Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 26/4/2018)

Having narrowly missed a landslide while motoring to Shrewsbury in a downpour, bickering marrieds Philip (Raymond Massey) and Margaret Waverton (Gloria Stuart) and their passenger, Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) seek shelter in a remote manse in the Welsh countryside. The door is opened by the scarfaced butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff), who beckons them inside while he fetches the owner, Rebecca Femm (Eva Moore) and her gaunt brother, Horace (Ernest Thesinger). She is reluctant to allow them to stay for the night and curtly informs them that there are no beds available. However, the travellers are simply glad to have a roof over their heads and Roger brings the bags inside while Morgan helps Philip park the car in the stables.

Over a glass of gin, Horace explains that he is of a nervous disposition and dreads being locked up in the house with Morgan, who has been known to turn dangerous when drunk. The religious Rebecca has little sympathy for her sibling and mocks the fear of death that comes from his denial of God before offering to show Margaret where she can change out of her wet things. Proudly declaring her disdain for electric lighting, she leads her guest along a gloomy corridor to the room in which her free-spirited younger sister had died in agony after falling from her horse. Rebecca's face distorts in the old mirror, as she curses the antics of her decadent father, Sir Roderick (Elspeth Dudgeon), who is 102 and bedridden. But she also attacks Margaret for wearing a gossamer gown that will one day rot like her white flesh and she screams when Rebecca suddenly lays a hand on her chest.

Snooping through the door, Morgan watches as Margaret opens a window and is blown back by the intruding gale. She cries out in shock and struggles to finish dressing before pulling in exasperation at the unresponsive door. But she finally makes her way along the corridor, with curtains billowing from each window, and is relieved to rejoin the others in time for supper. Rebecca silences Horace as he questions the need to say grace in a household that has long ceased to expect blessings. But Roger tries to lighten the mood, as Horace offers everyone potatoes, Rebecca cut bread and Morgan passes the slices along the table, while casting furtive glances at the discomfited Margaret.

She is relieved, therefore, when there is a loud knock at the door and Morgan admits Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his companion, Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond). A bluff northerner who is used to getting what he wants, Sir William dries off by the fire, while Gladys accepts a pair of shoes from Roger, as her own are soaked through. Horace invites them to share their supper and Sir William starts singing `The Roast Beef of Old England' without noticing the look of disapproval on Rebecca's face.

After supper, Horace joins his guests around the fire. Sir William complains that they are all so guarded that they have revealed nothing about themselves during a two-hour conversation. Philip mentions something about Margaret's intuition and Horace asks if it extends to realising that he is holed up in this godforsaken pile because he is hiding from the police. Nobody asks him why, however, as Sir William and Roger get into a heated exchange about having a purpose in life. As a war veteran, Roger admits that he is struggling to find a niche and Sir William accuses him of looking down on him because he's a self-made man. He continues that he set out to ruin his rivals after they snubbed his beloved wife, Lucy, for wearing a cotton frock at a soirée and a silence descends before Gladys owns up to being a chorus girl named Perkins, who probably wouldn't dating a man like Sir William if she wasn't so bad at her job.

Needing a drink, Gladys accompanies Roger to the stable to fetch a bottle of whisky from the car. The door slams behind her and she is spooked when Morgan (who is in his cups) smashes his hand through the kitchen window to make a grab at her ankle. She sinks down on the running board of the car and allows Roger to dry her feet, while slugging from the bottle. Back in the house, the lights go out and Rebecca sends Horace to collect a lantern from the table on the top landing. However, he is reluctant to go, especially after hearing a thin voice calling out from a neighbouring room, and he persuades Philip to run the errand for him, while he hides out in his bedroom. On reaching the landing, Philip finds a padlocked door and notices the remains of a meal on the table beside the lamp.

Downstairs, Rebecca asks Sir William to close the window in her sister's old room and Margaret makes shadow puppets on the wall to amuse herself. However, she gets a shock when what looks like Rebecca's shadow appears beside her and she rushes to the front door to call for Roger and Gladys. As she turns back into the room, she sees Morgan lumbering towards him and tries to stop his rapacious progress by pushing chairs in his path. Undaunted, he overturns the table and makes a lunge for Margaret, who manages to escape and cling to her husband when he appears on the staircase. He throws a punch at Morgan, who is far too strong and pushes him aside. But Philip succeeds on knocking him unconscious with the lamp and the mute brute tumbles down the stairs.

As the Wavertons go to investigate the childlike voice that Philip had heard, Roger and Gladys canoodle on the backseat of the car. He tells her about losing the love of his life to a darn good chap and she explains the platonic nature of her relationship with Sir William. She insists he's a nice man and has never recovered from losing his soulmate and hopes that he won't mind too much that she has lost her heart to someone new. Turning to Roger, she asks if he would let her live with him so that she can turn him into a useful citizen. Holding her close, he hints that he has a better arrangement in mind, but suggests that they had better return to the house before the path gets too muddy.

Carrying Gladys to the door, Roger is surprised to see the state of the room when Sir William wakes from a nap to let them in. He admits to not knowing where the others have gone before pressing Gladys into confessing that she has fallen for Roger. She leaves the men alone and Roger confides that he intends proposing marriage in the morning and hopes that Sir William will come to the wedding. Accepting his fate, he congratulates Roger on the best night's work of his life and suggests they start to tidy up the mess.

Meanwhile, Philip and Margaret have stumbled across Sir Roderick, an emaciated figure with a wispy white beard who looks tiny in the large bed at the far end of his cavernous bedroom. He sips water and tells the Wavertons about the threat posed by Morgan. However, he also explains that he only keeps the brutish butler because he is the only one who can control his mad son, Saul (Brember Willis), who is kept under lock and key because he keeps threatening to burn the house down. Margaret is terrified when Sir Roderick reveals that Morgan may well set Saul free if he feels resentful enough and Philip rushes downstairs to find Horace peeping out from behind his bedroom door to reveal that Morgan has come to and has stomped upstairs to see Saul.

As the guests gather in the hall, Morgan stumbles down the stairs and it takes all three men to bundle him into the kitchen. Roger returns to check on Margaret and Gladys, who have refused to join Rebecca in her room. But she locks the door off the kitchen corridor and strands Philp and Sir William, leaving Roger with no option but to hide the women in a cupboard as Saul makes his way downstairs.

Initially, he seems pleased to see Roger and declares that Horace and Rebecca have been keeping him prisoner because he knows that they killed their sister, Rachel. But he soon reveals his insanity by grabbing the carving knife from the floor and ordering Roger to sit at the table so that he can tell him everything he has learned about fire. Desperate to humour the old man, Roger lets him prattle. However, he becomes demented on recalling how Saul felt threatened by David in the Old Testament story and he throws the knife at Roger when he tries to grab the poker from the fireplace.

Crashing a chair over his head, Saul knocks Roger out and seizes a log from the grate and rushes upstairs in order to set light to the landing curtains. As Philip and Sir William attempt to break out of the kitchen and Morgan batters at the passage door, Roger staggers up the stairs to stop Saul. They tussle and fall over the splintering bannister, just as Morgan gets free. He releases Margaret and Gladys from the cupboard and is leering at the former when she tells him that Saul has been badly hurt. Morgan rushes to cradle his only friend and carries his body up the stairs, while Philip consoles Margaret and Sir William shares Gladys's joy when she discovers that Roger is still alive.

The next morning, Horace comes down as if nothing untoward had happened. As the birds sing, he announces that the floods have subsided and, as Rebecca scowls at the window, he bids the Wavertons a fond farewell when they leave to call an ambulance. Roger wakes with his head resting in Gladys's lap, as she leans back on the dozing Sir William. A cock crows and she reminds him that he had promised to ask her something in the cold light of day and they kiss (with Sir William snoring in the background), as Roger pops the question.

Considering it's now 86 years old, this is nowhere near as creaky an old dark house as it might have been. The performances may belong to the early days of talkies, but that only adds to the charm of a pitch dark comedy that somehow manages to lampoon clichés as quickly as it establishes them. The acerbity of the wit certainly remains undiminished, with Thesiger, Moore and Laughton (on his Hollywood debut) particularly relishing dialogue that feel remarkably fresh. But, then, Karloff succeeds in conveying both menace and pathos without uttering an intelligible word. Mention should also be made of Elspeth Dudgeon, who was supposedly cast as Sir Roderick because Whale was unable to find a male actor who looked suitably ancient. Billed as `John Dudgeon', the 60 year-old delivers a warning to Massey and Stuart with merely a hint of repentance for the sins that Moore is convinced are being visited upon her and her brothers.

Collaborating again with producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., cinematographer Arthur Edeson, production designer Charles D. Hall (who excels himself), special effects guru John P. Fulton and make-up artist Jack P. Pierce, Whale recaptures the Expressionist ambience that had made Frankenstein so compelling. But what is most striking is the blend of humour and horror that would make The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) even more memorable. Whale also found room for Priestley's musings on the sense of disillusion and detachment in postwar Britain, with the scenes touching upon Douglas's battle-scarred ennui and Laughton's one-man assault on the upper classes contrasting with the utopian sentiments the Bradford-born writer expressed in Basil Dearden's They Came to a City (1944), which emerged towards the end of the Second World War.

Expecting to be pinned back in their seats, contemporary critics dismissed the Halloween release as gimmicky and trite and it did mediocre business Stateside, despite being a hit in the UK. Indeed, it was believed to have been lost after a 1939 revival similarly failed to find favour and it was only through the persistence of underground film-maker Curtis Harrington that a print was discovered in the Universal vaults in 1968. The resorted version was feted as a missing masterpiece. But, while it may not quite be of that calibre, this 4K makeover remains hugely enjoyable and should most certainly be seen on a big screen before it is confined to DVD and Blu-ray on 21 May.

Having been BAFTA nominated for both Rite (2010) and Keeping Up With the Joneses (2013), Michael Pearce makes an assured feature bow with Beast, the latest in a growing number of pictures to have been made on the Channel Islands. A vast improvement on Coz Greenop's cumbersome lighthouse saga, Dark Beacon, this simmering psychological thriller draws on the case of Edward Paisnel, a serial rapist whose pitiless attacks on women and children between 1960-71 earned him the nickname `the Beast of Jersey'. However, Pearce is more interested in redressing the balance of the traditional fairytale by creating a complex anti-heroine who might be both Beauty and the Beast.

Among a series of shots establishing the idyllic nature of life on Jersey are close-ups of the shrines marking the spots where two young women have recently been murdered. Across the island, demanding mother Geraldine James interrupts a choir rehearsal to criticise daughter Jessie Buckley for not giving her enough. She further upsets her when she sends her for champagne after sister Shannon Tarbet upstages her at her 27th birthday party to announce that she is expecting twins. Rushing into the kitchen to gulp down two shots of vodka, Buckley drops the glass when the family dog barks at her and she presses a broken shard into the palm of her hand.

Still wearing her yellow party dress, the copper-haired Buckley slips away as evening falls and loses herself at the local nightclub. She dances until dawn and finds herself on the beach with Charley Palmer Rothwell, who has been chatting her up all night. He tries to force himself on her in the dunes, only to be scared off by poacher Johnny Flynn, who fires his rifle into the ground to show he means business. Uncertain whether to trust the stranger, Buckley goes to Flynn's Land Rover, where he puts a plaster on her hand. He shows her the bucketful of rabbits he is hiding under a blanket in the back of the vehicle and she backs up his story that they have been dancing together when he is stopped by the police while driving her home.

Hoping not to wake her parents, Buckley helps herself to a slice of birthday cake in the kitchen. James finds her, however, and lets her know how disappointed she is that she ducked out on her party after she had gone to so much trouble. Dismissing Buckley's excuse that she had fallen asleep on the beach, James reminds her of the need to be honest after what they have been through in the past and Buckley hugs her mother as she begs for forgiveness.

Buckley works as a guide on a tour bus and picks up niece Hattie Gotobed from school. Flynn is waiting for her at the side of the road and gives her a book on wild animals that she had admired during their first meeting. James ushers her daughter indoors, but not before she has invited Flynn to do some odd jobs over the weekend. Over supper, she watches a news report about another girl going missing and has a nightmare about being stabbed with a pair of scissors by a hooded attacker. She ventures downstairs and notices that the patio door is open and stares into the bushes at the end of the garden as she slides it shut.

Flynn comes through the same door after finishing work in the garden and Buckley feels a frisson as drops tobacco on the floor while rolling a cigarette. He also wipes something off her top lip and she readily consents when he suggests they go for a drive. Clambering up some rocks overlooking the sea, she kisses Flynn hungrily and allows the wind to blow through her hair as they speed home. However, James is furious with her for leaving Gotobed alone and brother Oliver Maltman looks on sheepishly as Buckley is forced to admit to being selfish and irresponsible before making a tearful apology. Left alone after being brusquely forgiven, she digs her nails into the cut on her hand and, that night, she comes downstairs again to find the curtain billowing over the open patio door.

The next day, Buckley joins in the search for her missing neighbour and flinches when she finds a dead animal in the undergrowth. Brandishing some flowers stolen from a nearby garden, Flynn turns up on the doorstep that night and Buckley invites him to dine with James, Maltman, Tarbet and their ailing father, Tim Woodward. James inquires about Flynn's family and he reveals that he is descended from Norman barons who used to own the land the house is sitting on. He rides sniping comments from Maltman about the killer on the loose, but is intrigued when Tarbet warns him off Buckley because she's a wild one.

In the pub, Flynn asks how she earned this reputation and she explains that she had been bullied at school and was expelled after she stabbed the ringleader with a pair of scissors. James had quit her job to homeschool her and had never let her forget how much shame she had brought upon the family. But Flynn urges Buckley to forget about the past or she will never escape the guilty. He also whisks her up to line dance to a live band and she surrenders herself to the music. Similarly, when Flynn leads her into a clearing in the woods, she overcomes her initial hesitancy to give herself to him with wild abandon and, having returned home, she scrapes her soiled nails across a pristine white sofa cushion with a deep sense of emancipated satisfaction.

A few days later, some potato farmers spot a shallow grave on the edge of their field and cop Trystan Gravelle (who had given Buckley a present on her birthday) asks her about her relationship with Flynn. Despite knowing that he has a crush on her, Buckley twists the knife by telling Gravelle that the sex is amazing and provides Flynn with a false alibi for the night the victim went missing. Nettled by her defiance, Gravelle shows Buckley Flynn's file and highlights a conviction when he was 18 for molesting a girl four years his junior.

Unsettled by the revelation, Buckley steers clear of Flynn and sings with her choir at a garden party. He sidles over to congratulate her on her performance and she makes a feeble excuse for why she has been avoiding him, When he looks hurt, she feels a pang of pity and rushes after him, only to see him get involved with angry father Barry Aird, who is picking on a migrant worker for harassing his daughter. Infuriated by Aird's casual racism, Flynn headbutts Aird and Buckley rushes after him when he storms toward his Land Rover. He drives recklessly towards the cliffs and Buckley feels afraid when he berates her for talking to Gravelle behind his back. But, in his anguish, Flynn blurts out that he loves Buckley and she replies in kind in holding him close and vowing that they will stick together come what may.

She invites him to a reception for her sister at the golf club and Buckley delights in riling Tarbet by declaring that she is attracted to Flynn by his smell. James disapproves of the fact that Flynn swings Gotobed around on the lawn outside and reminds Buckley that she still has to take her turn at nursing her father and cannot simply rewrite the rules because someone has taken an interest in her. Thus, when Flynn is asked to leave for wearing black jeans, Buckley proposes a toast to her family and thanks and forgives them for everything they have done for and to her. She then bolts out on to the 18th green and gouges the manicured turf with an iron.

The crash of a wave is cross-cut into her outburst and we see Buckley and Flynn kissing as they are soaked by the spray from the incoming breakers. They move into a cottage together and she hides her yellow dress in the chest of drawers. He teaches her to chop wood and hunt rabbits, although she has to finish off her first kill with the butt of the rifle after she merely wounds it. Shortly afterwards, they are woken in the night by policemen banging on the door and Buckley is taken to the local school to be interviewed under caution by Gravelle and mainland cop Olwen Fouéré.

She shows Buckley pictures of her consorting with Palmer Rothwell at the nightclub and Gravelle pleads with her to tell the truth. Fouéré sends him outside and produces crime scene shots showing that the victim had been suffocated by having soil stuffed into her mouth. Sensing that Buckley will defend Flynn to the hilt, Fouéré suggests that he is incapable of loving anybody and is using her to cover his tracks. As blood trickles out of Buckley's nostril, the power fails and Fouéré tuts in frustration before confiding that she knows all about Buckley's bid to kill a classmate. She grabs her wrists and warns her that she is making a big mistake if she thinks that protecting Flynn will help her strike another blow against a cruel world. Fouéré also sneers that she isn't fooled by the carefully choreographed image of the demure chorister who takes care of her father and Buckley strives to hold herself together on the car ride home.

Kneeling to tidy up the sitting room, Buckley thinks she hears a noise and is startled by a brick coming through the glass door. Further sounds of shattering glass follow and she is assaulted by three masked men. However, this is another bad dream and she wakes to the sound of a local TV news crew knocking on the door. She gives them the slip to go to work, but the memory of the photographs of the dead girl make her vomit at the front of the coach. Desperate to cleanse herself, Buckley goes to the shop where her school victim, Emily Taaffe, works and attempts to apologise. Recognising her, Taaffe (who has a scar on her left cheek) bawls at Buckley for daring to suggest that she had done anything to deserve the attack and she rushes out of the store in some distress with everyone looking at her.

Still feeling the need to feel part of the community, Buckley goes to the funeral for the murdered teenager. She nods towards James in the pew opposite and resists Aird's attempt to eject her. Ignoring Tarbet's advice, she insists on offering her condolences to mother Joanna Croll. But her awkward hug is not appreciated and Croll has to be restrained from lashing out, as Buckley beats a retreat. Aird follows in a bid to intimidate her, but Buckley turns on him and lets out two dolorous howls that cause him to back away. She drives to the cliffs and stands on the edge, with her eyes closed, as she feels breeze on her face.

Some time later, Gravelle comes to the cottage to inform Buckley that they have arrested a Portuguese farmhand for the crimes. She rests her head on his shoulder as she takes in the news. But, when Gravelle warns her off Flynn, she humiliates him by saying that she has always hated his odour.

Reunited with Flynn, Buckley enjoys a post-coital swim in the sea. As they sit on the beach, however, she is taken aback when he asks if she ever thought he was guilty. She tries to reassure him that she loves him, but he replies that his mother had said the same before she had disowned him for sleeping with an underage girl. Unable to sleep that night, Buckley examines the scars on her sleeping lover's face and goes to the bathroom to tell her reflection in the mirror that her ordeal is over.

During a night in the pub, Buckley gets tipsy and annoys Flynn when she suggests that they leave Jersey and start again somewhere hot. Out in the corridor, he tells her that he has a business on the island and has no intention of leaving it so that she can give him a makeover. Buckley tries to protest and complains that she has sacrificed her family to be with him. But he grabs her by the throat and pins her against the wall with such ferocity that she struggles to breathe and flees the bar as soon as he releases her and tries to apologise.

She goes to see Graville and asks if he is certain that the Portuguese suspect is guilty. When he smiles because he realises she has come to see Flynn as a dubious character, she admits she lied about spending their first night together in the club. He mocks her readiness to lose her liberty for a bit of rough and orders her to leave. She goes to the shallow grave in which the body was found and lies down. Looking up at the moon through the trees, she pulls earth on top of herself and even stuffs some into her mouth so that she can experience what the victim must have felt.

Waking the next morning, with dirt across her face (as she had done when she besmirched the settee), Buckley returns to the cottage for a bath. There's no sign of Flynn and she notices a long hair growing out of her throat (as she had on the day of her party), as she checks her white dress in the mirror. She hears Flynn return and they apologise to each other for going too far the night before. He says he will go wherever she wants because he needs her and she responds tentatively to his bear hug.

They go for dinner at a restaurant abutting the beach and discuss where they might start afresh. But Buckley wants them to wipe the slate clean and confides that she stabbed her nemesis at school out of revenge not desperation and claims that she is able to love Flynn so deeply because they are so much alike. She orders him to admit that he killed the four girls and promise to stop if she gives herself to him completely. Caught off guard, Flynn gulps deeply and struggles to regain his composure, as she stretches out her hands on the table.

He takes them as the waiter brings their food and they smile at each other silently. Buckley asks if they can leave and they wander back to the Land Rover. As they drive home, she asks Flynn to kiss her and, while he is distracted, she unbuckles her seatbelt and grabs the wheel to overturn the vehicle on the edge of the woods. It's dark when she comes round and she scrambles on to the tarmac to see the badly injured Flynn pulling himself along in an effort to get away from her. She staggers over to him and straddles him. Ignoring his plea to be spared because they are kindred spirits, she throttles him before collapsing on the road. Struggling to her feet, she stands erect and stares menacingly into the camera, as the screen goes black.

Before we go any further, it must be stated that Michael Pearce has shown enough in his nascent career to suggest he is a highly promising film-maker. But his laudably ambitious first feature keeps stumbling between missteps that eventually trip him up. Clearly, this is not supposed to be a work of social realism, but the pall of implausibility descends quickly and thickly almost as soon as Buckley and Flynn meet. The palpable spark between the leads and the excellence of Geraldine James's scene-stealing turn as the monstrous mother go some way to papering over the cracks. But the action (which often strays into Joe Eszterhas territory) is strewn with clumsy moments, such as the lights going off during Buckley's interrogation by Fouéré, while the false shocks provided by the nightmare interludes are irksomely intrusive and wholly superfluous.

Elsewhere, the sequence with the shallow grave suffers from poor continuity, as there are clearly no trees surrounding the site when Buckley first lies in it and, yet, she can look up at the moon through the foliage as she wrestles with her thoughts. Similarly, it seems highly unlikely during the denouement that nobody would have passed the overturned vehicle between the crash in broad daylight and the onset of darkness. Of course, such slips are superficial. But the sheer number of them, along with the overemphatic nature of Jim Williams's gauchely pulsating score and the rigidity of some of the support playing, scuffs the gloss of an otherwise engrossing, if sometimes generic and never entirely suspenseful chiller.

On the technical side, cinematographer Benjamin Kracun makes evocative use of the seaside settings and deftly switches between smooth long takes for the sequences depicting Buckley's conventional lifestyle and jerky handheld shots for those driven by her emotions. Production designer Laura Ellis Cricks also makes telling contrasts between the family home and the love nest, while Gunnar Oskarsson's sound design cocoons Buckley in her own little world. She is often mesmerising, as she strains to deal with her mother's calculated cruelty, her passion for Flynn and her desperation to find some normalcy away from her twisted psyche. Fewer demands are made on Flynn in what is essentially a Mellors role. But he smoulders to good effect and, moreover, makes the moment of ambiguity in the beachside café that bit more credible.

With LGBTQ issues still very much a taboo in South Africa, it's hardly surprising that lesbian dramas like Helena Nogueira's Quest for Love (1988) and Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen (2007) and such gay offerings as John Greyson's Proteus (2003) and Oliver Hermanus's Beauty (2011) have been so rare. But first-time film-maker John Trengrove is not solely content with exposing homophobia in the tribal lands in The Wound, but he also raises the Xhosa initiation ceremony known as `ukwaluka' and questions its continued relevance in a progressive society. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela claimed to have experienced `fire shooting through my veins' while undergoing the ordeal. But, in disclosing details of this once secret ritual, Trengrove cautiously follows the example of Senegalese maestro Ousmane Sembène, who denounced female genital mutilation in what turned out to be his final feature, Moolaadé (2004).

Leaving his unrewarding job in a Queenstown factory, Nakhane Touré returns to his village in the Eastern Cape to mentor an initiate at the traditional ukwaluka ceremony. Gabriel Mini is worried that living in Johannesburg has made nose-pierced son Niza Jay Ncoyini go soft and asks Touré to ensure that he completes the three-week trial. Following the brutally brusque circumcision session, Touré takes Ncoyini to a hut and gives him a joint to help cope with the pain. He informs him that, as an `umkhwetha' or initiate, he will remain in seclusion for eight days of fasting and reflection and reminds him that he is there to guide him along the route to manhood.

While Touré is committed to the ideals behind ukwaluka, he has also come home to see fellow `khaukatha' or caregiver Bongile Mantsai, a married father of three, who has been his clandestine lover for many years. Leaving some initiates to camp by the river, the pair find a quiet room to have rough sex and Touré congratulates Mantsai on becoming a father for the third time. He says little about his own life, however, and remains distant while changing Ncoyini's dressing and reassuring him that he will heal quickly and come to look back on his initiation with pride.

Mini is delighted to see his son sticking it out when he comes to the bush. But the other boys think Ncoyini is a city snob and Mantsai threatens to punish him during a campfire confrontation that Touré finds distasteful. However, when Ncoyini goes to sit in a car and listen to music on the radio, he sees Mantsai following Touré away from an elder telling the group a story and he asks about the nature of their friendship while bathing in the river the next day. Touré reveals that they had caught birds together when they were boys and warns Ncoyini to keep away from him.

The next time Touré and Mantai are alone, the former tries to kiss his lover. But he forces him to his knees and stalks away without a word after climaxing. There is still a tension between them when Mantsai allows some of the other caregivers to pick on Touré while they are overseeing a woodcutting task and Ncoyini is intrigued by the way in which Mantsai treats his friend. When Touré wakes from a nap, the youth reassures him that his secret will remain safe with him, but they argue after Ncoyini wanders away from his hut to join Mantsai's group on the riverbank.

Touré has been into town to take out some money because he knows Mantsai is struggling. He accepts sheepishly and the pair wander into the veld with a bottle of hooch. They reminisce about old times and Mantsai returns a gentle kiss. However, he warns Touré not to get involved with Ncoyini, as he knows he's gay and can only cause him trouble. When he protests that he only comes home each year to see Mantsai, Touré loses patience with him and asks why he keeps denying his true self (a question that Ncoyini had also asked Touré) and they fight before Mantsai returns the cash and says he can't keep up the charade any longer.

During a confessional session, in which the initiates explain why they wished to undergo ukwaluka, Ncoyini refuses to speak and Touré defends him when fellow caregiver Thobani Mseleni accuses him of disrespecting elders Zwelakhe Mtsaka and Menzeleli Majola. He further ruffles feathers when he refuses to show the other's his scar and, when Sibabalwe Ngqayana teases him about his expensive trainers before making a homophobic slur, Ncoyini claims that his trucker father is a serial adulterer who brings shame on his mother. Seeing the furore, Mantsai summons Ncoyini and warns him not to push his luck and he seethes when the boy suggests that he is jealous because Touré wants him to himself.

The next day, Mantsai breaks the rules by taking all the initiates into the hills. Touré and Mseleni follow and he insists he is merely taking the group to see the nearby waterfall. Touré insists they accompany them and is negotiating access with a white farmer fencing off a parcel of land when Mantsai steals a goat from the back of the stranger's truck and runs off with it into the woods. He orders Ncoyini to slaughter the creature, which he does as Mantsai grinds Touré's face in the dust for daring to challenge his authority. Everyone looks on in stunned silence before Mantsai leaves with his initiates and Touré turns to see Ncoyini with blood spattered all over the white body paint he has to wear during his initiation.

That night, Ncoyini gets drunk while the others sing around the campfire and he is disappointed when Touré fails to return to their hut. But, when he asks where Touré has been, he receives a tongue-lashing for not taking the ukwaluka seriously and a reminder that they come from different worlds and any hope that Ncoyini has that Touré will join him in Joburg is a pipe dream. As he walks away, Touré is confronted by Ngqayana, who tells him that rumours are flying that he and Ncoyini are lovers. When Ngqayana refuses to apologise for his remark, Mantsai beats him up and has to be restrained and he glares at Touré for putting him in such a situation.

Touré follows Mantsai to the waterfall and they embrace in the pool before making love in the undergrowth. Unfortunately, Ncoyini finds them sleeping naked together and demands to know if Mantsai's wife knows about what he gets up to in the mountains. Dressing hurriedly, Mantsai chases after Ncoyini, who turns his ankle and has to lay low beneath a branch. Touré finds him there the next day and gives him some clothes so that he can hobble to the main road.

Back at the camp, the elders bless those who have made it through their initiation before they set light to their huts. They are escorted back to their loved ones in the township and Mantsai joins them after failing to find Ncoyini. But Touré takes Ncoyini on a circuitous route, as the teenager curses the macho nature of South African society and wishes people would stop thinking with their genitals. He also urges Touré to have nothing more to do with Mantsai and tells him to spread his wings and accept who he is. As they reach a peak overlooking the river, with the highway in the distance, Touré punches Ncoyini, who plummets to his death. Risking his own liberty to protect Mantsai, he hitches in the back of a truck to the city and prepares to take his chances, knowing he can never go home again.

Rather lazily described in some quarters as `the South African Brokeback Mountain', this is as much about the contrasts between tradition and progress, the town and the country, and wealth and poverty as it is about homosexuality. Much has also been made about a white director critiquing tribal practices. But Trengove co-wrote his script with Thando Mgqolozana and Malusi Bengu, who are respected authors in their own right, and there is nothing patronising or fetishistic about the depiction of the ukwaluka rituals. However, Trengove provides an unflinching examination of the physical and psychological scars left by the process and binds this into the other socio-political issues facing young black men in the Rainbow Nation.

Gay musician Nakhane Touré and fellow debutant Niza Jay Ncoyini acquit themselves well alongside stage star Bongile Mantsai, although the characterisation sometimes lacks depth and too many of the minor roles are ciphers. However, Trengove ably conveys the envy, ignorance, hypocrisy and self-loathing that are sparked by the group's exposure to Ncoyini's city ways. Moreover, Paul Özgür's widescreen photography is exceptional, while Matthew James's sound design reinforces the immersive sense of place.

As the media turns its attention to the 50th anniversaries of the Prague Spring and Les Évènements de Mai, the Czech Centre opts to explore the period of Normalisation that followed the removal of reforming First Secretary Alexander Dubcek with a screening of Petr Nikolaev's ambitious 2007 adaptation of Jan Pelc's cult 1980s novel, It's Gonna Get Worse. In keeping with the tome's samizdat distribution, producer Cestmír Kopecký chose to show the film in pubs and clubs only (and even incorporated a bathroom break for the audience's comfort). Tonight's Czech Centre presentation will be a more salubrious affair, however, as it will be followed by a discussion with both Pelc (who was forced into French exile for being part of the Czech underground) and Karel Šling, who played a key role in the Prague Spring and the Charter 77 human rights movement before he relocated to Britain in 1984.

Having been released from a mental institution after cutting his wrists to avoid doing national service, hippie Olin (Karel Žídek) is viewed with suspicion by his fellow train passengers. He alights in his home town in Northern Bohemia and repairs to the bar run by Alois (Michal Gulyás), who pours him a drink and ushers him into the back room, where his friends are waiting for him. Pig Pen (Filip Kankovský) gives him some beads to wear, while Olga (Tereza Hofová) finds him a place to crash for the night in a manhole. But she refuses his request for sex and hurries home to her mother, who is an active member of the Communist Party and wholly disapproves of her daughter's clique.

Waking with a hangover the next morning, Olin insults an old woman who tuts at his beard, long hair and dishevelled clothes. He comes to the bar, where Alois informs him that Olga has been grounded by her mother and warns him that he needs to keep a low profile, as he is unemployed and liable to be picked up by the police. Alois also reminds him that he can only afford to help him so much, as he has a lot to lose if he is implicated in any trouble.

Sleeping rough in the park, Olin meets Gumo (Radomil Uhlír), a wartime pilot with the RAF, whose face has been badly disfigured by fire. He shares a bottle of beer in return for one of the cigarette butts that Olin lifted from the ashtrays in the bar and suggests they form a team. The next day, they go gleaning in the dumpsters on the nearby housing estate and earn enough to buy some food and booze. But, when Olin goes back to the bar, Alois is duty-bound to report him to the police and he is roughed up by the interrogating officer for daring to challenge him for making an illegal reference to his mental state. His superior, Fasoun (Karel Zima), intervenes and gives Olin a week to produce proof he has secured gainful employment and urges him not to push his luck by staging any unsanctioned public events like football matches.

Olin and Pig Pen apply for jobs as street cleaners and are pleasantly surprised when the manager not only hires them (as, in his mind, the posts perfectly suit a lunatic and a criminal), but also offers them digs in a basement. They show the room to Olga, who helps them move in and joins them for sex, drugs and rock`n'roll sessions with their pals. Complaining that her mother wants to send her to an asylum, Olga refuses Olin's latest request for intimacy and he has to make do with a blonde (Markéta Stechová) who rests her head on the lap of her friend (Viktorie Hásková), while Olin relieves his pent-up frustration. Across the room, Pedro (Hynek Cermák) bursts in wearing a German helmet and proceeds to give a Nazi salute before sinking down on the sofa to take a deep slug from a bottle.

On the streets the next day, Olin and Pig Pen think they've struck gold, as they keep finding smokable fag ends on the pavement. The boss is impressed with their energy, but suggests they slow down so that they have something to pick up after lunch. During their break, they meet up with Gumo at the bar and share their meal with him. As they charge around with their litter cart, Pig Pen hits on the idea of forming a heavy metal band with Hash (David Strnad) and Chink (Radek Bouska) so that he can play drums like Ringo Starr.

Back at the bar, an old man (Vratislav Brabenec) comes looking for Gumo and informs Olin and Alois that he was a hero during the war and has been invited to London to collect a Battle of Britain medal. Olin knows they won't let him leave, however, and organises a cake to be baked in the shape of an aeroplane and everyone greets Gumo with a round of applause when he arrives. During the party, fellow recusant Otto (Mirek Škultéty) shows up with his girlfriend, Petra (Eva Cerná), and they look on as the guests sing `It's a Long Way to Tipperary' in Gumo's honour.

He also performs the ceremonial kick-off at a football match that Olin stages on a pitch in the shadow of some factory cooling towers. Before the game, the teams line up to sing their contrasting anthems and no quarter is asked or given once the action starts. At full-time, everyone gathers to watch Hrbatá (Perla Kotmelová) strip off to hug a tree and Pig Pen is frustrated when she wanders off with Petra rather than him. Pedro gets pelted when he stands on a hut roof in his Nazi helmet and greatcoat, but he joins the audience to watch Hrbatá sing with a band, with Pig Pen pounding away on the drums.

Much to his annoyance, Hrbatá decides to marry Petra and Pig Pen and Olin get into a fight before the latter conducts a blood ritual to join them together. Otto also decides to wed one of the other women and snapshots of the day get passed around in the bar when the gang next meet up. As they carouse, they are interrupted by an undercover policeman (Michal Pesek) who demands to see their identity cards. When Gumo stumbles in looking for beer money, he ignores the cop, who takes exception to being disrespected and everyone protests when he places Gumo under arrest.

When Olin calls on Petra and Hrbatá to break the news, they ask him to help them get pregnant, as they are deadly serious about making a life together. Having obliged, Olin returns to the bar in time to see Gumo enter. He looks shaken and gulps down a glass of rum before the cops detain him for escaping from an asylum. Fasoun apologises for doing his duty, but Olga discovers where they have taken Gumo and poses as his granddaughter in order to inquire about visiting hours. She is shocked to learn, however, that he has hanged himself in his cell and the gang gatecrash his funeral to give him a last chorus of `It's a Long Way to Tipperary'.

He helps the mortician incinerate the coffin and sprinkles Gumo's ashes under the tree in the park where he used to sleep. His mood is improved slightly, however, by the news that Hrbatá and Petra are both pregnant and he agrees to pretend that the children's fathers are dead in return for access. The band compose a special song for them and they are singing it when Pedro warns Olin that Pig Pen's new pal, Jaroslav (Martin Dusbaba), is a police informer. Olin gets him tipsy and lures him to some waste ground, where Pedro subjects him to a savage beating. However, Fasoun is quickly on the scene to arrest Pedro, who puts up quite a fight before being subdued.

Olin and Olga are also taken into custody and, through the barred windows, he sees her being bundled into the back of a waiting car. Fasoun despairs of them and warns Olin that Olga could be sent to borstal for hitting a cop in the face with an ashtray before he has one of his officers inflict a punishment beating. The next day, Olin is still feeling the effects and he and Pig Pen are photographed by security agents while sweeping up some fallen leaves. But, when Otto discovers that Olga is due to go shopping with her minder from the reform school, he and Olin pull off a daring rescue and are driven in a van to a blockhouse in the middle of nowhere.

The plan is to lay low and make a break for the West and Otto suggests that they go to Australia because America is too obsessed with money. However, Olin and Olga soon get stir crazy and sneak off to a local bar, where they see a police notice about their flight. Back at the hideout, Olga cuts off Olin's long hair and they agree to turn tricks in order to make the money to cross into Hungary. Olin thinks Olga should do all the work, but he is shamed into sleeping with a man (Martin Matejka), only for him to inform on them to the police.

Following a chase through some shunting tracks, they trio leap from a bridge into a lorry carrying sand. They also succeed in stealing a car and an aerial shot follows the vehicle speeding along a country road. Suddenly, however, a cut takes us to Paris, where Olin is living alone. He reveals in voiceover that Olga was caught when she tried to sell a painting belonging to one of Otto's relatives in the hope of raising some funds to cross the border. She was returned to borstal and jumped to her death from an upper window. Otto also committed suicide in prison. But, while Olin was also incarcerated, he managed to procure a false passport and made his escape through Yugoslavia.

In many ways recalling the freewheeling counterculture movies made in America in the 1960s by the likes of Roger Corman and Dennis Hopper, this often feels like found footage salvaged from the Husák era. Filmed in monochrome on 16mm stock, Diviš Marek's images have a raw immediacy that is reinforced by Jirí Brožek's jittery editing and the spontaneous nature of the performances. Karel Žídek excels as the tuned-in dropout, as does Radomil Uhlír as the war hero who has been turned into a pariah by the uncaring totalitarian authorities. However, it's intriguing to note that the cast also includes the cameoing Pavel Zajicek and Vratislav Brabenec, who were respectively members of the underground bands DG 307 and The Plastic People of the Universe, whose music features so tellingly on the soundtrack.

Bearing in mind the time and place, it's perhaps unsurprising that the proceedings have a chauvinist feel. But, while Nikolaev and Pelc's screenplay marginalises the female characters, it notes their readiness to rebel and it's tempting to see a sly homage to François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1961) in the scene in which Olin and Pig Pen charge down a walkway on the housing estate with Olga riding on a trolley. Such exuberance feels doomed from the outset. Yet Nikolaev makes each kick against the system feel liberating, while each new tragedy cuts to the quick and reminds viewers how much we take our freedom for granted.

During two spells of service between 2003-14, Fakhir Berwari acquired a reputation for being a fearless bomb disposal expert in and around the towns of Mosul and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shortly after Berwari paid the ultimate price for his reckless courage, his son, Abdulla, found a briefcase containing 40-50 hours of footage of this extraordinary maverick deactivating bombs, booby traps and landmines with nothing more than a penknife and a pair of pliers. Abdulla entrusted his discovery to Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal (who had filmed some of Berwari's later exploits) and they have shaped the often harrowing imagery into a troubling and transfixing tribute entitled The Deminer.

In the summer of 2017, as the Iraqi army reclaims Mosul from Daesh/ISIS, Abdulla comes across the stash of videos that depict his father, Colonel Fakhir Berwari, clearing mines with wire cutters and spades in the most haphazard manner imaginable. We see him toiling between two rows of mines designed to blow up passing vehicles. He walks awkwardly, having previously lost part of his right leg, but works swiftly and decisively, as he snips through cables before pulling several metal canisters out of the soil. Much of the footage dates from 2003-08, when Fakhir was a major based in Mosul and his widow, Sheyma, speculates that he kept the tapes and discs hidden, as he didn't want his family to see what he had been through.

The Berwaris live in Dohuk in Kurdistan and Abdulla remembers when his father bought the camcorder to chronicle his children as they grew up. However, he soon started using it on the frontline and we see Berwari leading a small team towards a booby-trapped truck. Ignoring warnings to be careful, he clambers into the cab and breaks the connections to a mobile phone trigger and calls him minions in to remove the petrol cans stored in the cab to create a fireball. He carries out his mission with an eerie calmness that contrasts with the panic that ensues when a bomb explodes in the streets of Mosul while people were out celebrating the arrest of Saddam Hussein. The camera surveys the devastation and picks up the screams of terror and cries for help with a chilling immediacy that drives home the fact that Ba'ath supporters were prepared to target residential areas and kill innocent men, women and children in a bid to cling to power.

We next see Berwari drop into the US Army base at Mosul to thank the troops for giving up a year of their lives to help Iraq. Much as they admire him, however, the Americans were often bemused by his tactics and we hear radio exchanges over footage of him shambling up to his first roadside device and disarming it with a knife and some pliers. He toys nonchalantly with the wires, as Abdulla explains in voiceover that his father felt the need to act quickly because it always took too long for specialist UXB teams to respond to call-outs.

By 2004, those opposing the Allied forces had splintered into numerous groups and they found lots of impoverished people willing to lay mines or drive car bombs for money rather than out of any ideological conviction. Regardless of who planted them, Berwari has to dig them up and we hear one of his own unit comment over the radio that he is striding towards certain death, as he approaches a roadside device. Astonishingly, he hacks at it with a pickaxe with a wobbly head and has to order his cameraman and some onlookers to keep their distance in case it explodes. Eventually, he manages to unearth the sizeable shell and is show hauling casings out of a hole in the dirt, as cars drive past him and another gaggle of rubberneckers watches him work with grim fascination.

As we see an explosion light up the night sky with a flaring yellow light, Abdulla reveals that his father removed over 600 mines during his first year in Mosul. In the next clip, he works by torchlight in the darkness and disregards all warnings to proceed with caution, as he scrabbles in the dust. When family members urge him to return home, he claims that his conscience won't allow him to leave the children being imperilled by the bombs. However, each time he successfully defuses a device, he incurs the wrath of those who had planted it and, by 2005, he was receiving death threats from the insurgents.

On one occasion, Berwari 's unit intercepts a truck being driven by three kids aged between 12-15 and quickly discover that it's full of weapons. He insists on going into the nearby village and summoning all the men to a meeting in the square, where he is busy telling them to make their children hate weapons so that Iraqis stop killing each other when an enormous explosion erupts and the cameraman is knocked over. Amidst the smoke and chaos, we hear Sheyma remembering the sense of dread when someone called to inform her of the attack. She was convinced that her husband had died, but he was found in the nearby hospital making light of his injuries and insisting on reporting for duty the following day. Abdulla reveals that his father was frequently decorated by the Americans, who affectionately dubbed him `Crazy Fakhir' and presented him with a padded flak jacket to keep him safe.

In 2007, following a kick-about with his men, Berwari goes out on patrol and turns off his radio when ordered not to approach a booby-trapped car. In addition to neutralising the bomb, he also leads a house-to-house search and discovers a cache of weapons that Abdulla claims convinced his father that the leaders of the insurgency had come from Turkey, Syria and Iran. His unit goes on a raid into Mosul and the camera switches to night-vision mode to record the recce. As they drive through the deserted streets, someone starts singing an out-of-tune love song (probably Berwari), but he is silenced by an explosion that kills 14 of the unit and eight civilians. Once again, the frame fills with smoke and only the sound of distressed voices reveals the horror of what is going on beyond the shattered windscreen.

Undaunted, Berwari returns to the village the next morning to argue with the locals about helping foreign fighters kill their own loved ones. He is angered by their refusal to provide information and tries to convince them that he is not a traitor coercing them into betraying their own. They capture two suspects and bring them in for blindfolded questioning. The older man readily admits where he has planted four bombs and avers that he was paid between $50-100 for his efforts. However, the younger one denies having anything to do with the mines until Berwari discovers that his brother had been killed by the Americans while wielding a weapon and that he had vowed to avenge his death.

Following this tour of duty, Berwari had returned home and Sheyma had hoped that he would remain in Duhok with his eight children. But, in 2008, he was offered a post training new recruits and decided he had no option but to accept. However, he is soon back in the thick of things and gouging away at the ground in his impetuous manner. When a crowd begins to follow his search for another device, he shakes them all by the hand and apologises for being so discourteous in sending them away. Venturing on to a patch of wasteland, he complains about the smell before being blown up. Abdulla tries to control his emotions, as he watches the footage on the family television set.

Berwari's men are convinced he has been killed, as they wrap him in a rug and carry him to a Land Cruiser, with the intention of returning his remains to Duhok. But he is made of stern stuff and, even though he spent several days in a coma and lost most of his right leg, as well as much of the hearing in each ear, he survived. He even asked if he could return to the front, but the Americans refused to let him take any further risks. While Berwari recovered, however, President Barack Obama declared that the US mission had ended and Abdulla describes how his father became despondent and reclusive during this period because he no longer felt he had a purpose in life and that Iraq had been left at the mercy of its enemies.

In June 2014, Daesh captured Mosul and thousands were made homeless, as it sought to seize control of the entire region. Indeed, their forces came within 30km of Duhok and Berwari felt compelled to volunteer for action. The army claimed he was of little use with one leg. So, he acquired a plastic prosthetic and joined the Peshmerga in order to defend his people against the invaders.

Riding in the front of an armoured car, Berwari is in his element and he states that he will keep doing this job until the day he croaks. Despite his brush with death, however, his methods remain unchanged and he enters a building by flashlight to dismantle a bomb with a screwdriver and a hammer, even though the trigger phone starts ringing while he is working. He is appalled that Daesh could turn people's homes into weapons and vows never to surrender. When dawn breaks, he is seen in a long shot prodding the corpses of two suicide bombers who had been shot for refusing to stand still. Once again, he dismantles the devices and completes the task, even though his leg is so sore that he has to remove the prosthetic while he cools down. He admits to being tired and Abdulla starts searching for an electronic limb that would respond to his father's movements and place less stress on his stump.

Now working with his brother, Ghazi, Berwari continues to go his own sweet way, as he enters a ramshackle building and ticks off the cameraman for failing to notice a tripwire. He also finds an enormous bomb in a chest freezer and uses his trusty pliers to snip away at the wires before removing several plastic containers of liquid explosive. Plodding on, he tackles a lorry that has been primed and explains that he feels obliged to keep working because of the number of lives he can save if he succeeds. As his unit pulls out of a village after loading up 1150 mines, Berwari expresses his pity for the residents, as the enemy has made their homes uninhabitable.

Still coming to terms with her loss in September 2014, Sheyma shows off photographs and videos of happier times, as her brood mills around and Abdulla tries to concentrate on his studies. A couple of months later, Berwari and his brother arrive in Zummar in the middle of a street fight. Nevertheless, they go about their duties without trepidation, even though Berwari has to proceed with caution on entering a house with a booby-trapped door. He seems to have a sixth sense about what he will find in each location and acts decisively whether digging holes or cutting wires.

After clearing the mines from a garden, Berwari wants to call it a day, as his leg is hurting and he is exhausted. However, a couple of villagers persuade him to do one more house, as they won't be able to move back in unless the premises have been cleared. He follows their pick-up truck and goes inside, having told the cameraman to keep his distance. The crew members come after him, however, and film him as he dismantles a number of sophisticated devices. His phone rings while he is carrying some explosives outside and he is forced to speak to a neighbour pestering him about an unpaid debt.

With the cameraman sounding increasingly nervous, Berwari returns inside and remains there when another phone rings and his oppos flee the scene. He strolls out on to the patio clipping the wires attached to a container and seems oblivious to the danger he is in. A radio message comes through calling him to another heavily mined house. But, as he continues his search, another phone rings and a bomb is detonated.

Funeral footage follows, as Ghazi reveals that Berwari's trusted lieutenants, Masoud and Lokman, had perished alongside him. Abdulla is distraught and confides that he still misses his father's smile. But, as the film ends, we see Berwari's picture adorning the walls of shops and cafés around Duhok, where he remains a hero and continues to watch over his beloved hometown.

It's easy to see why the Dohuk-born, but Swedish-based Hirori and co-director Kamal have been accused by some critics of producing a piece of docsploitation that shamelessly builds the suspense during the lengthy sequences of Berwari taking the extreme risks that will eventually prove to be his downfall. Yet, while a little more context about the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan might have been useful, the co-directors largely follow the lead provided by Zaradasht Ahmed's Nowhere to Hide (2016), which also used `found' footage to show how medic and father of four Nori Shariff responded to emergencies in the town of Jalawa in Dyala province.

The footage certainly exerts a ghoulish fascination and it comes as something of a relief that the camera seems to jam after the fatal explosion and we can see nothing but a pall of thick smoke. But Berwari leaves an indelible impression, as he chats to his camera crews while snipping and stripping wires with the assurance of a gambler on a hot streak. His geniality doesn't disguise the intensity of his commitment to the cause of protecting his people, however, and there is palpable frustration and fury in his speeches to the townsfolk being lured into doing the work of a cowardly enemy that is prepared to claim martyrdom for impoverished everymen simply seeking to provide for their families in a time of crisis.

However, the pride and pain of Sheyma and Abdulla are also readily evident and it should be remembered that the film could never have been made without their sanction. But it's important not to be distracted by Berwari's insouciant bravura (`If I fail, only I will die, but if I make it, I will save many lives.'), as he recorded his missions in order to alert the wider world to the living hell being endured by compatriots who have been terrorised for as long as they can remember by Ba'athists, Allied invaders, Al-Qaeda insurgents and caliphatist jihadis.

Although it has slipped down the news agenda of late, the European migration crisis continues to attract documentarists intent on reporting the stories that no longer make the headlines. Contrasting examples recent examples include Gianfranco Rosi's Oscar-nominated Fire At Sea (2016) and Ai Weiwei's frustratingly self-referential Human Flow (2017). And it's this struggle to find something new to prick the collective conscience of the world's television and cinema viewers that comes under Orban Wallace's scrutiny in Another News Story, which is one of two features showing in London this week under the Dochouse banner.

Wallace starts his journey at the Rozke refugee camp on the Hungarian-Serbian border on 13 September 2015, when he snatches interviews with NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his associates, Johnny (a cameraman) and Bruno (a producer). The latter confides that their job is to convey a sense of the reality of the camp to provoke people back in the United States into discussing the plight of those fleeing countries caught up in the War on Terror.

Six days earlier, Wallace had been on Lesbos in Greece, where he had watched various news crews scrambling down to the beach to film a couple of rubber dinghies coming ashore, filled with men, women and children who are simply grateful to step on to dry land again. He asks a cameraman if he had got the images he wanted, but his female companion suggests that Wallace concentrates on the refugees rather than the reporters, as they aren't part of the story.

A montage of clips from various rolling news channels suggests that the migrants aren't of much interest, either, as within five days of the corpse of young Aylan Kurdi being washed up on a Turkish beach, journalists have resumed their coverage of a range of thorny and trivial topics of a much more parochial nature. In the port of Mytilene, however, life remains a struggle for the likes of Mahasen Nassif, a Syrian woman who is trying to make her way to Germany. Her companion shows the scars on his back incurred during the fighting in their town and she explains in excellent English that she has left behind a living hell. Equally fluent, Ali from Afghanistan reveals how the migrants are treated like cattle by the local authorities who have no idea what to do with them or how to cope with the next influx.

News correspondent Lorenzo watches the chaos at the gates of the port and admits that he has days when he thinks he is alerting viewers to what is going on and others when he wonders why he bothers. He shrugs when asked about what politicians can do resolve the problem, as he knows there is no answer that will please everyone. As he packs up his camera, Wallace takes a ferry to Athens and speaks to a man who says he can only go forwards, as there is no possibility of going back.

As marchers protest against the number of migrants placing an additional strain on Greece in a time of recession, Wallace catches up with Ali, who grumbles that the novelty of speaking to foreign news crews has begun to wear off, as he knows the reports will largely be background noise as people make plans for their evening's entertainment. A woman interviewed by Lorenzo seems similarly disillusioned, as she can't understand why she can't simply make an appointment at the German Embassy and ask for asylum rather than risking her life while making the journey across numerous borders by foot.

On the Macedonian frontier on 11 September, Wallace catches up with Mahasen on a train, as she reveals that she hasn't seen her children in four years. As a constant chatter of newspeak fills the soundtrack, Wallace cuts between TV reports and his own footage of the mayhem that erupts at Rozke when the Hungarian police block the migrants from crossing the border. The rapid editing of the juddering handheld images conveys the tension of the situation and emphasises the point that nobody really knows what's going on. This is where he catches up with the NBC crew and Bruno quotes Mike Wallace at the end of a live feed that there is no such thing as a slow news day, just lazy journalists.

Realising Bruno is a man with his finger on the pulse, Wallace joins him at a camp that has sprung up beside the railway line. He tells him how a man who was beaten up by the Hungarian police was surrounded by 75 photographers all taking the same picture and jokes that there is a huge element of luck about being in the right place at the right time to get the snap that makes the front pages. German news correspondent Tomas tells Wallace that a switch from colour to monochrome would have you believe that you had gone back 70 years in time and his comment exposes the xenophobia that has exacerbated the migrant crisis in Eastern Europe. His producer explains that the aim is to present reality without editorialising, but he concedes that every reporter has their own personality and this inevitably influences the content that is seen back home.

Hungarian Petra Laszlo, who is one of the few camerawomen in Rozke, captures some cops kicking and tripping refugees running for cover and her images go around the world. Bruno and Johnny are also on the scene and Wallace rather unfairly cuts from them taking their leave to eat to an interview with a migrant who says that he has been wasting away since he left home because food is in such short supply. However, Wallace sticks with this group and speaks to a man who claims that this part of the journey has made him more nervous than the sea crossing. He has been told that it's easier to sneak across the border during the night and, as we hear someone mention people traffickers profiting from their misery, we follow a party through a field in their bid to get through a hole in the wire fence before the Hungarians outlaw all illegal transit through their country.

The next day, the authorities clamped down on those arriving in the border town of Assothalom and Wallace juxtaposes his own footage with news cuttings, including a piece by Engel in which a refugee collapses at his feet while he is broadcasting. Meanwhile, on a train in an undisclosed spot, Mahasen reveals her delight that Angela Merkel has extended the hand of welcome and she hopes that she will soon be able to call herself a German citizen. On the border between Serbia and Croatia, some 662 km from Mahasen's promised land, Sasa tells Wallace that it's tough to go back to the hotel at the end of a day knowing that he is leaving children to face whatever might come in his absence.

Wallace presses on to Tovarnik railway station where he meets a woman called Zana who has not eaten for two days. He films a conversation between a migrant and a stern-faced official, who tells him his best chance lies in returning to Turkey. However, when a train arrives, dozens of people scramble aboard and Spanish correspondent Francisco Guaita says that everyone he meets has a story worth telling, but there is only so much he can do. Australian reporter Hugh Whitfeld laments that human beings are being shunted around the region like unwanted produce and he puts the blame on Hungary for being the most obstructive. When Wallace asks him what it's like covering this kind of story, he admits it's difficult because he sees so much misery and can only convey a fraction of it in the short time his network allots to the crisis.

Some time later (the time captions appear to have stopped), Wallace fetches up at Tovarnik coach station, where he runs into Mahasen (who remains optimistic) and Ali (who does not). He also finds Johnny, who reveals that Bruno has returned to the bureau base in Geneva and he jokes around with other cameramen in explaining that the news agenda gets set in situations like this because the same faces congregate in the same places and report on what they see, even though something far more significant may be happening elsewhere. One of the border guards plays with a toddler being held by its father and Mahasen declares that they seem more organised and less frantic today, even though nobody is able to give them any information about when they can leave.

The lucky ones leave on buses, to be waved off by the crews loitering at the depot. But Wallace returns to the railway station and joins Mahasen on a train bound for Austria. She finds herself in a compartment with no ventilation and manages to open a window and tell her story to a waiting reporter, who creates sufficient fuss for the migrants to be transferred to a more suitable carriage. As she settles in her seat, she compares the experience to the Second World War. But she is soon forced to change trains and, as the rain comes down, Wallace trudges with her across an unnamed Hungarian halt in the hope of making her connection.

Following another train ride and a further trek, Mahasen arrives at Nickelsdorf coach station in Austria and she finally has hope that she will find her niche, even though she is still 371 km from Germany. Wallace bumps into Francisco, who tells him that 20,000 refugees have passed through this spot in the last two days. Mahasen does an interview with another Italian journalist, Paolo, who wishes her luck in her endeavours and then sends his cameraman to film her from behind, as she teeters away while loaded down with bags.

Correspondent Federico wishes there was more humanity in newscasting, but realises that the industry has to cater for public tastes and needs. As Mahasen agrees to shell out for a taxi to take her to Vienna station, the genial Johnny introduces himself to a man who has walked on crutches all the way from Afghanistan. He can barely understand what is being said, but the comfort of strangers is clearly welcomed and the Afghan gives him a beaming thumbs up after their hearty handshake.

Meanwhile, Mahasen crosses into Germany and travels from Hamburg to a reception centre at Horst, where she is billeted in a bunk dormitory. For the first time, she allows some emotion to show, as her eyes fill with tears at the prospect of being reunited with her children. Back in Nickelsdorf, Johnny is still on the spot in case anything newsworthy happens. But the place is deserted and he tells Wallace that he will head home and wait for the next big story to break.

On 13 November 2015, the focus shifts to the Bataclan and Wallace is there to record the world's media trying to make sense of an atrocity that seems set to make Europeans view the migrants settling in their countries with renewed suspicion. He bumps into Bruno, who admits to not being surprised that their journey would end in a tragedy. Yet, while he suggests that the odds were always strong that there would be potential terrorists among the legitimate refugees, Wallace pays a visit on Mahasen in Stralsund. She reveals that they have been subjected to abuse since the attack on the concert hall, but she argues that most people left their homes to avoid war not wage it elsewhere.

Back in Paris, Wallace meets up with Tim, a correspondent who says that journalists seize upon stories like Aylan Kurdi's because they are easy to sentimentalise in order to make them palatable for the average viewer. But they all know that others suffered worse fates and he wishes that there was a way of reporting on their suffering, too. He follows Tomas and NBC's Bill Neely as they cover the police operation to track down the perpetrators. His microphone picks up debates among the onlookers about the difficulty of keeping tabs on children and not knowing one's neighbours before Neely explains that the ringleaders were homegrown jihadis.

Bruno believes this is the most important story of our times, as it simultaneously shows the best and worst of human nature. Tim admits it's a tough one to cover, as he keeps feeling he is intruding upon grief. He has learned to separate the story from life, but he suspects that a lot of young reporters will become disillusioned or be repulsed by what they see that they will walk away. As Bruno worries that right-wing nationalists will seize upon these events for propaganda purposes, Wallace cuts away from a misty-eyed Mahasen to a Donald Trump rally, at which he declares that being soft on the fundamentalists encourages them to be bolder.

As the credits roll, we see Mahasen greeting two of her children at the airport, while Ali fills him in on life in Spielze in Switzerland. A couple of cutaways show reporters moving on to less stressful assignments, with Francisco reporting on FC Barcelona and Hugh covering affairs at Westminster. But, back in Lesbos, the rafts keep coming, even though the cameras of the major global networks have stopped rolling.

Although it seeks to put a fresh spin on the migrant crisis, this has more in common with such photojournalistic profiles as Sebastian Junger's Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013), Brian Oakes's Jim: The James Foley Story (2016) and Greg Campbell's Hondros (2017). The correspondents, producers and cameramen Wallace meets on his travels may not be in the same kind of danger as those who take their chances in war zones. But their instincts are much the same and Wallace elicits little that he haven't heard before about the news gathering mentality.

Moreover, while he gets to know Ali and Mahasen reasonably well during the few weeks they are together, he proves as voyeuristic in their pursuit as the newshounds whose methods he is critiquing. All of which begs the question of what Wallace was hoping to achieve by striving to show both sides of this particular coin, while overlooking the impact that the way the migrant crisis is being reported is having on public opinion as a whole. Have we become inured to the horror of the War on Terror and its consequences or has it seeped into the political debate in ways that we have yet fully to appreciate? The closing footage of Donald Trump seems like a cheap shot, considering that several European leaders have played on the fears of their citizens to more heinous effect. But there is no escaping the fact that the media has a duty to keep covering such stories in the hope of pricking the collective conscience. 

Despite these misgivings, Wallace should be commended for his tenacity and courage, as should cinematographer Joshua Allott and sound recordist Leo Smith. Editor Dominic Stabb also merits mention for assembling the footage into such a cogent narrative. There are moments, however, when Noémie Ducimetière and Ash Koosha's score feels a little intrusive and emotionally manipulative. But this is a film of compassion, commitment and intelligence and it begs to be shown on television with an accompanying panel debate.

Anyone wanting to expunge the memory of Florian Gallenberger's execrable Colonia (2015) should seek out Nora Fingscheidt's graduation film, Without This World, which profiles the Mennonnite community living in Durango in northern Argentina. Seven hundred souls reside in this remote settlement, which is accessible only by dirt roads that forever seem to be on the muddy side of passable. Yet, while they strive to live as simply as their 18th-century forebears instructed, the temptations of modern society seem stronger than ever. Indeed, some of the younger generation even view the mod-cons with which they are tantalisingly acquainted with a hint of envy. But, as Fingscheidt reveals in this respectful, if not always equitable, overview, the families of Bernhard Bueckert, Gerhard A. Klassen, Gerhard K. Klassen, Abram V. Klassen, Isaak F. Bueckert, Peter H. Wiebe, Benjamin H. Wiebe and Heinrich F. Woelke are driven as much by faith in God and pride in their traditions as they are by a desire to live like World People.

The latter is the quaint phrase used to denote all non-Mennonites and Fingscheidt has the tact not to ask her hosts too many awkward questions about their beliefs and lifestyle. Speaking Low German, some of the older menfolk (who quit Mexico for Durango two decades earlier) are more than willing to quote chapter and verse about social structures, moral codes, forms of punishment and the inevitable intrusion of external forces. But the strapping, dungaree-wearing youths seen milking cows, herding cattle and slaughtering pigs are more tongue-tied, especially when pondering home truths like the hazardous potential of the motor vehicles that glide past their horse-drawn carts without causing any harm to their occupants. Few of the women are prepared to share their thoughts and none of the adolescent girls, who meet so charmingly with their male counterparts for chaste encounters in their Sunday best.

Sisters Anna, Susanna and Sarah Woelke are more forthcoming, however, as they discuss their reasons for not marrying and use biblical timescales to calculate that the planet is precisely 10,057 years old. It's at moments like this when Fingscheidt allows her discretion to slip and she prompts the viewer into making value judgements about the contradictions she has unearthed since first coming across the colony as a teenage exchange student. Other elbow-nudging instances see a woman using a strimmer to clear some weeds, a man admitting to making phone calls even though he disapproves of new-fangled technology, a caterpillar bulldozing some inconvenient trees to create more arable land and a father taking his sons to watch television in a hotel in the nearby village of Pampa de los Guanacos. Yet, despite such inklings of forgivable hypocrisy, Fingscheidt stops short of presenting any tangible conclusions of her own, even when highlighting the unique brand of freedom that the Mennonites enjoy.

This shouldn't matter, as objective observation is a perfectly legitimate documentary gambit. But Fingscheidt (who was permitted to make a handful of two-month visits) is anything but an impassive bystander, as she can be heard posing questions. Moreover, neither Yunus Roy Imer's camera nor Bernhard Köpke's microphone (which makes a delightful cameo appearance when a babe in arms reaches up to grab it) are purely on a watching or listening brief. For all her evasions, however, Fingscheidt plays pretty fair with those who have opened their homes to her and conveys her own fascination with a form of frugal self-sufficiency and peaceful coexistence from which we could all learn.