A top student’s A-level celebrations are overshadowed by bad news in Sasha Nathwani’s Berlinale prize-winning British film

Some actors take a while to capture your attention; others grab you by the eyes the moment you first encounter them. Kurdish-British actor Deba Hekmat falls into the second category. Her debut, a supporting role in Luna Carmoon’s Hoard (2024), was electrifying – there’s a semi-feral, unfettered physicality to her performance that chimes perfectly with Carmoon’s maverick vision.

In Sasha Nathwani’s Berlin film festival prize-winning Last Swim , Hekmat gets the starring role of Ziba, a high-achieving A-level student whose carefully planned day of celebration with her friends is clouded by an ominous diagnosis and a question mark over the future. Sunny, soulful, if a little montage-heavy at times, this is a more conventional film. Hekmat’s magnetic star quality, though, is unmistakable: she’s a free and fascinating presence.

In UK and Irish cinemas

The latest book from artist Lee Shulman, who has created the world’s largest private collection of amateur colour transparencies, has an often startling sartorial focus

It started with an impulsive eBay purchase. When Lee Shulman received the box of vintage slides he had bought from an anonymous seller, the British visual artist and film-maker could not believe the treasure he had accidentally uncovered. Beyond the impeccable quality of each image, taken in the 1950s by unnamed photographers, these were glimpses at everyday moments from everyday lives long since lost. Birthdays, family gatherings, holidays, parties, graduations – once cherished memories lovingly captured but now forgotten.

Bought in 2017, that box was the catalyst for what Shulman refers to as a “complete obsession”. More than 1m slides, 14 publications and a dozen international exhibitions later, The Anonymous Project has grown into a global endeavour and the 51-year-old’s life’s work. This ever-expanding archive of Kodachrome – a once groundbreaking but now defunct colour film released by Kodak in the mid-1930s – now represents the world’s largest private collection of amateur colour slides.

A young writer who becomes a London sex worker for the sake of his art gets much more than he bargained for

At first it’s just research: aspiring writer Max (Ruaridh Mollica) tentatively ventures into sex work to gather material for his first novel, about a rent boy named Sebastian. But then the side hustle becomes the primary source of income after Max loses his job.

This handsomely shot, London-set sexual odyssey is just starting to get a little repetitive (there are only so many anonymous hotel room blowjobs we need, however pleasingly they are lit) when Max meets Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), a cultured, much older man. A connection develops between them that goes far deeper than the contract between sex worker and client. It’s tender, thoughtful film-making from Finnish director Mikko Mäkelä, exploring the bond between two men separated by generations but joined by literature and love.

In UK and Irish cinemas

Tron theatre, Glasgow
Martin O’Connor’s witty and provocative show casts the 18th-century equivalent of the Hitler Diaries in a fresh light

Martin O’Connor calls it “the first Outlander effect”. He is thinking about how an image of a country catches on and, factual or otherwise, comes to define it.

Just as the sexed-up Highland romance of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander projected a view of Scotland with questionable historical grounding so, in 1760, James Macpherson captivated the literary world with his rediscovered verses translated from the third-century Gaelic of the poet Ossian.

Jones plays the schoolmaster who spotted the Welsh actor’s raw potential in Marc Evans’s sluggish drama

Inspiring teacher cliches abound in Mr Burton , a drab, slag-heap-grey drama about the early life of the actor Richard Burton ( Harry Lawtey ), born Richard Jenkins in industrial south Wales in 1925. The Burton of the title is not the hot-headed teenage aspiring actor who we meet bunking with his sister’s family in Port Talbot, but rather the sympathetic teacher Philip Burton ( Toby Jones ), who spotted the schoolboy’s potential and coached him to extract the full value from his vowel sounds.

The always impressive Jones gives a satisfyingly fleshed-out turn as a closeted gay man forced to contend with whispers, rumours and outright hostility. And Lawtey, while way too old to convincingly pass as a schoolboy, has occasional flashes of Burton’s dangerous charisma. It’s a pity, then, that this sluggishly paced film, which leans heavily on a fussy, twinkling piano score, is so meandering and listless.

In UK and Irish cinemas

A bereaved woman forms new relationships in the author’s first novel in seven years, a tender and funny tale of forgiveness

Paulette, the protagonist of Kit de Waal’s latest novel, isn’t perfect: she can be judgmental and stubborn; she often speaks sharply; and she probably drinks too much Appleton rum. But De Waal’s candid narration makes it difficult not to love her.

The Best of Everything is the Birmingham-born author’s sixth book and her first novel for adults since 2018’s The Trick to Time . She made her name with her 2016 debut, My Name Is Leon , which established her as a writer full of heart.

As the star teams up with director Michael Grandage for his first West End part in 17 years, the pair discuss the thrill of putting on a new play, how it updates Ibsen for our times – and a Trainspotting-esque toilet encounter in Russia

In September last year, it was announced that Ewan McGregor, the 54-year-old Scottish actor, had been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The news item happened to pop up on the feed of Michael Grandage, the theatre director who worked with McGregor in the mid-2000s on two productions, Guys and Dolls and Othello , both under the Donmar Warehouse umbrella. “I thought, ‘Oh God, how brilliant is that!’” exclaims Grandage, who is 62 and since 2012 has been the artistic director of the Michael Grandage Company . “We hadn’t been in touch for a long time and I just thought that I’d send him a text, because it’s a big well done. It’s not something that a lot of people get, actually. I was looking up who hasn’t got one…”

Grandage and McGregor, who are sitting side by side in a rehearsal space in central London, steal a glance at each other and erupt, simultaneously, in loud howls.

I get why wedding DJs are increasingly discerning. Our job is to spread joy on the dancefloor – not upset and division

I have DJed at some impressively esoteric weddings in my time. I started playing clubs in 1999, but in the mid-2000s I started advertising myself as a wedding DJ on the era-defining digital noticeboard Gumtree. One heroic couple only wanted the music of abrasive Manchester geniuses the Fall for the entirety of their nuptials. Another sweet couple wanted to evoke the night they met at 5am at the London gay club Fire – so hired me to bang out punishing hard house from 5pm in a hotel function room.

From experience, people who hire wedding DJs are usually fairly clear about what they like. They may provide a short list of songs they love, usually across a few genres, and trust a DJ to fill in the gaps. It’s rarer that people are clear what they explicitly don’t like.

Almeida, London; Theatre Royal, Bath
A bold revival of Ionesco’s play about the dangers of conformity rings all too true. And Hitchcock’s murderously droll back catalogue is turned into a stylish, suspense-free song and dance

Who would have thought that Rhinoceros , written in the 1950s, would prove to be a stage-shaker today? Sometimes taken as a satire on the rise of the Nazis or the lack of resistance to East European authoritarianism, but surely more accurately described as a general attack on unreflecting conformism, Eugène Ionesco’s play is a hard thing to pull off. At least in Britain, where the expectation of naturalism runs deep. After all, the plot turns on the entire human population of a European village – bar one – turning into rhinoceroses.

There are touches of Kafka, without the black force. There are Beckettian gleams of despair without Beckett’s lyrical intensity – or brevity. Insisting on the one theme without ever quite making an argument, Rhinoceros can easily become both heavy-footed and elusive: a pachyderm peeping flirtatiously from behind a fan.