On this page: DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA | IF IT WERE LOVE | NOTTURNO

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Songs included here traverse from Talking Head classics like Once in a Lifetime and Road to Nowhere to more recent hits like 2004's Lazy. Byrne's vision for the show was to simply have people performing for people, so everyone on-stage wears the same grey suit with bare feet. And Annie-B Parson's choreography has the same wonderfully jagged-edged quality as Byrne's music, to create a heady brew of joy and anger, curiosity and yearning for that One Fine Day that shouldn't be this difficult to achieve.

Byrne never shies away from bold issues. He refers to the fact that he and most of his band are immigrants, and how so few people actually vote in elections, determining everyone else's future. There's a reverent nod to Colin Kaepernick, and a cover of the protest song Hell You Talmbout, demanding that victims of racist violence be named, a powerful sequence that's expertly augmented by Lee. As Byrne notes, it's a song about change, not just out on the streets, but also inside each of us.

themes, language

14.Oct.20 lff

Because of the deliberately reduced speed of their performance, there's an overpowering tactile physicality to the way they dance with each other. And then backstage we see other kinds of interaction, including conversations about hobbies, the highs and lows of relationships, the roles we play in real-life to throw people off the scent of our truth. One guy talks about playing the womaniser while he secretly lusts after the boys. Another speaks of using the pain of life to add emotion on the stage.

With this exhilarating piece, Vienne is deliberately evoking a range of sexualities, relationships and interactions, refusing to indulge in audience expectations. It's a bracing depiction of youthful connections, both one-to-one and in a group setting. Each of these performers is engaging, and they open up on-screen with remarkable intimacy. They're playing characters, but they're also bringing themselves with them into their roles, which is essentially what each of us is doing every day.

themes, language

12.Oct.20 lff

Rosi is skilled at finding raw beauty even in the most horrific situation (see also his 2016 masterpiece Fire at Sea). His camerawork here is often staggeringly gorgeous, fluidly edited (by Jacopo Quadri) without commentary. So a series of small narratives emerge within the larger story, including the heartbreaking perspective of children who describe growing up surrounded by violence. Their drawings are horrific but important. And they're followed with deliberate irony by shots of orange-clad Dayesh militants in prison.

In each strand, there's a vivid sense that nobody knows what the future will be. They yearn for liberation from war, self-rule and the freedom to simply live their lives. They love their homelands, but their days are filled with desperation, fear, death and callous disregard from the world beyond their borders. And they are under no illusions about who created this mess to begin with, and who continues to pour fuel on the fire.

themes, violence

15.Oct.20 lff