Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Based on the British-Iranian filmmaker Maryam Mohajer’s experiences of life during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Red Dress. No Straps. (2018) explores the sunny naivety of Marmar, a young girl living amid the conflict. At school, Marmar is instructed to say ‘Death to America’ each day. But at home, her grandfather tunes into Voice of America radio, and her uncle sends her countless pictures from his life in the United States, where he’s training to become a professor. However, she’s far less concerned by these contradictory messages about the world than by the small intrigues of her everyday life, like eavesdropping on gossiping adults and eagerly awaiting the strapless red dress her grandmother has promised to make for her, emulating one worn by her favourite American pop star. With an emotive visual style and a playful piano score that evoke the innocence of childhood, Mohajer’s highly original short deftly draws out the jarring realities of living, and not living, through war.
Director: Maryam Mohajer
Composer: Tanera Dawkins
video
Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
video
Art
A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size
5 minutes
video
History
There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look
3 minutes
video
Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
3 minutes
video
Anthropology
Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?
16 minutes
video
Genetics
Why it took a century to work out that humans interbred with Neanderthals
22 minutes
video
Art
The sprawling mural that depicts an unflinching people’s history of Los Angeles
7 minutes