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After Love (2020)After Love (2020)

After Love (2020)

A beautifully powerful and quietly moving film about things left unspoken

Drama

best
THE VERY BEST

8.8

movie

United Kingdom
Arabic, English, French
Character-driven, Dramatic, Heart-warming
2020
Aleem Khan
Adam Karim, Jeff Mirza, Joanna Scanlan
89 min

Synopsis

rotten tomatoes
imdb
wikipedia
Set in the port town of Dover in the South-East of England, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Our Take

8.8
The Staff

After Love is a beautifully powerful and quietly moving outing by emerging British filmmaker Aleem Khan. It follows Mary (Joanna Scanlan), a white Muslim convert who discovers a life-changing secret her husband has managed to keep from her all these years.

Without spoiling anything, I will say that After Love is charged with the sort of deep-seated emotion we sometimes don’t know how to express. It’s also a powerful reminder that there’s no one way to love or grieve or celebrate the people around us; sometimes, there’s just feeling. And Scanlan does a wonderful job of restraining then conveying all of that in devastating and commanding moments throughout the film, a feat that earned her the much-deserved best actress award at the 2021 BAFTAs. 

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