“The film offered a helpful primer to rules banning tea or coffee as well as alcohol and smoking. Too often, though, we were denied what we most wanted: answers.”

Meet the Mormons

Meet the Mormons, Channel 4

“The film offered a helpful primer to rules banning tea or coffee as well as alcohol and smoking. Too often, though, we were denied what we most wanted: answers.”
Tom Rowley, The Telegraph

“Never before has the church’s Utah HQ given a film-maker permission to document the lives of its UK members. But don’t get too excited. It turns out that the Mormon definition of ‘access’ and ‘no access at all’ are, in effect, remarkably similar.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“Lynn Alleway’s Meet the Mormons was a PR disaster, for while it confirmed my suspicion that the Mormons mean and do no harm to others, it revealed what they inflict upon their own. Alleway’s film was an essay in young-adult abuse.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“It is funny because of what Mormons believe in: that Jesus went to America after his crucifixion, the planet Kolob, Joseph Smith, the secrets, the angels, the little white handbook, the not-at-all-little white underwear, the ban on swimming etc. It’s also dead sad. Because Josh … sorry Elder Field would be such a likable, normal boy if he hadn’t been indoctrinated with such nonsense.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Beauty Queen or Bust, Channel 4

“It was easy to expect that Beauty Queen or Bust was going to be one uproarious send-up. I am pleased to report that it wasn’t. It was actually a rather sad, sweet film about hope and courage and people in broken places still managing to brim with promise.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Seeing these young people spend such sums on dresses they could ill afford was more depressing than entertaining, especially as they were pursuing a very outdated notion of success: to be judged the prettiest girl in town in an event hosted by a man.”
Tom Rowley, The Telergaph

“Even though 44 years have passed since feminists protested Miss World 1970, it seems that women in dire economic straits are still reduced to trading off their looks in the hope of advancement. And woe betide the ugly ones.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“The only way the contest and film could have redeemed themselves would have been to witness the plastic coronet bestowed on Diamond, a natural beauty whose CV included a mother who had served jail time for drugs offences.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

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