic cosmopolitan ideal that endures to this day.

Yet despite his iconic performances in other classics such as 8½ and La Notte, Mastroianni’s on-screen persona was a lot more complex than his reputation as the undisputed king of cinematic cool suggests. Though he undoubtedly reinforced this image both on and off screen, the characters he played often contained multitudes and contradictions.

Watch the full video essay below, and go to disaronno.com to discover more about Disaronno’s anniversary celebrations.

*1525: The legend of Disaronno begins.

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21/07/2025
The queer optimism of My Beautiful Laundrette

My partner and I headed from the suburbs into the city to attend a 40^th anniversary screening of My Beautiful Laundrette, a film neither of us had seen despite always intending to. Directed by Stephen Frears and written by Hanif Kureishi, this TV-movie-turned-sleeper-success is considered by many to be a cult classic and an early paragon of queer representation, meaning it necessarily carries the burden of fixed opinions and critical interpretations. It seemed there was no room to think about it for ourselves, so we put it off until it appeared at the cinematheque.

What surprised me most about the film, which I’d assumed centred around Daniel Day-Lewis’ Johnny Burfoot – who a friend understandably claims as her first cinematic crush – is the taciturn protagonist, Omar. Played by Gordon Warnecke, who the Times critic Vincent Canby called “wonderfully insidious,” Omar, when we first encounter him, is conscientiously washing clothes by hand and hanging them out to dry on the balcony of his father’s “black hole of a flat.” For a long time, he doesn’t speak, but we keenly observe him.

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As we hear, instead, from his perpetually-inebriated father, Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey), his savvy, philosophizing uncle Hussein (Roshan Seth) and his disagreeable cousin Salim (Derrick Branche), Omar is, as Roger Ebert said, “the blank slate,” a sponge, assuming their influence as he stirs out of a stupor– his immature outsiderdom – and transforms into a man of consequence.

“The way the script was written had very…actually no dialogue for Omar in the beginning,” Warnecke told me over email. “That enabled the viewer to see the way I reacted to what was going on around me. Sometimes, a look or non-verbal reaction can say much more than words.” The first time he speaks, at drinks with Hussein and his mistress Rachel (Shirley Ann Field), Omar discloses a personal vision: “If I pick up Papa and squeezed him… I often imagine I’d get a pure bottle of pure vodka.” The word “squeeze” recurs throughout the film, whether from Nasser, who complains Omar’s squeezing of shirts doesn’t stretch him, or Hussein, who says of succeeding in Britain, “You have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system.”

Kureishi’s script thinks in these terms: stretch and squeeze; rub and tug; hard and soft’ screw and unscrew. The world is a tangible, malleable thing, and Omar, who an uncle says is “the future”,is an embodiment of all these sensibilities. “If you take [squeeze] literally,” Warnecke says to me, “it is almost a metaphor of what the government was doing to the people of Britain at the time. Come to think of it, they were ‘squeezing’ them and ‘rinsing’ them. Rather like clothes. It’s about putting pressure and getting something out of something or someone.”

Over time, as he cleans cars at Hussein’s garage, unknowingly traffics drugs for Salim, and inevitably inherits the titular laundrette that he will successfully re-invent and ultimately make his name, he applies the pressure to himself to sharpen his look and learn to speak up for himself. “I’m not going to be beat down by this country,” Omar says to Johnny –and we believe him. Perhaps it is only those who refuse the constraints placed on them, by birth or by circumstance, to make something of themselves, to strive for a sort of life where renovation results in regeneration, that ambitious dreams like Omar’s can become actual possibilities.

Of Omar, Gordon, who played Nasser in a stage adaptation of the film in 2024, told me: “Back then he took stock of what and who was around him. He saw his father was beaten by the system and did not want to make the same mistakes. He was a progressive entrepreneur who wanted to better himself. He had seen how his father had battled the racists and how his father was bitter and angry not only with himself but society as a whole… Omar went the other way.”

The way that Johnny is weaved into Omar’s narrative is that he appears in the film’s prologue, a memory that fades away the longer we don’t return to it. But during a racist attack, accompanied by a gang of fascists in an underpass, his presence causes Omar to exit his car,the same way that working for his uncle gets him “outta the house.” As Omar, grinning, advances towards Johnny, followed in cinematographer Olivier Stapleton’s elegant tracking shot and bathed in a dreamy score produced by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer, it is as though he is the antidote to the world trying to do you in, a beacon of hope from the dulling darkness of modern existence.

That juxtaposition – between the tensions of their lives and the pleasures that each other’s presence respectively brings— – is repeated throughout the film as the stakes, and subplots, continue to converge: whether it’s aAfter Omar has been attacked by Salim, while receiving a lecture from his father, and Johnny’s phone call overrides the dread; or their silent, glowing kiss in the shadows, interrupted by an attack on the laundrette; or even on opening day at the laundrette, when their heated, champagne-sodden love-making is contrasted with a classical heterosexual pair, a bond which will soon break, on the other side of the one-way glass (“Daniel improvised the pouring champagne into my mouth,” Gordon said. “A brilliant invention.”).

The intimacy of their bond is expressed in an accumulation of private gestures: the way Omar wants to remove an eyelash from Johnny’s face, or the scene when the men embrace and Johnny sticks his tongue out to lick behind Omar’s ear. Much attention has been paid to the tongue, but how about the nape of the neck, as the wet trace of it dries up? In these brief, blushing instances, Omar manages to get out of his mind and deliver him back into his body.

“Let’s open,” Johnny says after buttoning up their shirts: “The whole world is waiting.”

The most moving scene – and one which I’ve returned to since – is when, after the laundrette opens and Omar stands on the other side of the glass watching the neighbourhood file in. It is only his back that we see, but he seems to be radiating pride, his dream realised. Johnny comes up to the glass and peers in so that, for a moment, their reflections transpose and form a new kind of face: one that is neither white or brown, rich or poor, dirty or clean. It’s optimistic.

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21/07/2025
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) Review

Introduction

With the success (I use this term loosely) of the Scream franchise’s reboot and the profitability of scary movies in general, it was inevitable that another bygone horror franchise would be brought back from the dead. After all, horror movies are almost always inexpensive to make. People rarely develop horror movie fatigue. And nostalgia is a powerful box office force. Or so I’m told.

I’m sure that’s what the studio executives were thinking when they assigned a random intern to go dumpster diving in their subterranean landfill of DVD cases. That intern stumbled across a battered copy of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Said intern excitedly ran to the executive suite, threw the DVD at the leather chair facing the window, and then Ubered to their college campus to change majors. And that is how reboots get made. Or so I’m told.

Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, Chase Sui-Wonders, Madelyn Cline, and Tyriq Withers in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (2025). Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing.

The Resurrection

I Know What You Did Last Summer is an obvious choice to resurrect if the target audience is people who were teenagers in the 1990s who still have bad taste in movies. The original film was not particularly well-liked by critics (43% positive rating) and grossed only $125 million. Its sequel plummeted to a 10% critical rating and $84 million box office. Thus, effectively killing the franchise. A direct-to-DVD sequel in 2006 and a short-lived Amazon Prime series in 2021 served only to prove that people didn’t like the franchise. Yet, here we are in 2025 with another requel (I will always hate the writers of Scream 5 for coining that term).

Rebooting a 1990s horror franchise isn’t the only lesson I Know What You Did Last Summer took from the Scream reboot. Like Scream 5, I Know What You Did Last Summer is very much a remake of the original. Yet it’s also a sequel. In this case, a sequel to the second film (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), which brings back the original survivors, and all but puts a nametag on the killer early in the film, and isn’t scary at all.

In case you weren’t a teenager in the 1990s and never saw it, the original film’s plot was that a group of young people accidentally ran over a guy with their car, tried to cover it up, then were systematically murdered a year later by a killer seeking revenge who knew what they had done. This remake has the same plot but dumbs down the setup so much that even The Fast and Furious writers are shaking their heads in incredulity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IceTkSOSNJI

Synopsis

This time, reunited friends Danica (Madelyn Cline), Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) are watching fireworks from the side of a road on a cliff with a blind curve. A car comes speeding around the bend, swerves to avoid hitting Teddy, crashes into the guard rail, and plummets to the ground below. Teddy calls 9-1-1, then convinces the group that they need to leave before the cops and paramedics show up. But why?

Even if they were worried they could be blamed, the obvious lie is to just tell the cops the car was speeding around the curve and lost control, simply leaving out the part where Teddy was standing in the road. They even tried to stop the car from falling when it was teetering on the cliff’s edge. Not only is this a scenario where fleeing the scene and keeping it a secret makes no sense, but talking to the cops and fibbing would have strengthened the killer’s motivation.

Discussion

Speaking of the killer, wow, was it obvious early on who the killer was? I won’t tell you why or how, but it’s nearly impossible to miss. The only real question is whether there is just one killer or multiple killers. Scratch that, two questions. The other question is, why does I Know What You Did Last Summer feature exactly no scary scenes whatsoever?

Jennifer Love Hewitt in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (2025). Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing.

The original film was a straight slasher flick. It went for scares. The remake tries to reinvent itself more as a comedy horror, but forgets to tell most of the actors about the comedy part, and forgets to add elements that make horror movies frightening. The result is a very non-scary contrast of Wonders, Pidgeon, and Freddie Prinze Jr., all taking the movie way too seriously, and Hauer-King and Jennifer Love Hewitt phoning it in. Cline and Withers steal every scene because they got the memo about the comedy part.

Yes, Hewitt and Prinze Jr. return in their original roles. Sarah Michelle Gellar returns as well, but only in a dream sequence. Which is a shame because she also nailed the comedy part in her one scene. By the time the credits rolled – including a very predictable mid-credit scene – the only question I had was how much of the movie’s entertainment value was intentional. Many in the audience had fun watching it, but I think it’s because they saw it in a packed theater.

Conclusion

Given the bad screenplay, laughably stupid dialogue, lack of frights or thrills, and mostly bad performances, I Know What You Did Last Summer is the kind of movie that typically leaves audiences grumbling. I think Cline was so fun to watch that she lifted an otherwise lackluster movie to the kind of movie you watch with a bunch of friends, a bunch of alcohol, and a bunch of running commentary. Which is how the entire franchise should be watched. Still.

Rating: Ask for sixteen dollars back. Or so I’m told.

More from Cinema Scholars:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE – Judgement Day

MAD HEIDI: A Review Of The Modern Grindhouse Epic

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20/07/2025
From Hilde, With Love review – too staid to make…

In East Germany, where director Andreas Dresen grew up, Hilde and Hans Coppi were talked about with the kind of reverence normally reserved for saints. Members of a Communist German resistance group known as the Red Orchestra, which was working to aid the Soviet Union against the Nazis, Hilde and Hans were regarded more as symbols of heroism rather than real people who lived and died for their cause. From Hilde, With Love attempts to breathe life into the legend that Dresen was brought up with, but this handsomely crafted biopic is too staid to make a lasting impact.

Hilde, played with quiet resilience by Babylon Berlin’s Liv Lisa Fries, is picking strawberries when the Gestapo arrive to arrest her. The film begins as it goes on, with Hilde’s idyllic life with Hans (Johannes Hegemann), all kissing in sunlit gardens and harbouring Soviet spies, juxtaposed with the unmerciful reality of the Third Reich. As she languishes in prison, where she endures an agonising childbirth, flashbacks reveal her falling in with this group of young Communists for whom resistance is an adventure as well as a duty. For Hilde, however, it’s primarily an act of compassion; after hearing pleas from German POWs via illicit Soviet broadcasts she writes letters to their families, reassuring them that their sons and husbands are still alive. Discussion of politics is kept to a bare minimum.

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Every one of these flashbacks seems to take place on the most gorgeous summer’s day imaginable. At times it’s rather too beautiful, a “Visit Germany” logo threatening to appear at the end of another sequence of cavorting by a lake or speeding through the countryside on a motorbike. A much more significant problem is that these flashbacks play out in nonchronological order for no clear reason. If it’s a vague stab at shaking up the biopic formula it doesn’t work; in practice it’s needlessly confusing, and that the romance between reserved, slightly prudish Hilde and the dashing Hans feels genuine is in spite of this narrative device. One particularly affecting montage features Hans teaching Hilde Morse code by tapping his finger on her body, whether on her naked back after sex or on her knee on the bus, a secret language of love that’s also an act of rebellion.

To the film’s credit none of the Nazi characters are so cartoonishly abhorrent as to divorce them from reality. Some within this system, such as a prison guard who helps Hilde appeal her sentence, even show some humanity, making their active participation in the régime all the more unsettling. In the current climate rejecting complacency in the face of fascism is a more pertinent message than ever, so while its ending is a gut-punch it’s a shame that From Hilde, With Love isn’t the formally bold, politically radical film that the Coppis deserve.

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20/07/2025
Episode 203 of “The Cinephile Hissy Fit” Podcast — Every Movie Has a Lesson

PODCAST: Episode 203 of “The Cinephile Hissy Fit” Podcast — Every Movie Has a Lesson

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20/07/2025
I Know What You Did Last Summer review – cramped…

After 30 years, fans can breathe a sigh of relief – Julie James and Ray Bronson are back! Now, “Who are Julie James and Ray Bronson…and what fans?” I hear you ask. These are minor quibbles in the bigger picture: for some reason they’ve put together a legacy sequel to Jim Gillespie’s 1997 slasher underdog, I Know What You Did Last Summer.

It’s difficult to grasp why this version of I Know What You Did Last Summer was made – the bubble for horror legacy sequels has effectively burst after endless, largely bad iterations. Had this been greenlit six months later, it would have likely been a hard reboot; instead, we get an odd, ungainly hybrid with an identity crisis. As in the original, here a new group of hot young people accidentally kill a man in a car accident on the Fourth of July and swear each other to secrecy. A year later, a masked fisherman rocks up in town wielding a big hook to exact his revenge… but this time the group can turn to the original 90s survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr), for help.

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It is a strange, sporadically entertaining blend of far more ideas than you’d expect from, well, an I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel. Director and writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson grapples with wellness culture, gentrification, institutional misogyny and the life altering effects of trauma, all the while executing some of the most loyal fan service I’ve ever seen to two films from the late 90s and early 00s that not many people remember, let alone care about. Even as someone who adores the original film (to the point that one side character’s shared surname with the first film’s director did not go unnoticed) it is still mind-boggling that this strange not-quite-reboot made it to screen. This is Avengers: Endgame for a mostly unbeloved 90s slasher – there is quite literally a mid-credits scene with Jennifer Love Hewitt in Nick Fury drag teeing up a sequel. The target audience is me, a couple of my friends, and maybe 40 to 50 other people on planet Earth.

Since it makes so little sense to do a slavish legacy sequel for I Know What You Did Last Summer of all properties, it gives Robinson extensive wiggle room to do whatever she wants. Scream, its spoiled cousin, is a roundly beloved franchise and was too important to screw up or fundamentally meddle with when they brought it back in 2022. I Know What You Did Last Summer strikes out in far more compelling ways than that Scream sequel – which buckled under the weight of its ouroboric meta narrative – ever did.

If I Know What You Did Last Summer has loftier ambitions than the average slasher, these are fatally cramped by the limitations of the IP sandbox it’s playing in. The film violently seesaws between paying homage to the original and carving its own path, with Robinson taking some big swings and misses several of them for purely technical reasons. The featherweight script (co-written with Sam Lansky) is too unserious to sell the film’s absurd, intense finale, and the pair have a strong affinity for tin-eared ‘girls rule, boys drool’ feminism, peppering in baffling, entirely unironic lines about how the entire film’s bloodbath could have been avoided “if men just went to therapy.” This doesn’t cohere with any of the characters’ established personalities and creates tonal road bumps for the film. The direction leaves much to be desired too; when the film veers into horror territory, with frequent off-screen kills and often incoherent action, it offers little of the original’s gripping tension.

None of it really makes sense – both the plot when you think about it (a couple of scenes feel like active plot holes in light of the killer’s identity) and the sheer fact this film got made. The original film is remembered for being a refreshingly uncomplicated slasher about the era’s biggest stars hooking up and getting hooked to death, so there’s not much of a tone or a vibe to replicate. Yet Robinson, a diehard fan, does her damndest, and the cast, in particular Gabbriette and Madelyn Cline, nicely evoke the original cast’s charisma and preternatural good looks. The whole effort is admirable in a surrealist way – there’s one dream sequence that feels like you’ve huffed paint – but this level of fealty to an IP probably isn’t healthy in the long term.

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20/07/2025
Episode 204 of “The Cinephile Hissy Fit” Podcast — Every Movie Has a Lesson

PODCAST: Episode 204 of “The Cinephile Hissy Fit” Podcast — Every Movie Has a Lesson

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19/07/2025
Sudan, Remember Us review – extremely powerful…

There’s a kindness in the ability to forget. I myself constantly try and not remember the childhood streets I walked down a child in Khartoum, of eating fatoor at my grandmother’s home and of the hope that erupted on the back of revolution in Sudan in 2019. The place and its people now live in disarray, among the cruel remnants of a purposeless war. The optimism of that era feels ludicrous in retrospect so better to try and forget the things you once held dearest.

Yet that, of course is a privileged position, as unlike I, so much of the Sudanese diaspora could not speak of the horrors enacted by the genocidal militia leader known as Hemedti, and so work like this documentary from Hind Meddeb impresses upon us all to remember. There’s a quiet moment in Sudan, Remember Us where a young activist paints over a crumbling wall not far from my childhood home, her brush moving with a deliberateness that makes time stretch. It’s not just paint; it’s insistence, even if that wall likely has been now reduced to a pile of rubble. Meddeb’s documentary is full of such moments, of gestures weighed down by a history of violence, but simultaneously buoyed by a hope that refuses to die.

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Following the euphoria of the revolution, when Omar al-Bashir was ousted after three decades of authoritarian rule, Meddeb traces the fallout through the eyes of those who truly believed that something new might emerge from the blood strewn ashes. What makes this film extraordinary is its refusal to romanticise that belief. Instead, it sits with the disillusionment, the justified fear and the impossible resilience of young Sudanese artists and activists whose lives become quiet testaments to the revolutionary potential that was squandered.

Meddeb, a French-Tunisian journalist, employs a gonzo blend of handheld camerawork and vertical smartphone videos, and the film steps beyond the formalities of traditional filmmaking, just as a generation of Sudanese activists have broadened their horizons. If there’s a fault here, it’s not in the film’s ambition, but in its scope. Few people are aware of the hardships Sudan has endured over the past few decades, and the film doesn’t aim to educate them with an overabundance of context. Instead Meddeb commits to speaking directly to and with those who lived it. The result is something more intimate, more painful: a film that mourns the loss of collective innocence; laments the naivety of hope; but also insists on recording the bravery of bearing witness.

There is no false uplift here. No closing text promising a brighter future around the corner. Sudan, Remember Us ends with a silence that echoes across a cruel void of indifference. The title is less an appeal to the West than a message to the Sudanese diaspora who would rather compartmentalise, and to the disappeared and displaced, to those still fighting. It’s not an easy watch, and nor should it be. But in giving space to those who cannot and should not be erased, Sudan, Remember Us becomes not just a documentary. It is an act of resistance in itself.

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19/07/2025
Peter Cushing lives forever in Whitstable

I, on the other hand, was determined to commit as much of my day to memory as I could – and it was clear, as a I arrived early at the venue, the Horsebridge Arts Centre, that others were of a similar mind; a crowd was already gathering, chatting over tea served up by Noël himself, and rubbing shoulders with guests including Cushing co-stars Melvyn Hayes and Caroline Munro. I’ve written for Intermission and am a regular contributor to the TPTV podcast, so caught up with Sarah and Mel Byron, the Cronins’ chief factotum. Then it was time for the day’s action to begin.

After a brief introduction, the 150 or so hardened Cushing fans heard from Hayes, Munro, and former Hammer Films runners Phil Campbell and Brian Reynolds, who regaled us with tales of working with the great man, but the most amazing stories came from Geoffrey Hughes, whose father sold their family home to Peter and his wife Helen in the 1950s. The Hughes clan moved a few doors away, but remained friends with the couple; Geoffrey and his siblings appear to have been surrogate nephews and nieces to the Cushings, who were unable to have children of their own. Peter treated them to gifts from the local toy shop and encouraged their hobbies. I once interviewed the actor William Franklyn about his work with Cushing. He told me his daughters nicknamed him St Peter; if the tales recalled here are anything to go by, it was rather fitting.

Afterwards, we watched The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the film that began the actor’s long association with Hammer’s gothic horrors, before a brief lunch. The fun continued afterwards; like kids on a school trip, we were split into four groups, each taking it in turn to tackle various activities. For me, it began with a guided tour of some Cushing hotspots with comedy historian Andre Vincent. He admitted he wasn’t an expert in his subject, but in a way, that might have been an advantage – he really had to have done his homework, ‘winging it’ would not do for the audience of ardent Cushing fans. Nevertheless, he did miss out the Tudor Tea Rooms, the actor’s favourite eatery.

What we did see, however, was Cushing’s View, a spot looking out to sea towards the Maunsell forts in the distance. Unfortunately, a couple were sitting on the bench donated by the Cushings and steadfastly refused to move, despite 30 pairs of glowering eyes boring into their souls. (Vincent had earlier described the local folk as resolute and they were proof of that.) Cushing’s beachfront house, complete with its top-flight art studio, was also featured, along with places he would visit, such as the local golf course (to admire the view rather than play), as well as the local Wetherspoons pub – a former cinema now called The Peter Cushing.

It was then time to watch a 1992 interview, carried out by journalist Peter Williams (who was present to discuss the show) for his TV series The Human Factor, in which Cushing discusses his spiritual side as well as his love for his wife, who by then had been gone for over 20 years.

A trip to the local museum followed, where a plucky band of volunteers proudly showcased their exhibition devoted to the local hero, including his bicycle, his art equipment (Cushing was a skilled watercolourist) and a costume from The Masks of Death (1984), his final outing as Sherlock Holmes. Then it was back to the Horsebridge for the last event: a Cushing quiz. I’m proud to say I won.

After a quick catch-up with Mel, in which we mused on what Cushing would have thought of all the fuss (we decided he would have been touched, embarrassed and surprised), I was back on the train to St Pancras, passing some of the Charlton fans going in the opposite direction. They were jubilant, having won the match and therefore promotion to the Championship next season.

They can’t possibly have been as happy as me, however. I mean, I spent the day ‘with’ my hero, and then topped it off by winning some cake. Surely there can be no finer end to an event than that.

Talking Pictures TV’s Peter Cushing Celebration ran from May 25 – 26 2025.

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19/07/2025