Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 20/8/2015)

Now, at the grand old age of 84, Jodorowsky has returned with his first feature in 23 years. Drawing on his autobiography, it purports to be a childhood memoir. But The Dance of Reality is a typically fanciful and enjoyably unreliable rattlebag of narrative contrivances and eccentric set-pieces that will baffle those unfamiliar with Jodorowsky's distinctive style and delight those who wish he had found the funding down the years to devote more time to cinema than his healing therapy, psychomagic. Indeed, he may well be complaining more about his own financial frustrations than the evils of avarice in an opening monologue that is accompanied by a shower of golden coins.

The first inkling that facts are going to be at a premium comes with the dating of the action, which takes place in the year Jodorowsky was born: 1929. Yet, here he is already a young boy dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a head full of curls and an eagerness to discover every aspect of life in the north Chilean coastal town of Tocopilla. Alejandro (Jeremías Herskovits) lives with his Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky) and Sara (Pamela Flores). His mother (an aspiring soprano who sings rather than speaks) coddles the boy, as she is convinced he is the reincarnation of her father, who accidentally set himself on fire with paraffin at the moment the baby was born. But Jaime (a circus performer-turned-shopkeeper) believes that his son needs whipping into shape and subjects him to ordeals designed to make him more macho, such as having his golden locks shorn and forcing him to undergo dental treatment without anaesthetic.

As an avowed Stalinist, Jaime is determined to persuade Alejandro that God does not exist. So, in order to show him how cruel life can be, he volunteers him to become the mascot of the local fire brigade and Alejandro is so spooked by the sight of a charred corpse while attending a blaze in a shanty town that he has a nightmare that he is trapped inside a casket with the worm-infested cadaver taunting him that he can expect no celestial deliverance from his terrors. Sara's attempt to cure the lad of his fear of the dark proves no less disquieting, however, as she strips him naked and smears him with black boot polish and urges him to dream of a white princess to keep his fears at bay.

However, Alejandro (often accompanied by his older self) has an insatiable curiosity to go with his indomitable spirit and he mooches around Tocopilla in search of affection and enlightenment. Teacher Don Aquiles (Andrés Cox) fails to provide much of either, although he does take the class for rambles to the cliffs, where the boys masturbate in the open air and mock Alejandro for his lack of a foreskin. A hunchbacked female dwarf takes a shine to him, as does a tattooed theosophist (Cristóbal Jodorowsky), who teaches him about meditation before giving him four necklaces relating to the major religious faiths, which he instructs Alejandro to burn in order to find a single deity.

His message seems to make sense when Alejandro attends a church service and is bemused when Pastor Evangélico (Juan Quezada) commands the congregation to jump up and down 26 times to give thanks to the Lord. But Alejandro is further confused when he is given food on the point of starvation by a carpenter who resembles Jesus Christ (Sergio Vargas) and when an old drunk foretells disaster when Alejandro throws stones into the sea and causes a giant wave to deposit thousands of fish on the beach.

Yet, while this starts off as Jodorowsky's personal recollection, the focus eventually shifts to Jaime, the Communist hothead whose loathing of right-wing president Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Bastian Bodenhofer) prompts him to plot his assassination. He secures a post as groom to Ibáñez's prized horse, Bucephalus, but becomes so fond of the creature that his purpose is deflected and his hands become paralysed when he finally corners the dictator at gunpoint.

Forced to flee, Jaime is captured by neo-fascist troops and subjected to electro-torture and genital mutilation. However, he is rescued by rebel forces and returned to his family. But, instead of being relieved to see her spouse, Sara admonishes him for his folly in failing to see that all authoritarian regimes are alike. Deciding that Tocopilla is no longer the haven he had hoped it would be, Jaime bundles Sara and Alejandro on to a ship to Santiago.

This concluding sequence reinforces the link between this unreliable memoir and Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1973). However, it's also possible to detect the influence of Tod Browning, Raul Ruíz, Terry Gilliam, Emir Kusturica and Gabriel García Márquez on a gleefully jumbled narrative that bears only the slightest resemblance to reality. In fact, Jaime was a jealous brute who often castigated Sara for flirting with their customers and Alejandro was the product of a pitiless rape that left his mother utterly incapable of showing him the slightest tenderness. In addition to reinventing his mother as a dotingly dotty (if chauvinistically cartoonish) parent, Jodorowsky has also airbrushed his disliked sister Raquel out of the story altogether. Moreover, Jodorowsky has also nostalgicised his feelings for the townsfolk, as he appears to have little but contempt for the residents of Tocopilla who knuckled under the tyranny of the Americans who controlled the local mines. Yet, he never forgave Jaime for dragging him away from his home and forcing him to start all over again in the capital.

But nobody watches an Alejandro Jodorowsky film expecting it to eschew flights of fancy and stick to the facts. Consequently, this has to be celebrated as a work of mischievous mythologising. Evovatively designed in bold colours by Alisarine Ducolomb and sinuously photographed by Jean-Marie Dreujou, this is very much a family affair, with the costumes being provided by Jodorowsky's wife, Pascale Montandon, while sons Adán and Brontis respectively composed the score and excel as the macho paterfamilias oblivious to his own flaws and the ramifications of political extremism.

Jodorowsky repeatedly draws ungallant attention to Pamela Flores's décolletage, which distracts from the excellence and courage of her recitatival performance. But the director has never been particularly politically correct and some may bridle at his depiction of the circus folk and the limbless miners, who are forever looking for a fight even though they are in no physical state to throw a punch. One such character cautions Alejandro against harming the ocean and his refusal to heed the warning effectuates a natural disaster that is rendered with some charmingly Mélièsian CGI. This willingness to circumvent the meagreness of his resources typifies Jodorowsky's approach and results in some exuberantly baroque tableaux, which leave one lamenting the lack of imagination and mettle shown by those whose refusal to back this unconventional, self-indulgent, but always challenging and compelling film-maker over the last two decades has deprived the rest of us of some cinematic treats.

Fact and fiction clash to muscular, but less engaging effect in actor Andrea di Stefano's directorial debut, Escobar: Paradise Lost. Evidently influenced by classics by Carol Reed and Francis Ford Coppola, as well as any number of Italian Mafia movies, this offers an intriguing insight into the workings of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's fiendish operation. However, it takes far too long to set its scene and becomes bogged down in a MacGuffinesque love story before the tension starts to mount in the final third.

In the early 1990s, Canadian siblings Nick (Josh Hutcherson) and Dylan (Brady Corbet) open a surfer café on a beach near the Colombian city of Medellín. They are menaced by a local thug (Tenoch Huerta). But he is quickly liquidated after Nick starts dating Maria (Claudia Traisac), whose uncle just happens to be Pablo Escobar (Benicio del Toro). Even though he is known to the community as a benevolent senator, Dylan warns Nick to have nothing to do with Escobar and severs all ties when he insists on moving to the family compound.

Accepted by Escobar and his wife, Maria Victoria (Laura Londoño), Nick takes a job as the pool boy and enjoys the facilities of a neverland enclave where it's not unusual to see an elephant wandering across the patio. But Drago (Carlos Bardem), one of Escobar's most trusted lieutenants, doubts Nick's loyalty. He makes Maria cry when he suggests they find a home of their own. But, when the minister of justice is assassinated shortly after accusing Escobar of being a drug baron, the newlyweds find themselves confined to an apartment in town that Escobar visits whenever he needs a little domestic solace.

However, he soon tires of being on the run and cuts a deal with the authorities to surrender himself and face a short prison sentence. But Escobar has no intention of losing his ill-gotten fortune and selects six underlings (including Nick) to deposit crates of contraband in secret locations across the region. Having already made plans with Dylan and his partner Laure (Ana Girardot) to return to Canada with Maria, Nick is aghast to learn that he will have to eliminate the campesino who will guide him to a remote cave outside Ituango and dynamite the entrance. But Escobar reassures him that his loyalty will not go unrewarded and he drives across country with a growing sense of dread.

His mood is scarcely improved by the news that his guide has broken his leg and sent his 15 year-old son, Martin (Micke Moreno), in his place. Escobar had warned Nick not to chat with his companion, but he ignores the advice and, thus, can't bring himself to kill the youth, who already has a wife and child of his own. Moreover, when he drops Martin at his house to collect his family so they can disappear, Nick discovers that Christo (Frank Spano) has been sent to dispose of him and he makes a series of frantic phone calls from a nearby bar in a desperate bid to extricate himself from the mess.

Hiding in the back seat of his abandoned car, Nick watches with growing dismay as Christo summons the police and the army to search for him and it's only through outrageous good fortune that he is able to go undetected until dusk. Taking a lone cop by surprise, Nick manages to drive out of Ituango in his car and holes up in a roadside bar while he works out what to do next. He calls Dylan, only to hear Laure executed over the phone. Distraught, he risks everything to gun down Christo and his sidekick and arrives at the church where he had arranged to rendezvous with Maria nursing a serious wound. As she runs for help, Nick reflects on the harmless dream that had first brought him to what had seemed to be an earthly paradise.

Given that Di Stefano also wrote the screenplay, he only has himself to blame for the fact that this ultimately gripping crime saga gets off to such a sluggish start. He might also have done more to animate the largely inert Hutcherson, who generates few sparks with Traisac and is completely overshadowed by Del Toro, whose mumbling intensity recalls Marlon Brando's performances in The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Yet, once he is left to his own devices and becomes a pawn in the slickly handled denouement, Hutcherson recaptures some of his Hunger Games energy, as he tries to protect the garrulous Moreno and remain one step ahead of the hulking Spano.

Di Stefano is indebted here to editors David Brenner and Maryline Monthieux (who also cut The Dance of Reality), as well as cinematographer Luis David Sansans and production designer Carlos Conti. But he allows too many other scenes to meander, including the pivotal tête-à-têtes between the naive Hutcherson and the scheming Del Toro in the former's bedroom and the bullet-riddled car in which Bonnie and Clyde met their match. Even the climactic scene in which Del Toro awaits confirmation that Hutcherson is dead before giving himself up lacks the necessary virility. Yet, for all its pacing problems and erratic tonal shifts, this has its suspenseful moments and suggests that its 42 year-old debutant could do good things with a similar topic set a little closer to home.

Di Stefano was three years old when 17 year-old Mohsen Makhmalbaf stabbed a policeman to death while rebelling against the rule of the Shah. The Islamic Revolution ensured that he only served five years of a life sentence and Makhmalbaf began a new career writing screenplays for the new Iranian cinema. Two years later, he made his first feature, Repentance (1983), and, in addition to chalking up such masterpieces as The Cyclist (1989), Gabbeh, A Moment of Innocence (both 1996) and Kandahar (2001), he has also since overseen the fledgling directorial careers of his daughters Samira and Hana, as well as their aunt-cum-stepmother, Marzieh Meshkini.

The latter co-wrote the first fictional feature that Makhmalbaf has made since fleeing to Paris after the Green Wave failed to sweep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from power in 2009. But, while The President is clearly a deeply personal work that reflects Makhmalbaf's despair at the state of the world, it is also a didactic and often simplistic fable whose laboured symbolism all too blatantly refers to the situations in the Mashriq and the satellite republics that once comprised the Soviet Union.

Having just signed a raft of death warrants - including one for a 16 year-old terrorist who has been the subject of a global plea for clemency - President Misha Gomiashvili gazes out over the capital of his unnamed country and asks his adored grandson, Dachi Orvelashvili, if he would like to play a game with the people. The boy would rather have ice cream, but humours Gomiashvili, as he places a phone call and plunges the metropolis into darkness. He hands the receiver to Orvelashvili so he can get a taste of absolute power. But his order is ignored and Gomiashvili knows instantly that the opposition he has long suppressed has finally risen in revolt.

Ushering wife Eka Kakhiani and daughters Nuki Koshkelishvili and Elene Bezarashvili into a waiting car, Gomiashvili heads to the airport. However, Orvelashvili insists on staying with his grandfather and no amount of coercion can convince him to board the plane. Driving back towards the city, the crowds block the limousine and Gomiashvili and Orvelashvili find themselves stranded when the chauffeur is killed trying to defend his charges. Hearing that the army has mutinied, the duo venture into the nearest village, where Gomiashvili draws on his fearsome reputation to frighten a barber into giving him a haircut and loaning him a guitar and some old clothes to replace his magnificent uniform.

Posing as a wandering musician and his dancing boy, the pair seek refuge with prostitute la Sukhitashvili. Gomiashvili had been a regular customer years before, but he knows he can only afford to stay a single night before they take the chance of mingling with the angry mob on the streets. Aware there is a price on his head, Gomiashvili refuses to be intimidated by his plight. But he is fearful for Orvelashvili and decides to lay low among a column of desperate refugees. No one recognises the tyrant, but one of the men boasts that he killed his son and daughter-in-law and Gomiashvili has to rein in his fury to keep up the pretence that he is a homeless peasant.

Having been forced to sleep in a cardboard box and disguise themselves as scarecrows, Gomiashvili realises that taking a stand to restore his power would be futile. He places a call, therefore, and arranges to be picked up by loyal supporters on the coast. But, just as it seems as though they might get away, the pair are recognised and seized. Forced to watch as the man he idolises is brutalised by his emancipated subjects, Orvelashvili tries not to show fear by watching the tide roll in, as his captors debate the punishment he should face.

Faint echoes of everything from King Lear to Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997), and Otar Iosseliani's Gardens in Autumn (2006) reverberate around this earnest allegory on oppression, revolt and the unending cycle of violence that sustains both. Yet, for all its admirable intentions, this lacks either the satirical edge or the political insight one might have expected of Makhmalbaf, whose canon is strewn with piercing critiques of unaccountable power.

The scene with Sukhitashvili, for instance, in which Gomiashvili recaptures something of the humanity he possessed before power corrupted him is both metaphorically clichéd and melodramatically trite. Similarly, the symbolism is consistently disappointing, as sandcastles are washed away and sheep are left to wander without their shepherd. But too many speeches are also floridly platitudinous, while the discussion of political ideology is never more than superficial.

This is doubly a shame, as Makhmalbaf is usually such a thoughtful film-maker and Gomiashvili and Orvelashvili make such an affecting twosome that they deserve something less ingenuous to work with. But, while there is something undeniably harrowing about a frightened child witnessing untold horrors after a lifetime of pampering and privilege, Orvelashvili's prattle and habit of asking awkward questions feels forced rather than incisive. Art director Mamuka Esadze deserves credit for making Georgia feel like a dystopic fairytale realm, while Konstantine-Mindia Esadze's cinematography is crisp and atmospheric. In their role as co-editors, Meshkini and Hana Makhmalbaf, also inject some vigour and suspense into the drive back from the airport. But there aren't enough moments of bleak wit and philosophical trenchancy and, consequently, this has to be seen as a missed opportunity.

Sadly, the same is also true of Anne Fontaine's Gemma Bovery, a picturesque adaptation of a Posy Simmonds graphic novel that lacks the satirical edge that made Stephen Frears's 2010 take on the same artist's Tamara Drewe so effective. The disparity is emphasised by the fact that Gemma Arterton plays both eponymous heroines, as her latterday Bathsheba Everdene in the re-imagining of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd feels more sure-footed than this expat variation on Gustave Flaubert's doomed Emma Bovary (who has recently been played by Mia Wasikowska in Sophie Barthes's more conventional period interpretation).

Having failed to take the Parisian literary world by storm, Fabrice Luchini returns to his village in rural Normandy to take over his late father's bakery. Garrulous wife Isabelle Candelier enjoys the change of pace and knowing everything about everyone, but Luchini misses the glamour of publishing and finds extended periods in the company of doltish son Kacey Mottet Klein tiresome in the extreme. He is relieved, therefore, when a young English couple move into their street, as Gemma Arterton and Jason Flemyng remind him of the principals in his favourite novel, Madame Bovary.

Unable to resist his bread and croissants, Arterton becomes a regular customer and even agrees to an impromptu baguette bakery lesson. But, while she enjoys chatting to Luchini, she knows little about books and flits around the neighbourhood to stave off boredom while Flemyng is devoting himself to restoring antique furniture. Eventually, she makes the acquaintance of dashing aristocratic Niels Schneider, who lives in an imposing chateau with his mother, Edith Scob. Much to Luchini's dismay, however, Arterton embarks upon an illicit affair and he soon comes to fear that she will suffer the same fate as her near-namesake.

His concern grows when Arterton and Schneider smash a valuable Sèvres angel while in the throes of passion and Luchini decides to intervene to prevent the object of his obsession from destroying her marriage. Assuming Schneider's identity, he sends Arterton a letter breaking off the romance and things seem to return to normal. But, with Flemyng away so often on business, the cracks between the Londoners begin to widen and Arterton seeks solace in the arms of conveniently available old flame Mel Raido.

Frustrated by Arterton's caprice, Luchini wonders how he can regain control of the situation. But events conspire against him, as Flemyng returns home unexpectedly to catch Arterton and Raido in what appears to be a passionate embrace. However, as he takes the interloper to task, he fails to realise that he was trying to help his ailing wife, who chokes to death on a piece of Luchini's bread. Yet, while he is distraught by his inability to have prevented the tragedy, Luchini seemingly learns nothing from his experience, as he seeks ways to ingratiate himself with a new Russian neighbour named Anna Karenina.

There's something endearing about Fabrice Luchini, even when he's playing a character as resistible as the snoopingly manipulative baker in this far-fetched saga. His head may be firmly in his beloved books, but a man of his experience and intelligence must know the difference between fact and fiction. Thus, it's too much of a stretch to accept the conceit that he would interfere so blatantly in a stranger's life to prevent her making the mistakes that caused a calamity in a 160 year-old novel. Moreover, in an age of instant communication, is someone going to make a life-changing decision solely on the basis of an unexpected letter?

Fontaine and co-scenarist Pascal Bonitzer don't help the situation by creating so many thinly sketched stereotypes, who feel as though they have drifted in from a 1980s Marcel Pagnol adaptation. Arnaud de Moleron's production design and Christoph Beaucarne's lustrous photography reinforce this sense of heritage pastiche, although such idealisation of the locale does chime in with the winsome Arterton's expectations of her escape to the country and narrator Luchini's nostalgic evocation of the Flaubertian milieu. With a touch more wistful wit and a little less novelettish melodrama, this might have been a pastoral delight. But it falls some way short of the charm that Simmonds summoned, along with director Brian Gilbert, for her neglected 1986 take on the Nina Rootes book, The Frog Prince.

There is also charm in abundance in Kenton Hall's debut feature, A Dozen Summers, a breezily loopy peak into the minds of a pair of 12 year-old Leicester twins who just happen to be the director's daughters. Imagine the kind of concerns that once taxed fellow Leicesterite Adrian Mole being viewed through the prism of Spaced and Family Guy and you get a rough idea of the gleeful self-reflexivity of this largely homemade affair. Admittedly, the acting is patchy, while some of the gags falls flat and the mid-section is beset with longueurs. But this is an ambitious, amusing and entirely amiable enterprise that should strike a chord with tweenagers everywhere.

As the action opens, narrator Colin Baker waxes lyrical about the joy of having adventures. But, as the camera follows a brother and sister heading into school, Baker attracts the attention of Maisie and Daisy McCormack (Scarlet and Hero Hall), who accuse him of being a pervert for filming children. When he explains that he is making a movie, the sisters decide to hijack the project and sit on a bench in the playground wondering what form the picture should take. Trading insults, they consider the merits of period melodrama and film noir in cine-literate cutaways that will become a key component of the scenario (along with finger clicks for edit points).

Their deliberations are interrupted by mean girl Jennifer (Holly Jacobson) and her posse, Audrey (Sophiya Sian) and Beth (Yasmin Allen). She sneers that the siblings are so weird they must be lesbians and they counter that there is nothing wrong with being gay, even though Maisie has a crush on Matty (Quenton Nyrienda) and Samuel (David Knight) follows Daisy like a devoted puppy. However, their Canadian mother, Jacqueline (Sarah Warren), is appalled by the accusation and interrupts an art lesson to humiliate Jennifer in front of her classmates.

Maisie and Daisy don't see much of Jacqueline, as she has set her heart on becoming a model (even though she isn't very good at it) and finding her soulmate, as she has realised that she is not right for their Irish novelist father, Henry (Kenton Hall). He desperately wants the girls to think he is cool and does his best to entertain them, while also allowing them to indulge their fantasies. At times, they are embarrassed by his over-zealous efforts (such as dressing as a pirate and playing the accordion for their friends), but they prefer him to Frank (Richard Stephenson Winter), the string vest-wearing father of their pal, Patricia (Demi Lou Allen), who is part of their quartet, along with Etta (Kylie Lee).

This makes it difficult to go to the local shop together, as Gary (Ewen MacIntosh) only allows three schoolchildren in at any one time. But the McCormacks mock his petty restrictions in a robbery reverie that ends explosively, thanks to a shaken fizzy drink can. Such digressions also come in handy when reminiscing about awful encounters with Jacqueline's new beaux (Clifford Hume, Sanjiv Hayre and Michael Smith) and plotting how to find Henry a new girlfriend). But time hangs a little heavily, as Maisie and Daisy meet Tyler (Robert Bilic) in his cavernous modern home and use a billet doux inside a book to bring Henry together with Miss Walters (Tallulah Sheffield), a teacher who finds herself in an Austen-like ménage with two colleagues: Mrs Vargas (Karen Ayre) and Mr Brown (Kieron Attwood). However, the normal bickering order is restored once Daisy and Maisie decide it's tough enough living their own lives without trying to influence anyone else's and the picture closes with a final ticking off for the returning narrator and a promise that there won't be a sequel, because that would be stupid.

Although much credit has to go to Kenton Hall, who wrote and directed the feature (as well as having a hand in its production, editing and music), this jolly jape would be nowhere near as enjoyable without the wonderfully deadpan performances of Hero and Scarlet. Committing wholly to the conceit, they banter with the hiss and fizz of real sisters and often upstage the more experienced grown-ups in the cast. Nothing seems to faze them, whether they are dreaming in animal onesies or debunking a monochrome homage to the chess sequence in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957).

Hall litters the action with similar movie and pop cultural references and some of the jokes may fly over the heads of the target audience. But any accompanying adults will be wreathed in smiles by the time they leave the cinema and some may even be inspired to attempt screenplays for their own kids. However, pulling off an exercise like this in 19 days on a £20,000 budget is not as easy as it looks and Hall (an actor-musician with five shorts to his credit) is ably served by art director Gurdeep Sian and cinematographer and co-editor Geoffrey Gilson. He has already announced a second project that doesn't seem to involve Hero and Scarlet. But, even if they never act again, they will always have the satisfaction of having headlined one of the best British kidpix since the heyday of the Children's Film Foundation.

Leicester may not have featured in too many films, but Lesotho makes an even rarer appearance in Andrew Mudge's The Forgotten Kingdom. A tale of spiritual and emotional reconnection, this is a measured and laudably unsentimental off-road movie that makes effective use of the spectacular scenery without trivialising local custom or the problems facing remote communities that are dismally ill-equipped to deal with the encroaching realities of the 21st century.

Basotho twentysomething Zenzo Ngkobe lives in Johannesburg and feels compelled to pay a visit to his estranged father when shopkeeper Sam Phillips notices that they have the same fire in the eyes. However, when he arrives at Jerry Phele's shack in the Hillbrow district, Ngkobe is distressed to discover that he has died alone of an AIDS-related illness. Aware of the sacrifices Phele made in coming to South Africa to find work to support him, Ngkobe decides to honour his last wish to be buried in his ancestral village of Mapotsane in the land-locked state of Lesotho.

Travelling with a makeshift casket, Ngkobe arrives in his childhood home and barely recognises the place. However, following the funeral, he is pleased to bump into old school friend, Nozipho Nkelemba, who is now a teacher. He always had a soft spot for her and is pained to learn that her father, Jerry Mofokeng, has disowned her sister, Reitumetse Qobo, because she is dying of AIDS. Despite wishing he could do something to help, Ngkobe is unable to match dowry demand made by Mofokeng and returns to the `city of gold'. But he can't get Nkelemba out of his mind and he heads back to Mapotsane, only to discover that Mofokeng has relocated the family to the other side of the mountain, as he can't bear the social stigma of having an infected daughter.

Chirpy orphan Lebohang Ntsane claims to have an excellent knowledge of the veld and offers to show Ngkobe the way. Ntsane chatters incessantly and Ngkobe is amused by his attempts at philosophical profundity. He is also reassured by the presence of Phele's ghost, who appears to be acting as his spirit guide, as they pass through rocky terrain and verdant plains. However, they have to complete the journey on foot after their horses are stolen and Ngkobe is relieved to receive a warm welcome from Nkelemba when they arrive.

Unfortunately, Mofokeng is nowhere near as cordial and he complains about the shame Qobo has brought upon him before revealing that he has arranged for Nkelemba to marry wealthy businessman Silas Monyatse so that he can see out his old age in some comfort. Ngkobe is crestfallen, as he was going to propose to Nkelemba himself. But, when Monyatse comes to claim his bride, he so appals Nkelemba by insisting that Qobo can only travel to the nearby clinic in the boot of his car that Mofokeng cancels the contract and rediscovers his love for his dying daughter.

Aware that Nkelemba is never going to abandon her sister, Ngkobe leaves for the bus stop with Ntsane. But, just as he is about to depart, he realises that he can't live without his soulmate and he strikes out across the wilderness to commit his future to his homeland.

It's a shame that an indigenous film-maker missed out on the honour of making the first feature in Lesotho, but Andrew Mudge has been drawn to the country ever since his brother served there in the Peace Corps. Like Nicolas Roeg in Walkabout (1970), he turns his outsider status to his advantage, as he and cinematographer Carlos Carvalho capture the changing landscape with a degree of trepidation and awe. But it might have been useful to have explored some of the rituals and attitudes from the viewpoint of someone who considers them part of their own heritage.

Nevertheless, there is nothing patronising about Mudge's story or his direction, as he highlights the pressing problems facing tribal peoples lacking basic medical care and reliable transportation. He also pulls few punches in his discussion of patriarchal tyranny and the extent to which the generations drift apart as distance or perspectives come between them. But he slips up in giving Ntsane a few too many sagacious speeches and never really addresses Ngkobe's abandonment issues or his feelings about Lesotho, as he clearly stays because he loves Nkelemba rather than because he has been overwhelmed by patriotic pride.

Finding a soulmate is a lot more problematic for black Britons according to Menelik Shabazz in Looking for Love, a talking-head documentary that addresses universal themes from a singular perspective. The focus here is firmly on heterosexual relationships between black British men and women, with no room for discussion of interracial or homosexual liaisons. This is fair enough. But Shabazz, making his first film since the excellent reggae study The Story of Lover's Rock (2011), struggles to develop any sustained arguments, as he keeps flitting between earnestly delivered sound bites that are periodically punctuated by smokily monochrome snippets from a stylised slam performance piece by Sidel `Comfort' Stewart.

It soon becomes clear from the individual speakers and the members of the Undiluted Expressionz group that there are a lot of single people within the British black community and that the majority of them have problems relating to the opposite sex, let alone committing to them. Many seem to think it is near impossible for black men to stay within a traditional relationship or family unit. Some believe this is a legacy of slavery, as African family structures were consciously dismantled and men got out of the habit of heading a household, as both a provider and a protector. Some suggest that because so many boys either witnessed their fathers beating their mothers or never saw them at all they are scared to make the same mistakes, while others still claim that a number of black men are so angry with their mothers for neglecting them while they doted on their lovers that they find it difficult to trust women.

Psychologist Umer Johnson reckons that black men are loners who fear women and wonders whether concept of idyllic love should be played down to reduce the risk of broken relationships causing such emotional damage. Jackie Holder concurs that a fear of failure prevents many men from seeking exclusivity, while Anita Bey declares that the inability to communicate is a cross-gender problem. Andi Osho, Kojo, Slim, Mr Cee and Donna Spence try valiantly to put a comic spin on things, while some of the banter at the Undiluted Expressionz session is lively, particularly when the chat shifts to online dating, the sexualisation of young girls during Carnival, oral sex and domestic abuse.

But Shabazz seems so intent on exploring the negative aspects of his topic that he pays little heed to longevity, the rearing of children or the fact that many of the problems under discussion are not unique to those of African or Caribbean origin. A little more time spent with the wittily wise Alex and Joyce Pascall, who have been together over 50 years, might have done much to rectify some of these deficiencies. But, while this is clearly supposed to spark a conversation within the black community, its preachy tone means it is unlikely to play to packed cinemas and, thus, reach they very people it's intended for.

Veteran documentarist Brian Hill also relies heavily on camera interviews in The Confessions of Thomas Quick. However, he leavens this investigation into the man who was considered to be Sweden's first serial killer with plenty of archive material and some ill-judged dramatic reconstructions that come close to undermining an intriguing, if never quite compelling saga. As is often the case with exposés of this kind, the refusal of the more controversial characters to justify their actions leaves the argument looking a little lopsided. But the fact that Hill managed to secure access to the man at the centre of the scandal represents quite a coup.

Born in 1950, Sture Bergwall was raised with six siblings in the provincial town of Korsnäs. At the age of four, he recalled looking up from being sexually abused by his father to see his mother with the dead baby he named Simon dangling between her legs by its umbilical cord. Knowing at an early age that he was gay, Bergwall proved to be a problem child, who did drugs, molested other boys and even stabbed a casual pick-up before being jailed for holding a banker's family hostage as part of an armed robbery in 1991.

Lodged at the psychiatric hospital at Säter, Bergwall (who insisted on being known as Thomas Quick) attracted the interest of psychoanalyst Margit Norell, who soon became convinced that she had a fascinating patient on her hands. Indeed, when, in 1992, he confessed to the murder of 14 year-old Thomas Blomgren at Växjö in 1964, she became certain that an in-depth case study could be the highlight of her career. Working in conjunction with psychiatrist Birgitta Ståhle, Detective Inspector Seppo Penttinen, prosecutor Christer van der Kwast and memory expert Sven Åke Christianson, Norell began to follow up Quick's confessions. Yet, even though he could never find the bodies of his victims when he was taken back to the murder scene, Quick always seemed to know enough to make a conviction possible.

Thus, between 1994 and 2001, he was convicted of the killings of Charles Zelmanovits (1976), Johan Asplund (1980), Trine Jensen (1981), Janni and Marinus Stegehuis (1984), Gry Storvik (1985), Yenon Levi and Therese Johannesen (both 1988). Despite the lack of hard evidence, Quick's lawyer Claes Borgström failed to beat a single rap and he ceased co-operating with the authorities in 2001. But journalist Hannes Råstam was among a small number who felt that the prosecutions were deeply flawed and, during a 2008 television interview, Quick withdrew all of his 30+ confessions and revealed that he had been so heavily medicated during his incarceration that he had developed an eagerness to please that prompted him to piece together his testimony in each case from leading questions and the body language of his inquisitors.

Resuming his real name and patching up with estranged older brother Sten-Owe and sister-in-law Ingegerd, Bergwall appointed Thomas Olsson as his new lawyer and the convictions imposed from six trials were quashed on appeal over the next five years. Eventually, he was allowed to leave Säter after two decades and resume a normal life. This included him giving an extensive interview to Brian Hill, who presents his chronicle as a Nordic noirish thriller that often feels uncomfortably resistible on account of its lurid tabloid tone.

Clearly influenced by Bart Layton's The Imposter (2012), but lacking its finesse, this is provides a chilling introduction to Sture Bergwall, who remains a disconcerting character, even though he is no longer demonised as the Swedish Hannibal Lecter. However, it never digs deeply enough into his psyche and gives him a surprisingly easy ride in return for his collaboration. The contributions of consultant psychiatrist Göran Fransson, former Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz, reporters Gubb Jan Stigson and Jenny Küttim, and biographer Dan Josefsson are all cogent, while editor Mags Arnold does a neat job piecing together the various materials, including the dramatisations with Oskar Thunberg as Bergwall/Quick. Obviously, Hill was hamstrung by not being able to speak to those who handled Quick at Säter. But he fails to ask the serious questions about the conduct of his treatment and the readiness of the justice system to accept highly suspect evidence in order to tick off as many unsolved cases as possible.