The term “alien” takes on multiple meanings in writer-director Moin Hussain’s intriguing and rather gloomy debut feature, Sky Peals, which follows a lonely rest-stop cook whose life is upended by the death of his estranged father. Although extraterrestrials are evoked at some point, this intimate indie is less of a sci-fi thriller than a minimalist character study, focusing on a multiracial protagonist who doesn’t seem to be at home anywhere.
Screening in Venice’s International Critics’ Week sidebar, the film marks a promising first feature for Hussain, who shows a steady command of tone in a story that’s basically set in one colorless, extremely alienating place. But it can also be too much of a one-note affair at times, lacking the dramatic energy to take it to wider audiences.
What’s important to note about Sky Peals’ young hero, Adam (Faraz Ayub), is that his mother (Claire Rushbrook...
Screening in Venice’s International Critics’ Week sidebar, the film marks a promising first feature for Hussain, who shows a steady command of tone in a story that’s basically set in one colorless, extremely alienating place. But it can also be too much of a one-note affair at times, lacking the dramatic energy to take it to wider audiences.
What’s important to note about Sky Peals’ young hero, Adam (Faraz Ayub), is that his mother (Claire Rushbrook...
- 9/6/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Venice film festival: Moin Hussain’s arresting debut feature about an alienated night-shift worker turns the humble service station into a nightmarish modern limbo
“Do you ever feel that you’re in the wrong place?” asks Adam, the doleful hero of Moin Hussain’s debut film. “Like, if this is the place you were meant to end up?” Adam might conceivably be talking about life in the Sky Peals Green service station, where he works the night shift in a fast-food establishment, but his question goes wider; it’s the existential full house. His troubled dad, after all, believed himself to be an alien from outer space. Under the eerie lights of the station, Adam has started to wonder if he might be one as well.
Premiering in the critics’ week section here in Venice, Hussain’s creepy, distinctive British feature wrings the maximum mileage from its location, conjuring a...
“Do you ever feel that you’re in the wrong place?” asks Adam, the doleful hero of Moin Hussain’s debut film. “Like, if this is the place you were meant to end up?” Adam might conceivably be talking about life in the Sky Peals Green service station, where he works the night shift in a fast-food establishment, but his question goes wider; it’s the existential full house. His troubled dad, after all, believed himself to be an alien from outer space. Under the eerie lights of the station, Adam has started to wonder if he might be one as well.
Premiering in the critics’ week section here in Venice, Hussain’s creepy, distinctive British feature wrings the maximum mileage from its location, conjuring a...
- 9/5/2023
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
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