thu 03/07/2025

documentary

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorised

In 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-...

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Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

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...

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The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testament

“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...

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Formula E: Driver, Prime Video review - inside the world's first zero-carbon sport

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...

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Neil Young: Coastal review - the old campaigner gets back on the trail

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...

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Manhunt, Royal Court review - terrifyingly toxic masculinity

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...

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Twiggy review - portrait of a supermodel who branched out

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...

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Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winner

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...

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Vietnam: The War That Changed America, Apple TV+ review - painful and poignant stories from a terrible conflict

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...

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Merchant Ivory review - fascinating documentary about the director and producer's long partnership

“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...

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Mediha review - a brutalised Yazidi teen comes of age with a camera

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...

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Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat review - jazz-themed documentary on the 1960s Congo Crisis

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...

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