Mark Adams

As the song goes, diamonds are forever…but are they? They may well represent the grandest of romantic gestures and are often priced as the most expensive bauble a person might own, but as Jason Kohn’s fascinating and provocative documentary examines, the little-discussed infiltration of the jewellery market by synthetic diamonds could have massive implications in years to come.

Stories about a return to the homeland to seek fortune and happiness are familiar, but Inka Achté’s heart-warming Golden Land manages to add something generous and gently compassionate to the canon. While drama and darkness lurk in the background (and certainly have an influence on proceedings) the film is permeated with reflections on family and support as it tells the story of a Finnish family who return to Somaliland to follow their dreams.

A visionary concept about empowering entrepreneurship through a shared live/work space with like-minded driven individuals, or a pragmatic way of collective living that can help save costs as well as providing a nurturing environment? Filmmakers Marta Dauliute and Viktorija Šiaulyte offer a balanced yet gently sceptical look into a new business modus operandi in which worktime and downtime are indistinguishable.

In this stunningly beautiful and impressive documentary about the Sámi worldview and mythology, director Thomas Jackson details the story of artist Britta Marakatt-Labba, at the same underlining the importance of land to the indigenous Sámi people and how climate change is the latest battleground for her community.

In Susanna Helke’s cleverly provocative and often very moving documentary, the beautifully hypnotic sound of Anna-Mari Kähärä’s music plays in poignant counterpoint to the words, comments and confessions posted by carers for the elderly in Finland between 2019 and 2021, and sung by a choir up of fellow, exhausted nurses.

Selected for the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, Calendar Girls is an effortlessly charming, generous and joyous look behind the scenes into Southwestern Florida’s number one dance group for women aged 60-plus.

Insightful, continually engaging and shot in cinéma vérité style, the young Mormon missionaries of Salt Lake City attempt to convert, of all people, some of Europe’s most non-religious and sceptical people to their faith. Welcome to Finland.

Documentaries about rock’n’roll bands are hardly the rarest of movies on the festival circuit, but Sirens is something rather special, charting the story of the Middle East’s first all-female thrash metal band and set against the fragile political landscape of Lebanon.

In a fascinating and often quite moving insight into the life and music of iconoclastic Irish singer Sinéad OʼConnor, what shines through is both her immense talent and passion but also her vulnerability and determination to be true to herself.

An unsettling and powerful examination of both the background to long-held rumours of a large-scale massacre that allegedly happened in the Palestinian village of Tantura in 1948 when Israeli forces took over the village and the plight of graduate student Teddy Katz whose research into the incident for his thesis was rubbished, his reputation left in tatters.