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This movie opposes two different and opposed views of the world: that of Jimmy Gralton, who apart from wanting to open a dance hall, is also a left-wing idealist. Although Ken Loach makes not mystery of his sympathies in this movie, as usual he remains even-handed, lets the opposition have their say, and never makes the conservative side appear as ridiculous or stupid. In fact the heart of the movie is the confrontation between Jimmy Gralton and Father Sheridan, which despite the depth of conflict, is fundamentally based on a grudging mutual respect.

What, indeed, could be wrong with opening a dance hall and cultural center? Well in the thirties Ireland was recovering from years of bloody conflict, first the war for independence, followed by more years of civil war. Father Sheridan argues that now is the time for reconciliation, not for political agitation, and what he sees as communist propaganda. It is time for being Irish together, for listening to Irish music rather than "alien Jazz from deepest Africa".

Of course the Loach's sympathy (and ours) goes to the yearning of the young people who have no place to go, no prospects, no jobs, and who desperately want to find some joy, relief and self-expression. The movie may be a bit slow at times, but it is deeply moving.

This movie captures the atmosphere of the end of the 90's in Singapore, when an economic tsunami devastated much of Asia, through the memories of a 10-year old.

When Antony Chen was looking for a subject for his first feature film, he recorded an event of his childhood that he had since nearly erased from this memory: how he was heartbroken when the Filipino maid who was living with his family had to leave, following his mother's decision to stay at home to tend to the family. From there, vignettes of the past came back to him, that he sought to transcribe them in the movie in the most authentic manner possible.

Antony Chen pushed that search for authenticity pretty far, as to find Ko Jia Le (the boy playing the central part), he trawled schools seeing some 2000 boys, interviewing hundreds, and inviting a hundred of them to do workshops. The result was not to take the cutest or the best-looking - something the director wanted to avoid - in fact you often feel ill at ease watching him, playing obsessively with him Tamagochi (remember those?) or making a nuisance of himself in all sorts of ways. You love him and you hate him, was the director's comment, and shooting the movie appears never to have been easy. "There were two children on the set, one in front of the camera, one behind", reminisced Chen. The embarrassment you feel watching him is a compounded by that caused by the tensions between the characters, sometimes so painful and so real that you wonder what you are doing there watching them.

The period of the film is, in 2013, highly unusual: nobody to my knowledge has yet set an entire film in the 1990's. But none of the usual tricks to show the audience the period: no camera lingering on a period calendar, no newsreels announcing events identifiable with the period. Part of the time you forget about it, and get reminded by an audio cassette or an electronic typewriter.

The movie is upheld by a brilliant cast of very eclectic actors. Chen Tian Wen (the father) comes from Singapore TV soap operas, Angeli Bayani is Filipino and worked in the Philippines in theater and in movies. The fact that the mother (Yann Yann Yeo), was really 6-month pregnant during the shooting, adds humanity to a character who would otherwise appear excessively domineering. The art director is French, met by Chen in the London school of cinema. Chen expressed how he had fears that being a westerner he would show a romantic view of Singapore, something like Woody Allen in Paris, which would have gone against his search for authenticity. The shooting does avoid any romanticism but remains highly interesting, occasionally tripping into a dreamlike quality at odds with the rest of the movie.

In short, this is a movie like none other.

What I like most about this movie is that it opens a window into an unknown world for me, that of relations between men an women in modern Egypt, and it does so in a style that is at the same time sumptuous an unfamiliar. People do things you wouldn't expect, despite the slightly heavy-handed handling of emotions. There are areas where the movie is not perfect: it is so highly pessimistic and denounces the greed and selfishness of Egyptian men with so much vigor that it appears somewhat simplistic. It does tend to ramble a bit. But the power and the humor of the movie (it is quite funny, despite being tragic) transcends all that and makes those minor faults. I understand the director is very young, so he will have ample time to overcome and transcend these youthful imperfections. I didn't like Slumdog Millionaire because it told me everything about India that I already knew: it feels like a package tour where you are shown the sites you expect to see, and are whisked from one location to another. For a western viewer, Omaret yakobean is like a journey where you land at the airport and are immediately carried away by the atmosphere, the culture shock, the bustling streets, the misunderstandings, from which you emerge with challenged assumptions and a wider view of the world.