The end of January this year marked the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when peaceful demonstrators in Derry were shot dead by British soldiers. Bloody Sunday was one of the tragic highlights of the Northern Ireland conflict. Kenneth Branagh experienced this time as a child in Belfast and has now created a sadly beautiful memorial in nostalgic black and white in "Belfast". He doesn't shy away from scenes of violence or kitschy, romanticised childhood memories. At the same time, "Belfast" also tells of the difficulties of migration in the centre of Europe.

Kenneth Branagh

He is considered the epitome of English nobility: Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh. He has worked hard to achieve this image, for example by directing countless plays by Shakespeare for stage and screen, and often with himself in the leading role - even Oscar-worthy, as in 1989 in "Henry V". As a director and/or actor, he can pull off horror ("Frankenstein", 1994) and heroes ("Thor", 2011) just as well as crime thrillers (Hercule Poirot and Kurt Wallander) and now the working-class child born in Belfast in 1960, based on his own biography.

They give birth at the same time and in the same place: Janis, the happy late mother, and Ana, a minor with an uncertain future. They become friends in the delivery room, but it is not until a stroke of fate several months later that their paths cross again.

No, what Pedro Almodóvar has staged in his latest drama is not "women on the verge of a nervous breakdown" (1988). On the contrary, the "parallel mothers" - and there are more than two of them in this film - are characterised by a clear head, empathy and, above all, solidarity.

Milena Smit

After Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes and Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit is already being touted as Pedro Almodóvar's new muse, as he likes to adapt his film heroines to the current image of women. Smit, who was born in 1996 to a Dutch father and a Spanish mother in the Alicante region, has the self-determined go-getter attitude that also makes the protagonists of the Spanish series "House of Money" so attractive. Smit herself proved this in the thriller "No matáras - Cross the Line" (2020).

When a series begins with a Schopenhauer quote ("The world is hell and the man in it is both the tortured and the devil"), you should be prepared for all kinds of abysses, both geographical and human. In the six-part film "The North Water", writer and director Andrew Haigh ("45 Years" 2015, "Lean in Pete" 2017) has succeeded in turning Ian McGuire's novel into not only a literally ice-cold adventure, but also a thrilling psychological drama with profound characters. Because language also plays a major role in the latter, the OV function with subtitles is particularly worthwhile for the DVDs of "North Water".