Mark Adams

A delightfully immersive and engrossing examination of a country set over a 10-year period, Jessica Beshir’s rightly acclaimed film offers up an enthralling portrait of Ethiopia, blending lyrical moments with reflection on myth and spirituality and told with a refreshingly gritty honesty.

A moving, provocative and at times justifiably angry wildlife documentary that charts the campaign to free Asian bull elephant Billy after more than thirty years of captivity in Los Angeles Zoo, Marshall Corwin’s film is unrepentantly one-sided, but its deep-rooted frustration about how this magnificent creature has been treated is both heart-felt and appropriate.

A gently beautiful and beguilingly uplifting film infused with warmth and generosity of spirit, Keyboard Fantasies shines a belated spotlight on the talents of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a transgender, septuagenarian musical genius as he is re-discovered, courtesy of a Japanese record collector, and heads off on his first international tour at the ripe age of 74.

A harrowing, provocative and powerful film that balances anger with grief, but also highlights the fight for justice, often apparently against all odds. The documentary is the UK’s official entry for Best International Feature Film for the Academy Awards.

The third and most prescient of director Peter Nicks’ trilogy of vérité portraits of life in Oakland, California, Homeroom is a film that is, in equal part, impressive, immersive and insightful, and made with real compassion and respect.

Charting the odyssey taken by Greek marble as it is shipped to China, sculpted into objets d’art and then transported back to Greece, only to be bought by Chinese tourists, the doc is gently ironic and eminently watchable, and blessed with a satisfyingly light touch.

Treating youngsters with respect and demanding respect in return is the astute and impressive ethos of Las Delicias, an agro-technical boarding school in the Argentina countryside in the province of Entre Ríos, where more than 120 youngsters live, learn and play together.

Acclaimed veteran Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio is in deeply contemplative mood with Marx Can Wait, a warmly personal film that sees him delving into family history, and in particular the circumstances surrounding his twin brother Camillo’s suicide, allowing for insight and reflection as he gathers the surviving members of his family around him more than 50 years later.

There are, of course, plenty of films that have looked into the Covid global pandemic, but director Nanfu Wang’s remarkable film – which screens at IDFA – manages to take its viewers on a rollercoaster journey as she details the start of the crisis in her native China and its devastating human impact, but also the political machinations of both the Chinese and US governments as each tried to spin the crisis.

In Maia Kenworthy and Elena Sanchez Bellot’s smartly constructed film the ultimate achievement – and one which is at the heart of the film – is the very real impact that Extinction Rebellion has had on tackling climate change.