Reviews

Citizen Osama Al-Ashi is an internationally recognised journalist and war photographer in Gaza. He isn’t reckless but he is very courageous, and many times we see him walking towards the tanks, towards the frontline, towards the billowing clouds of smoke, while everyone else is walking or running in the opposite direction. Because that’s his job. And his job is important. Citizen Osama is not an art film. Its style is basic, its storytelling straightforward. But these images have come to us at a very high cost. And we should not look away.

The artistic and cultural footprint of cult cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman reaches across decades, from turbulent 1950s New York through to his death in the 1990s and this engrossing and engaging documentary strikingly helps reinforce how the man who created MAD Magazine helped redefine American humour and visual storytelling. The film world-premiered August 16 at Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Gara and daughter Nada live on a gorgeous, sparsely populated plateau, which the Montenegrin military is eyeing up as a NATO shooting range. To Hold a Mountain, selected for Sarajevo Documentary Competition, explains their resistance not through arguments, but through the sublime beauty of the landscape. Because to be there, to live on this ancestral mountain, is to experience the most wondrous sense of space.

Simple on one level, but in fact deeply complex, Kristof Bilsen’s The Apologist, world-premiering at Sheffield DocFest, examines the ritual of saying “sorry,” and uses that well-known and much utilised phrase as a starting point on a journey to explore how apologies redefine history and what happens to us as witnesses to the act of atonement.

Rich Felgate's Sheffield DocFest opener We, The Hated is a provocative and intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the work of - and some of the personalities involved in - the British protest group Just Stop Oil, who took part in a series of high-profile protests between 2022 and 2025. Evocatively, perhaps a little clumsily, titled, the film nevertheless wears its heart on its sleeve, especially given that it is directed by the partner of one of the founders of the organisation.

There’s a lot going on in Céline Carridroit and Aline Suter’s hybrid Summer Drift (Virages) which, on a basic level, charts protagonist Johanna Schopfer’s summer in Geneva as she works, enjoys the summer sunshine and considers getting rid of her old VW Beetle. The doc, which premiered in Cannes ACID, also provides a nuanced appraisal of LGBTQ+ and trans themes within a visually alluring 16mm aesthetic, all of which help to deliver a gentle charmer of a film.

Mark Cousins continues his winning streak with parts 6 and 7 of his sixteen-hour long series, as he explores the global development of documentary film in the 1970s, with the rise of, among other things, environmentalism, gay rights, feminism and punk. “White western critics hardly noticed, but the message was clear. In the 1970s, cinema was everywhere. Documentary in particular,” Cousins points out.

A hybrid documentary that astutely blends archival video, pictures and audio with re-enactments, Regina Schilling’s absorbing DOK.fest Munich opener Ingeborg Bachmann – Someone Who Was Once Me (Ingeborg Bachmann – Jemand, der einmal Ich war) is made all the more accessible and intriguing with acclaimed German actress Sandra Hüller on board to portray the eponymous heroine on an imaginary day in Rome.

Five years after the horrific racist murders in the German town of Hanau that made headlines around the world, survivors and relatives are still searching for answers and, above all, recognition as equal members of society. Meanwhile, in Germany, the far right is on the rise, and support for the AfD shows no sign of abating...

With incredible creativity, care and integrity, Maria Esteve Silvia has made a film that is as compelling as it is harrowing, about the traumatic impact of abuse within the Catholic Church and the exhausting struggle for justice. From the very first moment, we are seized by the combination of images and materials that are masterfully edited into a flowing, gripping and balanced tale.