Mark Adams

Nishtha Jain’s absorbing film Farming the Revolution documents the 2020 march of thousands of farmers on Delhi, protesting against new farm laws imposed by the Indian government. The film takes time to detail the experiences of the farmers and protesters, whose sense of camaraderie is what gives the doc a real sense of heart and purpose, as well as outlining the politics and reaction to the protest.

For lonely and troubled Canadian teenager Billy Poulin the video camera became the friend he never had when Lawrence Côté-Collins put him in the frame, inadvertently recording his worries, outbursts of anger and deep-rooted confusion and sadness. Years later, after he has been jailed for murder, the footage she [Lawrence] shot offers a striking insight into the inner turmoils of a young man whose life had taken the darkest of turns.

In Limbo (W zawieszeniu) is an intimate and insightful look at the war in Ukraine as seen from the viewpoint of a very particular family, and presented in very personal form. Set against other films from Ukraine which focus on frontline battles, the film is a welcome and moving glimpse into the lives of an ordinary family unit at the onset of the conflict.

A protest film rather sweetly dressed-up as a science-fiction discourse, Tobias Nölle’s essay film intriguingly offers up the notion of an android arriving in modern-day Germany from a future in which humans no longer exist, determined to discover what happened to machines and also try and talk with the King of the Humans.

In Apple Cider Vinegar by Sofie Benoot, which world-premiered at VdR 2024, a kidney stone is the unusual prompt for a narrative that reflects on the often imperceptible connections between life and nature. It is a unique and almost unquantifiable film, but also an engaging and intriguing one.

The Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand is the first river in the world to be recognised as a legal person - as a living and indivisible being – and this engaging and informative documentary might well be the first film where a river receives a shared on-screen ‘created by’ credit along with filmmaker Petr Lom and his producer partner Corinne van Egeraat.

A generously revealing exploration into the life of Wilfred Buck, an elderly member of the indigenous Cree people of Canada, Lisa Jackson’s engaging film also acts as a spiritual guide to the heavens as it moves between past and present, and between Earth and the stars, aiming to overcome the ghosts of colonisation.

A playfully self-aware film-within-a-film, My First Film veers between moments of blissful joy through to self-doubt and untold truths, but is always driven by director/creator Zia Anger’s refined and astute sense of what she is trying to deliver, and given energy by a cast and crew that buy into her vision.

An engaging and illuminating hybrid documentary that reflects a spectrum of autistic experiences, the intriguingly titled The Stimming Pool is co-created by a group autistic directors, known as the “Neurocultures Collective” (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles and Lucy Walker) along with artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, and offers up an artistic interpretation of what it is like to live with neurodivergence.

The shadow of Jurassic Park looms long over the various characters who discuss their involvement in the high-stakes world of dinosaur bone collection and trading. In this world, it’s a race against time between high-minded and determined palaeontologists and well-equipped bone dealers, making for an enjoyably eye-opening – and strikingly shot - documentary about dinosaur bones, big cash and even bigger big egos.