Some varyingly lovely films in the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Hamada was a lovely insight into a bunch of young people living in a refugee camp in the formerly Spanish owned portion of Morocco. It's beautifully shot, potentially suffers from the lack of a proper narrative thread as many documentaries do but was funny and charming and surprising. (I expected unrelenting misery and got pranky entertainment.) And it was most remarkable as the director shot it all, knowing not a word of their language (unless they spoke Spanish), and could only edit the footage once he'd had it all translated.

A Girl From Mogadishu certainly wasn't the best film I've ever seen. It veered oddly between being a recreation of an actual story that sometimes strayed into sort of documentary that was a little sliver too sentimental in my humble opinion. And yet Ifrah Ahmed's story is incredible and then, to my ridiculously overwhelmed astonishment, Ifrah herself popped up at the end of the film along with the director and they chatted away about life, her story and her excellent Foundation.

And Scheme Birds was just super duper tickety boo. And it was sort of piercing. That one, I would certainly catch if you can.