![\"Ish\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Ish-Review.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Set in a\u00a0predominantly Muslim\u00a0community in rundown Luton, the title belongs to 12-year-old Ishmail (an impressively nuanced performance from newcomer\u00a0Farhan Hasnat), whose mother has recently passed away. While his family mourns, Ish seeks emotional refuge with his\u00a0pal\u00a0Maram (Yahya Kitana), a slightly more senior kid on the block. Together, they while away a\u00a0rather bucolic\u00a0summer: repurposing a dingy old mattress, building a den in the forest and staining their fingers foraging for blackberries.<\/p>\n
Ish\u00a0expertly tempers a sense of adolescent hope with mounting grown-up pressures.<\/p>\n
Yet this blissful bubble is in danger of bursting. Maram is Palestinian, and intermittent radio reports from Gaza or about protests on\u00a0British soil create an ambient backdrop of dread. Closer to home, there is a lurking threat, signalled by the very first shot,\u00a0which lingers on an abandoned bike as invisible bystanders holler. Spliced throughout the film,\u00a0footage from\u00a0surveillance\u00a0cameras\u00a0\u2014\u00a0kitted out with facial-recognition tech\u00a0\u2014\u00a0reveals that\u00a0plainclothes police are constantly on their tail. And when the temperature rises to boiling point, Maram is\u00a0literally snatched\u00a0off the streets by stop-and-searchers while his terrified best bud flees.<\/p>\n
Shot in a nostalgic, melancholic black-and-white by cinematographer Jermaine Canute Edwards,\u00a0Ish\u00a0expertly tempers a sense of adolescent hope with mounting grown-up pressures. Unsurprisingly, given that Perretta is also a composer, Jens Rosenlund\u00a0Peterson\u00a0and Nina Hartstone\u2019s sound design\u00a0\u2014\u00a0with its blaring planes, crackling radios and swelling\u00a0orchestrals\u00a0\u2014\u00a0effectively conveys the vast spectrum of emotion experienced by this teen duo.\u00a0Nothing is overcooked in this hazy summer drama, which takes a complex look at rifts within working-class communities.<\/p>\n
Perretta\u2019s impressive first feature is an intoxicating mix of weighty themes, unexpected beauty and teen euphoria, coalescing into a film that has a lot to say that you\u2019ll want to savour.\u202f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Luton, the friendship between two boys, Ish (Farhan Hasnat) and Maram (Yahya Kitana), is put to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-583504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}