Reviews

The sheer and awful brutality of war is examined in sprawling artistic fashion by filmmaker Amos Gitai in the simply (and appropriately) titled Why War, using as its spine an exchange of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud which dwelled on violence in the name of religion, race and nationality, but which also takes in art, music, performance and literature. The whole is based on Gitai’s notion of embracing the filmmaker or the artist as a healer.

Within a beautifully structured series of artful, dramatic vignettes and provocative, and often haunting, interviews, Errol Morris confronts head-on the frightening and brutal chapter in American history when the Trump administration oversaw (as one interviewee puts it) “state-created orphans” as it set in place a family separation policy that saw illegal migrant families left traumatised as children were forcibly removed from their parents.

In the second part of his Youth trilogy (subtitled Hard Times), master documentarian Wang Bing focuses on the economic hardships of young textile workers in Zhili, China. Less immersive than the first instalment Spring, this time we get more of a sense of how non-state-owned capitalism in China functions…or doesn’t. As managers run off with the money, the police extract forced confessions, and workers barely earn enough to get by…

Films like Man on Wire and Free Solo pushed the boundaries sky high in terms of portraying dizzying high-altitude adventure-seeking. Now, with the immersive use of drones and GoPro cameras, the terrifying (and highly illegal) practice of ‘rooftopping’ is brought to the screen with the Netflix doc Skywalkers: A Love Story, which – as the title implies – has the added twist of throwing romance into the already spine-tingling mix.

Ukrainian director and activist Oleh Sentsov, who was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize while in Russian captivity before his release in 2019, is now a soldier in the Ukrainian army fighting Russian invaders. In the trenches, he accidentally switched on his helmet cam. Real is the very real result, a film of unprecedented historical value.

The impact of economic development in rural Ethiopia is brought strikingly into focus in Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan’s absorbing and fascinating documentary Made in Ethiopia, which explores the grand ambitions for a massive Chinese industrial park in a remote farming town as seen – largely – through the eyes of three very different women, all of whose futures will be hugely affected during the future trajectory of the project.

The incredible story of Lhakpa Sherpa, screening on Netflix from July 31, will undoubtedly attract the attention of Hollywood, but any future filmmakers will have their work cut out as this documentary paints an almost perfect literal and metaphorical picture of an epic journey to the top of the world. If this film doesn't uplift, move and empower you, I'm afraid nothing will.

A glorious celebration of the power of cinema – and almost as importantly, of cinemas themselves – Arnaud Desplechin’s intimate and personal examination of what it means to go to the movies takes a meanderingly thoughtful journey through the history of film, delivering a warm, provocative and often thoughtfully enjoyable ‘cinematic hug’ for film lovers.

A lovingly reverential portrait of the most famous puppeteer of all time, Jim Henson, creator of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and other fantastical worlds, Howard's film offers eye-opening insights into Henson’s background, delivers anecdotes which will be new to many, and all the time propels this reviewer on a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

French director Yolande Zauberman’s documentary La belle de Gaza, which world-premiered May 17 as a Special Screening at Cannes, has an unapologetically straightforward approach to the trans women it portrays - which is both its weakness and its strength. One thing to note: the film isn’t set in, nor is it about, Gaza.