Nicole Santé

Some perspectives can only be revealed by insiders. That can provide unexpected insights, present unknowable facts and deliver very uncomfortable truths, as in this unvarnished portrait of a gold mining village in Burkina Faso, in which the prospect of redemptive wealth holds the inhabitants in an iron stranglehold.

Was there really a historical and cultural bond between Iran and Romania? Until watching Between Revolutions that possibility never even crossed my mind. But this personal and visualised exchange of letters between two friends sketches, both organically and lyrically, the connections and parallels between the dark histories of these two countries.

Seven Winters in Tehran is a tough watch. This has nothing to do with the qualities of the film but with the incredible injustice the main protagonist and her family are subjected to. The kind of injustice we unfortunately have grown accustomed to when watching documentaries from Iran. Even so, this one still manages to put a knife through your heart.

Heroic Bodies may not be the most skillfully made of documentaries, but its stories and images show a formerly unseen side of women's oppression in an impactful way, and also indicate how slowly but surely the balance is swinging in the other direction. The film provides an important contribution to the liberation and self-determination of women in Sudan - and around the world.

Once in a while you encounter a piece of art which ticks all the boxes. Light Falls Vertical is one of those rare examples, offering a profound view into the souls of both a perpetrator and a victim of domestic abuse. It is an intimate record of the troubled mind, without ever being intrusive.

This is not just a film, nor just a performance. It is an audiovisual and emotional art experience in honour of a young man that was murdered, one that grants you the opportunity to get to know this person and the ones that were left behind. The work offers no redemption. It just recognises the unfairness of life, the injustice and inequality of the society we live in and folk’s attempts to find a way to deal with it all.

How do you depict the impact of colonisation, decolonisation, a civil war and a destructed economy in one film? Director Alain Kassandra decided to portray his grandparents, who were both born in what was then called Zaire, and lived through all of these traumatising times. The result is a deeply personal, sometimes poetic, sometimes harrowing (hi)story of oppression, revolution, betrayal, disillusionment and love.

What is it like to be young and female and/or queer in this day and age, when social media is part of your daily practice, defines who you are, undermines or boosts your self-confidence? Answers can be found in this atmospheric, sensitive and revealing documentary set in the world of girls on the verge of adulthood.

Would you send a digital version of yourself out onto the worldwide web? Not just any old avatar, but a precise copy of you, looking, speaking, laughing and moving exactly as you do. In Uncanny Me it is 26-year-old Lale who finds herself in this predicament. A calm, understated, highly personal yet thoroughly thought-provoking documentary about a dilemma created by the highly technical world we live in.

The multi-layered documentary takes you on a journey through the minds and worlds of three like-minded and intrinsically connected thinkers and artists. Filmmaker Jose Luis Lopez Linares had the good fortune to film French writer Jean-Claude Carrière a year before his untimely death as he retraces Goya’s footsteps, all the time expounding lyrically on art, history, humanity and love.