Director: Elena Rossini
Stars: Nino Amareno, Charles Amirkhanian, Jeanin Basinger

Sex sells. What sells even more? Insecurity. Multi-billion dollar industries saturate our lives with images of unattainable beauty, exporting body hatred from New York to Beirut to Toyko. Their target? Women, and increasingly men and children. The Illusionists turns the mirror on the media, exposing the absurd, sometimes humorous, and shocking images that seek to enslave us.

The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Emi Lou Howe.

Emi Lou Howe is a campaigner for greater body diversity in the media and wider society. She feels that media ideals aren’t healthy or socially responsible and seeks to redress the balance through her initiative BodEquality. A cancer survivor she says “I really got to grips with body image and the impact it has on all of us when I was diagnosed and treated for cancer. It changed my body in ways that jarred with the current notion of what is attractive and acceptable, meanwhile it was working tirelessly to bring me back to health. I learnt that I could respect and love my body and help it do its thing, but I needed to let go of the limiting way I’d been programmed to think about it. Prior to the diagnosis, I didn’t even know that that was an option, or that it could be really good for me.”

There will be no trailers or adverts before the screening.