documentary
Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorisedTuesday, 01 July 2025In 2019, French-Tunisian journalist and documentary filmmaker Hind Meddeb flew to Sudan after the overthrow of hated dictator Omar al-Bashir, hoping to chronicle the dream of an Arab country shaken up by a feminist revolution. The young pro-... Read more... |
Bogancloch review - every frame a work of artSaturday, 31 May 2025![]() Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional... Read more... |
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testamentTuesday, 13 May 2025![]() “It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was... Read more... |
Formula E: Driver, Prime Video review - inside the world's first zero-carbon sportSaturday, 03 May 2025![]() The success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive not only provoked a viewer-stampede towards the world’s most expensive sport, but also triggered a chain reaction of similar behind-the-scenes sports documentaries. Suddenly we had Break Point (tennis), Full... Read more... |
Neil Young: Coastal review - the old campaigner gets back on the trailSaturday, 19 April 2025![]() As well as generating a ceaseless stream of albums, whether live, studio or culled from his copious archives, Neil Young has also amassed a fairly hefty body of film work, either as director, star or both. Like his music, his movies are created with... Read more... |
Manhunt, Royal Court review - terrifyingly toxic masculinityMonday, 14 April 2025![]() Are we really in “a new era of male anger, societal discontent and rage”? This is what Royal Court artistic director David Byrne claims in the programme of Manhunt, Robert Icke’s new documentary play about Raoul Moat. Weak thought, because surely... Read more... |
Twiggy review - portrait of a supermodel who branched outSaturday, 08 March 2025![]() When Twiggy burst on to the scene in 1966, she was a beacon of hope for all flat-chested, short-haired, skinny girls. Of course we couldn’t look as fabulous as she did, with her enormous eyes and high forehead and long legs, but we could try.Before... Read more... |
Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winnerFriday, 14 February 2025![]() Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the heroics of American special forces during the appalling Somalian civil... Read more... |
Vietnam: The War That Changed America, Apple TV+ review - painful and poignant stories from a terrible conflictMonday, 03 February 2025![]() It’s been 50 years since the USA bowed to the inevitable and pulled out of Vietnam, in the midst of harrowing scenes of anguish and chaos. Apple’s new six-part documentary series doesn’t bring any astounding new revelations about America’s traumatic... Read more... |
Merchant Ivory review - fascinating documentary about the director and producer's long partnershipSaturday, 07 December 2024![]() “Shoot, Jim, shooot!” Simon Callow does a fine impression of producer Ismail Merchant desperately trying to get director James Ivory to bring urgency to the proceedings.The received wisdom was that Ismael thought Jim was going to bankrupt Merchant... Read more... |
Mediha review - a brutalised Yazidi teen comes of age with a cameraFriday, 22 November 2024![]() The plight of persecuted minority groups around the world seems to be growing worse. As one form of response, a non-fiction film like Mediha works to make vivid the individual stories of people who might otherwise be reduced to statistics from... Read more... |
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat review - jazz-themed documentary on the 1960s Congo CrisisSunday, 17 November 2024![]() The British writer and Africa specialist Michela Wrong recently wrote a whistle-stop summary of the upheavals that afflicted Congo in the early 1960s:“A botched independence swiftly followed by army mutinies and attempted secession by two renegade... Read more... |
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