The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw on The Margate Exodus, the title of which was apparently trimmed to simply Exodus before it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival this week:
I was intrigued, but perplexed by another British film, Penny Woolcock’s Exodus; it’s a dystopian fantasy that parallels the Biblical story of the same name. Some time in the future, a firebrand fascist leader called Pharaoh (Bernard Hill) leads Margate as a secessionist city-state, and herds all the undesirables into a fenced-off zone on the site of the old Dreamland funfair. Part shanty-town, part concentration camp, it’s a Sowetànamo of boiling resentment. Pharaoh’s son Moses (Daniel Percival) winds up living there, and finds himself destined to lead the people into the promised land. The casting of up-and-comer Claire-Hope Ashitey underlines a resemblance to Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, though, frankly, without any very convincing or exciting story.
FWIW, the Times of London has an article on the non-actors who were hired to play many of the parts in this film.
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