While we are on the subject of human rights, might we draw your attention to the Oxford Human Rights Festival, which will be hosted by Oxford Brookes University between 14-18 March? All events can be booked through Eventbrite, including an opening night screening of I, Daniel Blake, which will be followed by a Q&A with director Ken Loach.

Also on offer are Anna Brass's Leaving Greece (2013), Karen Boswall and Ruba Al Akash's Boya Boya, Gertrude Schulte Westenberg and Matthias Coers's Rent Rebels (both 2014), Joss Holden-Rea's The A-Z of Poverty, Jake Gavin's Hector (both 2015) and Andrea Arnold's American Honey (2016).

Almost three decades after he made The Secret Country (1985), John Pilger returned to his homeland for Utopia (2013), in order to assess the state of Australia's first people, who represent the planet's oldest continuous human culture. What he finds often dismays him and it is surely no coincidence that this damning documentary has been released in the week of the first test in a much-anticipated Ashes series. Co-directing with Alan Lowery, Pilger pulls few punches in suggesting that the Aboriginal people is currently facing a form of apartheid that is every bit as pernicious as the one that existed in South Africa. As always with Pilger, his looming and often confrontational presence means that he sometimes steals focus. But this documentary is as personal as it is powerful and no one can question its sincerity or significance.

Iron ore magnate Lang Hancock (1909-92) wanted to sterilise the Aborgines and Pilger isn't sure that much has changed, as he shows footage of an Aboriginal youth being Tasered and a man dying three hours after he was attacked. Yet, when he travels to Palm Beach in Sydney to meet Diana Edwards, she seems largely unconcerned that the holiday homes she is showing off have been built on stolen land. The golden sands and mod-con accommodation couldn't contrast more starkly to the conditions in Utopia, a settlement near Alice Springs with one outside tap and outdoor cooking facilities. Eric complains that it is over-crowded and unsanitary, but this means little to the civil servants in the air-conditioned office that is supposed to be addressing the population's concerns.

In the Canberra suburb of Barton (which was named after Edward Barton, the Prime Minister behind a 1901 policy to promote a White Australia), Pilger declares that he is going to redress a century of neglect by highlighting the injustices that the Aborgines have been enduring at the hands of administrators who insist they run `the Lucky Country'.

The area around Utopia was named by the first white settlers. But the name could not be more ironic today, as this is the poorest place in the whole of Australia. David Smith runs as medical clinic in the small town of Ampilatwatja and he laments that, while this has been the physical and spiritual home of the Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years, they no longer have the most basic human rights. He decries the fact there is no public transport, sanitation or electricity and blames the poor housing, cockroach infestations and a lack of hydration on the fact that the residents suffer so grievously from diabetes, renal and respiratory failure and glue ear.

Yet, when Pilger tackles Warren Snowdon, the Minister for Indigenous Health and the MP for the Northern Territories, he says it is a legacy problem that his party is trying to address. He snaps back when Pilger accuses him of doing little or nothing during his 23 years in parliament and loses his temper altogether when Pilger claims he hides behind excuses while the likes of 47 year-old Davy die of a heart attack and his grieving family are evicted from their shack. And he berates Pilger for being puerile when he states that almost one third of Aboriginals die before the age of 45 and that nothing has been done on a state or national level to alleviate the contributory problems.

Pilger visits the Australian National War Memorial and notes that Aboriginals are only mentioned alongside animals and birds and that there is no statue to commemorate the indigenous warriors who perished during the Frontier Wars. The guide admits he doesn't know why such valour has been neglected. But it's hard to tell if he is sympathetic or merely embarrassed at being asked and Pilger avers that this chimes in with the so-called `history wars' over the state of Aboriginal culture when the British first arrived in 1788 and whether or not a concerted policy of genocide was pursued by successive colonial regimes.

Pilger, who first encountered Aborigines at the age of 11 in Botany Bay, remembers being told at school that the population was dying off and was unworthy of being included in the census - unlike the sheep. He now considers that Australia Day should be called Survival Day for the Aborigines and, when he interviews revellers at a parade, one woman tells him that they like to live in poverty, while another says they only have themselves to blame for being feckless drunks and another man is so offended by the suggestion Australia is stolen land that he almost lashes out.

Following a clip from Ian Dunlop's 1960 film, Another Sunny Day in Western Australia, Pilger escorts Nyoongar elder Noel Nannup and activist Marianne McKay to Rottnest Island and shows them how The Quod prison that had held their ancestors from 1838 is now a luxury hotel and spa. Noel performs a ceremony to protect them during their visit to what he brands a concentration camp and Pilger notes that no mention is made of the resort's hideous past in the brochure handed out on the ferry. His companions are appalled when they learn that it now costs $AU240 a night to sleep in a room that once would have been crammed with 51 inmates.

As he looks round, Noel curses that they are now refugees in their own country and he is similarly dismayed to learn that the morgue is now a kitchen and that a mass grave containing 300 Aboriginal prisoners is unmarked. Marian calls it a desecration and Pilger laments that things have scarcely improved, as Ian Ward was allowed to die on Australia Day in 2008 inside a police van that reached 56° during a 300-mile journey. Pilger confronts Margaret Quirk, the Minister for Corrective Services in Western Australia at the time and she says she contemplated resigning when the drivers were merely fined. However, while shouldering the blame, she felt she was best placed to implement reforms in the treatment of Aboriginal prisoners. When Pilger asks whether whites are ever subjected to similar cruelty, she reveals that she put policemen, prison guards and civil servants through cultural sensitivity training in the hope that they would have a better understanding of First People history. But, when pressed to give a straight answer, she concedes a `rack and stack' policy is employed in Aboriginal cells and she looks ashamed when he says this is similar to the arrangements on slave ships.

Journalist Gerry Georgatos confirms the failings in the prison system, as Pilger and Lowery switch to CCTV footage from Alice Springs of an innocent Aboriginal male being beaten and placed into what the police call `protective custody'. While his blood is being cleaned off the floor in the reception area, 27 year-old Kwementyaye Briscoe died in his cell. But no one was ever prosecuted and film producer and actor Patricia Morton-Thomas explains that the same thing happened to her nephew. On being challenged with the statistic that incarceration rates are now six times what they were during the last decade of apartheid in South Africa, Vince Kelly, the President of the Police Federation of Australia, agrees that staggering numbers of Aboriginal males are taken into protective custody and that only better education, housing and health care can rectify the situation.

Back in 1981, Pilger interviewed Arthur and Leila Murray, as they sought justice for their son Eddie, who was found hanged in his cell at the police station in Wee Waa. They had made little progress when he met them again in 1998 and he was struck by the toll the trauma was taking upon them. Lawyer Robert Kavanagh concedes that there would have been investigation and there would have been if Murray had been white. But Leila was still awaiting a review when she died in 2004 and Arthur explains to Pilger, as he accompanies him to Wee Waa, that he had been branded a Communist trouble-maker in the press after leading a strike to secure better wages and living conditions for cotton pickers. He recalls the harassment that Leila and Eddie had endued and yet no one was ever arrested. Moreover, even though a Royal Commission had recommended 339 changes to police procedures, nothing had been done to prevent a case like Eddie's from happening again.

They visit Eddie's grave and Arthur says he feels anger and sadness and Pilger reassures him that his son had not died in vain, even though white Australia had yet to acknowledge its guilt. As they stand beside Leila's grave, Arthur says she had given birth to nine daughters and three sons, but never got over the pain of losing Eddie. We learn that Arthur died four months later and it seems a little unnecessary to pay tribute to him with a photo showing him with his arm around Pilger's shoulder.

Pilger moves on to Ularu, which he describes as the sacred heart of Aboriginal Australia. Yet, while visitors to the former Ayers Rock stay in a luxury hotel, the villagers of Mutitjulu (who are the keepers of the site) live in dire poverty. Elder Vince Forrester shows Pilger his daughter Mary's shack and reveals that it is home to 32 people, even though it has no proper power supply and is riddled with asbestos. Local GP Janelle Trees reels off a list of recurring ailments and sighs that 70% of her patients here have hearing problems and malnutrition. She claims it is like something in 1780s London and admits that she fears a cholera outbreak. Pilger concurs and castigates Kevin Rudd for failing to deliver on a promise to ensure a sizeable housing budget for Aboriginal settlements.

In 2007, Prime Minister John Howard and Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough launched an intervention to save Aboriginal children from paedophiles. However, journalist Jeff McMullen insists this was a slurring lie that was disseminated to cover the fact that the authorities were trying to seize some disputed land. Elder Bob Randall recalls that people were scared by Operation Outreach, as 600 soldiers were sent in to round up the guilty. Those who refused to hand over the lease to their land were denied benefits and services, while pensions were restricted and ration cards were introduced to limit shopping options. Suicide attempts and incidences of self-harm quadrupled after the ABC programme Lateline claimed that kids in Mutitjulu were being groomed as sex slaves. However, Chris Graham exposed the show's mendacity and identified the anonymous youth worker who gave testimony in disguise as Gregory Andrews, a senior official in Brough's department, who had never been to the village in his life.

Tjanara Goreng Goreng was a colleague at Indigenous Affairs between 2005-08 and denounced him. But Brough continued to insist that abuse was occurring on a massive scale and he stands by his statements on camera when Pilger interrogates him. He claims subsequent inquiries were misled, but former Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alastair Nicholson, says the programme was a travesty, while Pat Anderson, who compiled a report entitled `Little Children Are Sacred' states that Brough is a fantasist who misused a report about poverty, unemployment and poor housing to turn neglect into obscene abuse. Yet, while Dr Hilary Tyler, the co-author of a report by the Central Australian Specialists, accuses Brough of making up the health issues in Mutitjulu, he again stonewalls when Pilger challenges his version of events and even uses parliamentary records to demonstrate that Andrews had briefed him about activities of which Brough claims to have no knowledge.

Nicholson reveals that the scenes of petrol sniffing included in the programme were filmed at Docker River, around 100km away from Mutitjulu, and lawyer George Newhouse is dismayed that by refusing to issue, ABC allowed the calumny to stand. Even Snowden confesses that the Intervention was based on a lie that all Aboriginal men are child molesters. But Brough continues to cling to his version and his defiance sums up the attitude that so disgusts Pilger and journalist Amy McQuire, who avers that Aboriginal men are demonised across the continent. She notes that both the major political parties agreed to the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act for the duration of the Intervention, while Olga Havnen, the former Northern Terrritory Co-Ordinator General for Remote Services, says there would have been an international outcry if such an atrocity had been committed in South Africa. But no one is prepared to task Australia for its institutionalised bigotry. The majority of commentators surmised that the policy had been instigated to facilitate a land grab and they seemed to be proved right in 2007 when Top End Secret 2 was launched to excavate for mineral deposits.

In 1969, Pilger had visited Jay Creek in the Northern Territory to investigate Aboriginal living conditions. He returns here and explains that it had been used as a holding bay for the Stolen Generation. This strategy had been based on eugenics and was designed to breed the black population out of Australia. Bobby Randall's `My Brown Skin Baby' plays over footage of a camp and Pilger reveals that many of the abducted children became servants in middle-class homes. Lorna Fejo recalls trying to hide when the snatchers came, but she was caught and sent to The Bungalow, which she insists was targeted by sexual predators.

While Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd apologised for the forced removal of Aboriginal children and insists under Pilger's questioning that this was more than a mere gesture as a new relationship could only be forged once the crime had been admitted. Yet, Pilger points out that 41 Aboriginal children were taken in Lightning Ridge, New South Wales a matter of months after the Apology and that, even thought they were returned after a public backlash, a new stolen generation exists. Paddy Gibson from the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology in Sydney confirms that police and child protection agencies are still confiscating children and, when Pilger informs Rudd that things have not improved, he has the temerity to defend the decision to refuse to give all victims compensation. McMullen says that the Aborigines have had their hopes raised and dashed too many times and the shameful treachery has to stop.

Despite humiliating a former Prime Minister, Pilger isn't finished yet. He next turns his ire on the mining industry, as Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation claims that the mining sector makes $AU 52 billion each year and yet is not averse to stealing from land it doesn't own. In the 1980s, the Labour Party promised to uphold Aboriginal land rights. But the mining companies launched an opposition campaign stating that 3% of the population owned 50% of the land and the scurrilous accusation that `black fellas' will nick your property prompted Bob Hawke to capitulate. A proposed tax on mining super-profits was also dropped and Pilger delights in showing the world's richest woman, Lang Hancock's daughter, Gina Rinehart, joining in a demonstration to `axe the tax'. Indeed, Julia Gillard cut the tax and Pilger reckons that $AU60 billion that could have been used to end Aboriginal poverty was lost.

Robert and Selina Eggington's son committed suicide and they now run a healing centre in Perth called Dumbartung. Robert says that any Aboriginal men kill themselves through a loss of heritage and self-worth and he says successive governments should take the blame. They show Pilger the memorial room they have set up to help those touched by suicide and explain how the Aboriginal belief system vitiates against hurting the land. As he crosscuts to a shot of the landscape, Pilger concludes that white Australians (with their religious obsession with heaven) have no real understanding of their compatriots and the problems will continue to exist until this gulf is narrowed.

In a closing piece to camera, which rather confirms that this is primarily a TV programme than a feature film, Pilger states that Australia is the only civilised country that is consistently accused of mistreating its indigenous peoples. He says that reconciliation is impossible without justice and that the Aborigines need a proper share in their own country, as Australia cannot be judged a proper nation until its first inhabitants are accepted as equals.

For all that he means well, John Pilger has a liking for confrontation and the limelight and he evidently relishes his on-camera jousts with some of the big beasts of Australian politics. But he too often takes for granted that non-Australian audiences will know why everyone is significant and also presumes a familiarity with the bleaker episodes of Aboriginal history. Thus, this can become a bit confusing, especially as it lacks a cohesive structure and rather lurches between outrages without always putting them in context. Yet, for all its organisational flaws, this is a compelling exposé and Pilger's tenacity ensures that, even if awkward questions aren't always answered, the viewer always knows who has something to hide. His decision to afford Aboriginal elders and activists the opportunity to make their own case also adds to the potency of the polemic.

This case took two years to compile and represents Pilger's fourth attempt to shame his fellow countrymen and women into acknowledging, let alone atoning for 250 years of prejudice, greed, violence and indifference. One fears from the reaction of the Aussies he encountered on the national holiday that he will have to wait a good deal longer for attitudes to change. But films like this should provoke the wider world community into using its leverage to shame Canberra into taking some decisive and long overdue action.

More than one million Syrians have left their homeland since 2013 and Yasmin Fedda shows in Queens of Syria how a group of women have been coping with their exile in the Jordanian capital, Amman. In an effort to help them channel their emotions, theatre director Omar Abu Saada and acting coach Nanda Mohammad inaugurated the Syria Trojan Women Project and invited women of all ages and backgrounds to audition for a performance of the provocative Euripides play, The Trojan Women.

The text concentrates on the trials of Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache and Helen, who have seen their homes in Troy destroyed and lost their lovers and offspring. Around 60 women respond to the casting call and the majority are clad in hijabs and niqabs and confess to being nervous doing anything that might embarrass their husbands or cause them any trouble back home. Those that remain participate in a flip chart exercise to plot their recent progress and explore their feelings at losing much of their lifetime achievement. Moreover, as the 25 who stick it out to the end begin to rehearse the drama, they begin to identify with the characters and find that phrases first uttered in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War have a chilling relevance to their own situations.

Democracy is currently under threat in a state that was once regarded as one of the most stable in West Africa. However, as the debuting Johanna Schwartz reveals in her documentary They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile, the unholy alliance formed by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and Islamic jihadists has created a north/south divide that threatens the very future of the country. The MNLA has been battling for Tuareg independence since 1963, but the influx of weapons and fighters into the north following the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya resulted in 2012 in a coup led by Captain Amadou Sonogo that was quickly followed by the introduction of Sharia Law. A ban on musical performance of any kind was swiftly imposed. But, as music is such a key part Malian life, it became an act of patriotic resistance to keep playing and Schwartz profiles some of the artists prepared to risk everything to preserve their culture and heritage.

Guitarists Garba Touré and Oumar Touré formed Songhoy Blues with singer Aliou Touré (curiously, none of whom are related) when they arrived in the southern capital of Bamako after being driven from the northern settlements of Gao and Timbuktu. As Schwartz uses TV news reports to show the capture and destruction of ancient landmarks, the trio's pain is shared by veteran singer Khaira Arby, who longs to return to a scarred Timbuktu to perform for the fans who were not able to flee.

Some 150 miles south of border, Fadimata `Disco' Walet Oumar has found sanctuary in the Saag-Nioniogo refugee camp in Burkino Faso. She jokes that she was given her name early in her career when she was influenced by Madonna. But she admits to being scared of having her tongue cut out by the extremists and explains how she has thrown herself into championing women's welfare in the camp because, even though she is a devout Muslim, she resents the imposition of the veil and the suppression of basic freedoms. However, she concedes she is in an awkward position, as her husband, Jimmy, is a prominent MNLA soldier. She backs his desire for an independent state for the Arab, Tuareg, Peul and Songhoy peoples of the Azawad, but she despairs of the ease with which the movement allowed itself to be infiltrated by jihadists who have corrupted the aims of the struggle.

Some musicians were unable to escape, however, among them Moussa Sidi, who remains in Gao with his wife, Fadi. Over harrowing news footage, he reveals how some artists have been threatened with having their hands cut off like common criminals for playing `the devil's music'. He also describes the tragic death of his 13 year-old nephew, who was gunned down when he ran out to greet his father, who is an MNLA warrior.

As a Tuareg, Moussa regrets the cause's loss of identity and longs to be able to break his own silence. The Songhoy Blues boys have no such restriction, however, and Schwartz films them composing a song beside a campfire as night falls over a river. It's an evocative scene and the music is catchy, even though the message is to urge Malians in the diaspora not to give up on the country and to return and reclaim it. Oumar denounces the jihadists for being hypocrites, as they claim to protect tradition while using modern guns, vehicles and GPS systems. But Aliou is even more outspoken in insisting that the jihadists make money by smuggling drugs and he denounces them for drinking and taking drugs while trying to lecture Malians about their Islamic purity.

Such is the deteriorating situation that Moussa is forced to flee to the Burinabé capital, Ouagadougou. But he could not afford to bring Fadi with him and he tells Schwartz that she has been arrested by government forces after jihadists took shelter in their home during a fire fight. He is fearful for her safety, but also has to make a living and he has to borrow a small guitar from his nephew in order to play some gigs. Khaira also continues to perform and writes a song saluting the French troops who landed in the north in an attempt to drive the jihadists out. She later writes a song about the 2013 election to urge people to vote for a strong president to save Mali. But she suspects the jihadists have merely retreated and are waiting for the French withdrawal to reclaim the previously captured strongholds.

Meanwhile, the Africa Express initiative has brought the likes of Brian Eno, Damon Albarn, Nick Zinner and Remi Kabaka to Bamako and Songhoy Blues audition for them and are signed by manager Marc Antoine Moreau, who wants them to make an album. The recording session is followed by an invitation to tour Britain and Schwartz catches up with them as they see the sights in London and play at the Royal Albert Hall. Nevertheless, they remain aware that their fortune coincides with their compatriots being subjected to frequent shelling as the war continues to rage in the north.

Back in Ouagadougou, Disco and Moussa team up for a gig to bring a little home to those in the nearby camps. But Moussa learns that Fadi has been released after six months in prison and is relieved when she joins him in the south. She is angry that Sharia Law has been used to eat the people alive rather than protect them and it is clear from her interview that she has been deeply traumatised by her experience. Yet she quickly returns to the north when her mother falls ill and Moussa receives a message from his brother that Fadi is having a hard time coping with her fears and he travels by bus to Gao, despite the personal risk to take care of her.

Jimmy is also on the move, as he goes to Algeria in 2014 to participate in negotiations to end the conflict in the north. He feels the strain of being a former MNLA officer, as he refuses to accept their alliance with the Islamists and is very concerned that Isis is behind a spate of executions. Disco complains it's hard being married to a soldier, as she wants peace. But she loves her man and tries to stand by him, even as she prepares to return to Timbuktu to play a defiant concert with Khaira that will demonstrate that Malians will not buckle under to fundamentalists of any kind. They have to keep the venue secret until the last moment, but Khaira tours radio studios to promote the event and there is a decent turn out of those determined to unite against those who seek to outlaw their customs and music.

The courage required to play in public is extraordinary and Schwartz captures the relief and joy both Khaira and Disco feel at being back among their people and doing what they love most. Closing captions reveal that a shaky truce was agreed with the MNLA in June 2015. But Disco and Khaira have yet to return home permanently, although Moussa stays in Gao and visits outlying communities that have heard no music since the 2012 ban. However, he can only dream of the success that Songhoy Blues have enjoyed since their debut album, Music in Exile, became an acclaimed hit.

It might have been nice to hear a bit more music, especially from Disco and Moussa. However, this is an engaging study of the crisis facing Mali and the response of those who refuse to be silenced. Schwartz keeps the political content to a minimum, as the complexities of the situation would otherwise overwhelm the film. She also has to tread carefully where Disco and Jimmy are concerned, as the tensions seem clearly evident within their marriage. But Schwartz establishes the significance of music to ordinary Malians and ably shows the joy it can bring in a time of crisis and the intrepidity required to perform it in the face of ignorance and intolerance.