This film was released  25th November 2016, and is no longer screening.

★★★★★ Irish Times

This film opens on November 25th.

In 2004, when Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen was just thirteen years old he made a promise that he would become the World Chess Champion, a goal he achieved in 2013 when, at the age of twentytwo he defeated India’s national hero Viswanathan Anand in the World Championships, becoming the youngest competitor to hold the title.

Director Benjamin Lee takes a disarmingly tender approach to this involving material, focusing on Magnus’s relationships with family and struggles with anxiety as much as on the mechanics and strategies of the game itself. Magnus is a welcome addition to the growing list of compelling documentaries about chess and can comfortably take its place alongside such classics of the sub-genre as Game Over: Kasparov and The Machine (2003) and Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011). (Notes by David O’Mahony.)