Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 15/6/2017)

Many assumed that this left-field paean to Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Haneke and David Lynch was merely an aberration and that Dumont would quickly return to the day job. But he continued to play the homage game with nods towards Max Linder, Jacques Tati and Luis Buñuel in Slack Bay, which is released in UK cinemas this week, before veering off in the direction of the musical with Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017), which stars Lise Leplat Prudhomme and Jeanne Voisin as La Pucelle in a rap-metal reworking of Charles Péguy's obscure play, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc.

The mind boggles at the thought of this latest offering. But there is also much to astonish in Slack Bay, a grisly absurdist Belle Époque satire that combines the upper-class eccentricity of Steve Roberts's Sir Henry At Rawlinson End (1980) and the quirky cannibalistic excess of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen (1991). Boasting production values that would be the envy of a big-budget heritage saga, this vicious assault on the French élite looks magnificent. But its most inspired touch is the casting of deadpan non-professionals against a trio of A listers camping it up as though they were in an arthouse pantomime.

On a wild stretch of the northern French coast, L'Éternel Brufort (Thierry Lavieville) scours the rocks for mussels with his wife (Caroline Carbonnier) and four sons, the big-eared, snaggletoothed Ma Loute (Brandon Lavieville), Clo-clo (Noah Noulard), Patte (Julien Teiten) and Ti-Louis (Noa Creton). As they haul their catch back on a handcart, they are beeped by André Van Peteghem (Fabrice Luchini), who is joined in his automobile by wife Isabelle (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), daughters Gaby (Lauréna Thellier) and Blanche (Manon Royère) and their cousin Billie (Raph), who is the child of André's sister, Aude (Juliette Binoche). They are driving to the Tymphonium, an Egyptianate edifice that André has erected on the headland as a bolthole from their home in the nearby town of Tourcoing. But, while Isabelle marvels at the beauty of the spot, the Bruforts are less than impressed by the interlopers and watch them pass with barely disguised disdain.

As stooping and twittish André waves the children off to the beach and fusses over a wisteria growing up the wall, Isabelle chides Nadège the maid (Laura Dupré) for moving dust around rather than cleaning. Meanwhile, in the dunes, the rotund Inspector Alfred Machin (Didier Després) rolls down an incline and has to be helped up by his assistant, Malfoy (Cyril Rigaux), in order to inspect the flag marking the spot where a tourist has recently disappeared. This is not the first such incident and Machin is bemused why so many strangers keep vanishing without trace.

On the marshy side of the dunes, L'Éternel and Ma Loute have a profitable sideline as ferrymen. They have a rowing boat. But, when the water level is low, they merely carry visitors like the woman with a yellow parasol (Maya Sarac) to the other side. Sporting white tam o'shanter with a red bobble, Ma Loute also pulls Billie, Gaby and Blanche out of the muddy reeds when they get bogged down and he blushes when they tease him about his name. Billie likes to cross dress and he surprises André and brother-in-law Christian (Jean-Luc Vincent) in male garb when they take a turn around the grounds. André apologises for them being so boisterous, but neither he nor Isabelle (who keeps falling off a chair while cleaning the chandelier) has much control other them.

Nadège pays a call on the Bruforts, who are eating body parts from a bloody cauldron outside their rundown shack. Their mother asks if anyone wants any more foot and Nadège tuts at Ma Loute when he makes a crude remark. Down on the sands, the local gendarme (Yohann Poulain) has found a wrecked boat and Machin and Malfoy waddled over to investigate. The woman with the parasol tries to flirt with Machin, who chases her away from the shore. Yet he has no memory of her when they find the yellow umbrella lying on the footpath and he even fails to notice Ma Loute dragging a heavy sack, as Malfoy squeezes into their little blue car beside him and drives away.

André and Isabelle are also oblivious to what is going on around them, as they potter to a waterside café to watch a fisherman (Yohann Belz) at work while eating omelettes brought by the waitress (Cécile Després). However, they chide Blanche, Gaby and Billie when the oyster man shouts at them for stepping into his moored boat. Sent to amuse themselves in the bay, the sisters get carried across the rising tideway under L'Éternel's arms, while Billie is eagerly puts his arms around Ma Loute's neck. He is confused by the masculine attire and spits on the ground after he deposits Billie on dry ground.

Ma Loute is still expectorating when Machin come to the ferry post to ask if they have seen the missing folks from Lille and Roubaix. Tottering down an incline, the Calais cop almost topples into the water. But he stops himself in time and pushes Malfoy over for sneaking up on him. They spot the Tryphonium and make their way towards it, as Ma Loute clouts two more unsuspecting passengers with his oar. Reading in the garden, André is appalled to hear that a growing number of people are unaccounted for and goes into a panic until he spots the children on the horizon. He promises to keep his eyes peeled, but can make no promises as it's easy to take the view for granted and simply stop looking at it. André goes to sit down on his deckchair, but it collapses beneath him and he lies with his legs in the air.

As Ma Loute gets a kiss from Billie for carrying him back to the dunes, Machin and Malfoy motor to the Brufort home in St Michel. L'Éternel has just been hacking up the bodies of the rowing boat couple and denies having seen the parasol woman on his travels. One of the children places a creel behind Machin, who promptly falls over it and wallows on the muddle ground before Machin helps him up.

Meanwhile, Aude arrives with an operatic flourish and greets the waiting Van Peteghems with exaggerated air kisses. She gushes about the beauty of the vista and the elegance of a passing heron. But she reduces Isabelle to flustered silence and so upsets Billie by telling him off for hugging her so tightly that he runs away. He bumps into Ma Loute in the dunes and they kiss before taking a boat out to sea.

Back at the house, André has such trouble carving the joint for lunch that Isabelle is forced to take it to the kitchen and do it herself. Aude wonders why André puts himself into such humiliating situations and becomes tearful while hoping that he doesn't turn out to be like their father. Gaby and Blanche look on without comprehension before Nadège serves them and Aude chews on her meat with exaggerated concern for her son. Eventually, she convinces André that Billie has disappeared and this reminds him of Machin's warning and he calls the police. Consequently, the horse-drawn lifeboat is called out and L'Eternal tows Ma Loute back to safety. However, Machin gives them a lecture for putting lives at risk and gets testy when he sees them giggling as Aude holds them both to her bosom. Crisis over, the Van Petethems and the Bruforts return home, but Ma Loute is still puzzled as to why everyone keeps calling Billie a boy.

The next day, he wears a pink dress and a long wig and causes Machin and Malfoy much consternation as they watch Billie kiss Ma Loute and row her across the estuary. L'Eternal views the pair with a jaundiced gaze during the return trip, while Aude continues to fret about her child's erratic behaviour. She cheers up when Christian arrives on his penny farthing, but he pushes her away when she tries to embrace him and Isabelle has to drag him away, only for him to collapse the sun lounger when he tries to lie down. They sit on the terrace with aperitifs and Aude declares that she is keen to attend the procession in the town the next day because she has got it into her head that Billie was saved at sea by the Virgin Mary.

As she witters on about miracles, Billie arrives with Ma Loute and Isabelle invites him to eat with them. Aude is charmed by his working-class accent, while he struggles to suppress a smile at the collective eccentricities of the older Van Peteghems. He watches with a smirk, as André discusses the disappearances and Aude announces that she will forego trips to the bay until the mystery is solved. Christian has a reverie about getting lost in the dunes before declaring that he will be safe from the attacker because he is from Calais. Gaby and Blanche snigger to their mother's dismay, as she rings for Nadège. She is surprised to see Ma Loute at the table and is scolded for talking out of turn. However, André restores the good humour when he announces that they will go sand yachting after lunch.

Having recently been confused by a yapping dog and a couple of female nudists (Angélique Vergara and Anna Zakharova), Machin and Malfoy look on with horror as André crashes into the wreck and goes flying through the air. They are even more perplexed when there is no sign of the hapless driver and Aude becomes hysterical with grief, while Blanche and Gaby cling to Isabelle for comfort. But André appears from nowhere and asks Machin why someone left a boat in such a dangerous place on the beach.

Meanwhile, Ma Loute takes Billie to see St Michel. His siblings clamour around them and he has to fight them off before their mother tells the little ones to behave. Billie is taken by the simplicity of the hovel and clings to Ma Loute. But he suddenly flinches and runs away without explanation. Billie rushes after him over the dunes, but she loses sight of Ma Loute as she scrambles over the rocks. As the sun sets, she strips off, wades into the sea and removes her wig to reveal the half-shaven boyish style below.

The next day, the Van Peteghems dress in white to join the procession of their black-clad neighbours through the dunes to the Marian shrine beneath the cliffs. Two of the Brufort boys carry a statue of the Infant Christ on a velver cushion, while others carry banners and sing hymns behind the parish priest (Fabien Fenet). As he preaches, Aude, André and Isabelle drop to their knees to give ostentatious thanks for Billie's safe deliverance. But Aude starts to wail and rushes to the shrine when Billie declares her love for Ma Loute and everyone stands around awkwardly until the sight of Christian shouting in English on the headland prompts them to beat a retreat.

Up at the house, Aude remains inconsolable, as she curses André and their father (she doesn't know which) for getting her pregnant and saddling her with a twisted creature. André tries to explain that they were drunk and that he can't be held responsible, but Aude lambastes the entire male sex for treating women so shabbily. As Billie further confounds Machin and Malfoy by informing them that she is a girl dressed as a boy, the detectives arrive at the Tymphonium with Christian's wallet. André realises he has not returned and they go to the cliffs in search of him. Suddenly, Isabelle levitates high above the ground and returns to earth with a serene smile, as André declares a miracle and the cops look on in amazement.

Ma Loute has also had a nasty shock, as he feels Billie's testicles as he carries him over the causeway and he is so furious that he throws him into the water and rains down punches until he knocks the boy unconscious. Picking up her wig, Ma Loute slings Billie over his shoulder and wraps her in a fishing net while he decides what to do with her. His brothers kick her and also boot a ball into Nadège's face. She is shaken and smiles as Ma Loute steadies her. But she steps back as he bites her chest and growls before rushing across the fields.

As Blanche and Gaby set about each other with croquet mallets, their aunt warbles a hymn on the roof of the Tymphonium. She calls down to André and Isabelle to ask if they have had news of Christian or Billie before suddenly charging through the garden and into the woods. The music swells on the soundtrack as she calls out to her child, only for her to fall silent when L'Eternal emerges from behind a tree to knock her out cold with an oar. She is tossed into the next beside her brother and son and Madame Brefort silence them with judicious swings of a large beam when they try to protest.

However, Ma Loute's conscience has been pricked and he grabs a barrow and rescues the trio. But no one knows where they have been deposited and Machin and Malfoy join an army colonel (Christian Coeugniet) on the beach to begin the search. He plays a hideously discordant rallying cry to encourage his men, who quickly find Aude, Billie and Christian in a state of bruised dehydration in the hills. However, Machin is forced to miss the discovery, as he has ballooned so much with worry that he starts to float away and Malfoy has to tie him to the car with a rope.

Such is the relief at having the family reunited that André and Isabelle host a garden party for the heroes of the hour. Lashed to a rope, Machin floats above the throng, as a traumatised Aude gibbers through her bandages and André waffles effusive praise for the uniformed saviours. However, when Malfoy reaches for another drink, he lets go of the rope and Machin is caught on a breeze. As he begins to sail out to sea, the guests charge after him. Eventually, one of the soldiers shoots Machin so that he deflates and he is warmly embraced by the grateful André. Further along the beach, Ma Loute cuddles Nadège on a rock. Sporting a black eye, Billie wanders past in her best dress. She stares at Ma Loute, who doesn't know where to look and falls backwards out of shot as Billie wanders into the distance with one of her cousins.

Where to start with a picture as resolutely madcap as this? It would fall flat on its face without the bravura brilliance of Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Jean-Luc Vincent. Resembling caricatures created by Eric Idle for a Monty Python sketch, Luchini and Vincent are magnificently odd as the inbred products of industrial dynasty building, while Bruni Tedeschi has the joys of the season squeezed out of her by the tomfoolery of the menfolk and the histrionic extremes that the extravagantly hatted Binoche reaches in response to everything from a birdsong to cannibalism. Yet their full-throttle hamming would seem wholly misjudged without the deadpan support of Brandon and Thierry Lavieville that enables Dumont to poke pitiless fun at both the bumpkins and the haute bourgeoisie.

He is aided invaluably in this regard by production designer Riton Dupier-Clément and costume supervisor Alexandra Charles, whose contribution is vital to keeping the audience guessing about the true gender identity of Raph. She was nominated for the Most Promising Newcomer award at the Césars, while Luchini and Bruni Tedeschi were also cited for Best Actor and Actress. But Brandon Lavieville can feel himself unlucky at being overlooked, as his display of backwater susceptibility is key to keeping the action on an even keel. By looking like a young Stan Laurel, however, he also helps Dumont link the numerous (and often very funny) pratfalls to the slapstick style of the silent era, which he reinforces by giving both the Oliver Hardyesque Didier Després and Cyril Rigaux bowler hats.

Despite the willing performances, the detection subplot is one of the weaker aspects of the storyline (as is the sound gag involving a squeaking fat suit), although the law of diminishing returns also applies to Jean-Luc Vincent's shenanigans and the levitation incidents. That said, Guillaume Deffontaines's painterly widescreen views of the windswept Channel coast and its inland marshes are as thrilling as the score by Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu, who died the day after his 24th birthday in 1894. For the most part, therefore, this is a bold and entertaining enterprise whose bestial themes, macabre humour and savage dissection of a bygone era that still impinges upon the present mean that it would make a mischievous top half of a double bill with François Ozon's Frantz.

As noted in the coverage of Liam Gavin's A Dark Song, Ireland has recently acquired something of a reputation for horror following the success of David Keating's Wake Wood (2011), Jon Wright's Grabbers (2012), Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal (2014) and Lorcan Finnegan's Without Name (2106). But American cineaste Dennis Bartok lets standards slip with Nails, a variation on the haunted hospital sub-genre that suffers from sluggish pacing and some decidedly dodgy CGI effects.

Best known for programming events at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Bartok teamed with archivist Jeff Joseph on the acclaimed 2016 tome, A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the Movies. He also dipped his toe in genre cinema with his scripts for Ari Taub's 1998 short, The Red Herring, and the 2006 portmanteau feature, Trapped Ashes (2006), which contained contributions by Sean S. Cunningham, John Gaeta, Monte Hellman and Ken Russell after Joe Dante had set the scene by trapping seven strangers on a Hollywood film set and requiring them to tell spooky stories in order to escape. But this revisitation of things going bump in the night is too full of clichés and caricatures to generate even the mildest scares. An opening coda set in the 1970s shows sinister hospital orderly Richard Foster-King collecting nail clippings from the youngsters he has murdered with a hypodermic needle. But we leap forward to the present, where athletics coach Shauna Macdonald finds herself hooked up to a ventilator in the same rundown Irish clinic having fallen victim to a hit-and-run accident while out jogging. Nursing aide Ross Noble tries to boost her spirits after she emerges from a two-week coma with cuts and broken bones. But, while daughter Lean McNamara reads to her, husband Steve Wall seems distant, as Macdonald struggles to master the laptop voice generator he has bought to help her communicate. Thus, he thinks she is merely hallucinating when she claims that someone entered her private room during the night before disappearing into the cupboard in the wall opposite her bed.

Noble inspects the cupboard the next day, but the door keeps creaking open. He suggests to Wall that Macdonald should consult psychiatrist Robert O'Mahoney, as it's not uncommon for post-comatose patients to imagine things. But Macdonald is convinced that something untoward is going on and starts keeping a diary. She also asks Wall to find her care, but he insists that Hopewell is all they can afford on their health insurance. While they talk about new running prospect Muireann D'Arcy, McNamara wanders off alone and (oblivious to the malevolent presence stalking her) sets off a panic alarm in a side ward and is escorted back to her parents by hospital director Charlotte Bradley.

That night, Macdonald wakes from a vision of Foster-King leaning over her to find the softly spoken O'Mahoney sitting beside her bed. He asks about the visions and she wonders if they are a by-product of the fact that she was dead for two or three minutes before the paramedics reached her. She explains how she could hear voices and feel the fingernails of the departed digging into her flesh. But, while O'Mahoney assures her that she is safe, she is attacked in the night by Foster-King, who turns off her ventilator. Wall has CCTV cameras fitted in the room and in the corridor (as if a hospital would allow this) and Macdonald sees her husband arguing with Bradley about the poor standard of care. She takes out her frustration on Noble, who blames the machine failure on a combination of rats, cloth wiring and under-funding.

Alone in her room, Macdonald complains about her lot to the CCTV camera before a series of loud bangs convince her that someone next door is trying to contact her. But the noises stop when she mentions that someone is threatening her. So, she looks up the history of Hopewell on line and discovers a photograph with Foster-King towering over a group of young children. She asks Noble about him, but he proves evasive and has to restrain her when she freaks out about the bed sore appearing on her thigh. However, he does use a wheelchair to keep the cupboard door closed.

As O'Mahoney had treated Foster-King, Macdonald asks about his involvement in a series of killings. O'Mahoney reveals that Foster-King had been rescued from abusive foster homes and had frequently attempted self-mutilation during his rehabilitation. But, over time, he had improved and was hired as an orderly. However, he earned the nickname `Nails' because he kept the clippings of his young charges in sealed envelopes. These suggested his guilt when five girls died suddenly and he hanged himself. But O'Mahoney believes that he was trying to keep them innocent forever and refuses to tell Macdonald where Foster-King committed suicide. Convinced he perished inside the cupboard, Macdonald lies back on her pillow in dread.

Upset by D'Arcy interrupting a skype call with McNamara, Macdonald summons help when Foster-King emerges from the cupboard and starts lurching towards her. Noble arrives to protect her, but Wall is sceptical when his wife shows him what she is sure is positive CCTV proof that Nails is trying to slaughter her. He consults with Bradley and O'Mahoney in the corridor, as Macdonald asks McNamara to ask the woman next door if she has seen anything. However, the inquiry merely provokes a fatal lapse and even Noble begins to get exasperated with Macdonald after he nails shut the cupboard and reminds her that he has other patients to attend to.

While Noble tells Bradley that he thinks he felt something in Macdonald's room (and she declares that there was never conclusive proof against Foster-King), Macdonald looks up ghosts online and sees a clip in which American linesman Dennis Bartok points a camera at the grey woman who has haunted him since he `died' after a power surge. But, while she begins to train herself to breathe without the respirator and tries to get some feeling back into her legs, Macdonald is powerless when Foster-King takes over her laptop and shows her images of Wall smooching with D'Arcy before making scars appear on her legs and invisibly scratching `I miss you' in blood on her abdomen.

Down in his shabby cellar hideaway, Noble watches monster trucks on his laptop. However, he is disturbed by a noise that seems to be coming from a filing cabinet. He thrashes it with his metal baseball bat before opening the top drawer. Rather conveniently, he finds a file relating to the Nails case (complete with clipping envelopes) and sees a picture of a young Macdonald among the victims. Suddenly aware that his own face is occupying his computer screen, Noble fails to notice Foster-King crawl out of a hole in the wall and turns too late to see the ghoul bearing down on him.

Nobody seems to realise Noble is missing as Wall accuses him of causing the cuts on his wife's legs. He orders Bradley to call the police, as McNamara and D'Arcy arrive (as though an 18 year-old girl needs a babysitter who is barely her senior). Moreover, Wall tosses the folder found in Noble's room on to the bed and informs Macdonald that he is a deranged copycat who knew that she had been a meningitis patient during Foster-King's time at Hopewell. She refuses to believe him and accuses him of sleeping with D'Arcy. As she stalks off in disgust, Foster-King murders Bradley and cuts the power across the hospital. Wall goes to investigate and Macdonald begs McNamara to help her escape.

Yanking the breathing tube from her throat, Macdonald scrambles into a wheelchair and they head off down the corridor (of the suddenly and infeasibly deserted hospital). While Wall is butchered after finding D'Arcy dead in his passenger seat in the underground car park, McNamara tips Macdonald down a staircase in a desperate bid to keep out of Foster-King's clutches, as he scrapes his nails along the wall. They abandon a man with an eyepatch to his fate, as they scuttle past, and watch in horror as Nails throttles O'Mahoney. But Macdonald (who has miraculously recovered her strength and dexterity after being little more than a helpless bag of bones when she was first placed in the wheelchair) outwits Foster-King by locking her daughter the other side of a fire door and then rolling unflinchingly towards him. McNamara looks on in terror, as her mother is thrown around the room by an unseen force before Foster-King peeps through the window at her with a sickening growl. Seemingly unable to resist overkill, Bartok closes the picture with the last of the interminable drone views of the hospital roof with which he has punctuated proceedings before leaving a bemused McNamara in the hands of a paramedic who has no idea who Nails is. He next shows Macdonald's corpse being recovered before he guides us into her room, where the CCTV feed depicts Foster-King coming to clip her nails before he scowls into the lens for one final jolt. But there's nothing frightening about this grim gambit, which feels as thuddingly calculated as just about every other attempt to raise the audience's pulse rate.

Most familiar from her spelunking exploits in Neil Marshall's The Descent (2006), Shauna Macdonald does what she can to emulate Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948) and Joan Crawford (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962) in summoning up some bedridden anxiety. But she receives little assistance from the supporting cast or Bartok and Tom Abrams's undercooked and often clumsily contrived script. Production designer Til Frohlich is to be commended on his location spotting, as the suitably deceptive Mount Carmel Community Hospital exteriors are complemented by the creepy interiors of the abandoned Baggot Street Hospital in Dublin that cinematographer James Mather roams to creepy effect. Editor John Walters also cuts sharply, while Stephanie Lynne Smith's make-up is suitably unsettling. But Bartok's direction is often as blatant as Ade Fenton's blaring score and, consequently, this committed, but muddled fare is best left for the least discriminating fanboys. Closer in look and tone to Aaron Woodley's Spark than Michael Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle or Claude Barras's My Life As a Courgette, Ash Brannon's Rock Dog magpies from several superior animated outings in adapting a graphic novel by Chinese musician Zheng Jun. The voice cast works hard to make it seem fun and the odd gag does raise a smile. But this well-intentioned, but bland blend of Tibetan Zen and Western aspirationalism (which has curiously been released a little late for half-term) lacks the narrative invention and comic cutting edge to capture the tweenage imagination.

As narrator Fleetwood Yak (Sam Elliott) reveals, the Himalayan village of Snow Mountain is under constant threat from a grey wolf pack led by the snarling Linnux (Lewis Black). In repelling the last attack, all but one of the toughest Tibetan Mastiffs was killed and Khampa (JK Simmons) is concerned that his son, Bodi (Luke Wilson), lacks the right stuff to become a fearsome warrior. Anything but a natural martial artist, Bodi struggles to master the Iron Paw technique that requires him to `find the fire'. Moreover, he is easily distracted by playing a stringed instrument called a dramyin and hopes to become a musician, even though his father has banned such frivolous pastimes, as they deflect a warrior's focus.

One day, Bodi makes such a mess of a training exercise that he causes a passing aeroplane to drop a package in the snow. Inside, he finds a red radio and quickly becomes hooked on the music of a superstar British Persian cat named Angus Scattergood (Eddie Izzard) and adds extra strings to his dramyin so that it sounds more like a Western guitar. Keeping the purloined instrument hidden from his father, Bodi tries to be a good guard alongside sheep pals Floyd and Carl (both Will Finn). But he is fooled into believing a raid is underway when Khampa dresses as a wolf to keep the flock on its toes and, in the resulting false alarm chaos, the firework store catches fire and lights up the sky. Convinced it would be better for everyone if Bodi was allowed to follow his dream, Fleetwood Yak convinces Khampa to let his son try his luck in the city, on the proviso that he returns to do his duty if things don't work out. Carrying just his guitar, Bodi boards a bus with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. However, he is spotted by two of Linnux's henchman, the diminutive Riff (Kenan Thompson) and the hulkingly silent Skozz. They report back to the boss, who orders them to kidnap Bodi while he makes plans to capture Snow Mountain. Oblivious to the danger he now faces, Bodi heads to Rock`n'Roll Park, where he meets bass guitarist fox Darma (Mae Whitman) and goat drummer Germur (Jorge Garcia), who play in a combo with Trey (Matt Dillon), a self-regarding snow leopard who convinces Bodi that Angus Scattergood would willingly give him guitar lessons if he dropped round to his mansion.

In fact, Angus is in a foul mood, as he is suffering from a serious case of writer's block and has been warned by his record label that he will be dropped unless he comes up with a new hit in the next three days. He is busy bemoaning his fate to his robot butler, Ozzie, when Bodi shows up at his heavily fortified home. Astonished that such a guileless fan could breach his security, Angus humours Bodi in the hope of driving him away. But they wind up stranded outside the electrified fence and Bodi offers to busk at Rock`n'Roll Park to earn Angus's fare home. Darms and Germur are sceptical when Bodi informs them that Angus is his new pal. But he is mistakenly abducted by Riff and Skozz before Bodi can introduce him and Trey mocks him for being a dreamer.

Linnux is furious with his sidekicks for making such a stupid mistake and orders them to take Angus home before finding Bodi. However, they don't think that Bodi will show up at the mansion and sit on the pavement in the hope of apologising to his idol. As he plays mournfully, the sound of his strumming reaches Angus, who recognises a hit when he hears one and he whisks Bodi inside with the promise of a guitar lesson. He even offers to let him use one of the instruments in his enormous collection, albeit a rather battered one. But, together, they work on the song and record it as `Glorious'.

Overjoyed to have collaborated with Angus, Bodi returns to the park in time to hear the single being played on the radio. He is disappointed, however, to hear Angus take sole credit for the tune and feels so low that he not only allows himself to be captured by Riff and Skozz, but he also lets slip to Linnux that the force defending Snow Mountain is made up solely of sheep in Mastiffs' clothing. While Linnux devotes himself to planning his attack, Bodi is dispatched to his cage-fighting club, where he finds himself up against a ferocious opponent. However, he uses his wits to dupe his adversary into smashing the cage so that he can beat a hasty retreat.

Meanwhile, Ozzie has shamed Angus into seeking out Bodi to thank him for his inspiration. He drives his old tour bus to Rock`n'Roll Park in order to give him an autograph and the shabby acoustic guitar. But Darma and Germur have found the abandoned dramyin riddled with tranquilliser darts and convince Angus that he has a duty to find and rescue Bodi. Fortunately, they find him wandering the streets and whisk him off to Snow Mountain to warn Khampa of the oncoming onslaught. By the time they arrive, however, Linnux has conquered Khampa and is gloating about the prospect of dining on lamb. But Bodi finds the fire and, having escaped capture in a madcap chase around the village, he begins to play Angus's guitar with such passion that the wolves are swept into the air and becomes suspended in animation with the sheep and his new friends.

Khamps is proud to see his son excelling at his chosen vocation and gives his permission for him to become a musician. He also subjects Linnux to a little Iron Paw treatment before banishing him from the mountain. As the film ends, Khampa is joined by the penitent Riff and Skozz at a special concert, at which Bodi and Angus play `Glorious' to ecstatic cheers.

Ripping off everything from Kung Fu Panda (2008) and Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) to Footloose (1984) and Hop (2011), this undemanding feel-good frolic is about as derivative as it gets. Even Eddie Izzard's Machiavellian moggie sounds like Russell Brand's drum-mad Easter Island bunny. The pixellated characters lack personality and charm, while the frantic chase and slapstick sequences seem to have been lifted from a video game, such is their clumsy eagerness to immerse the audience in the action. This is doubly a shame, as the basic story premise has potential and Pixar alumnus Ash Brannon has demonstrated with Surf's Up (2007) - a mockumentary about a wannabe surfing penguin that was co-directed by Chris Buck - that he can produce left-field animal morality tales with something to amuse the whole family.

It doesn't help that the songs by Adam Friedman and Rolfe Kent are so trite in comparison to soundtrack offerings like `Learn to Fly' by Foo Fighters, `No Surprises' by Radiohead and `Dreams' by Beck. But the real problem here are the visuals, with Snow Mountain lacking an idyll's necessary `no place like home' vibe, while the city is bereft of the kind of grandiosity that would slacken the jaw of a rube like Bodi. The designers may well have been hampered by a need to stick closely to Zheng Jun's original concepts, but surely a director with two Toy Story credits on his CV could have done something to zhuzh up the workaday visuals.

The city symphony is one of the oldest documentary forms and Mark Cousins has already proved a dab hand with Here Be Dragons (2013) and I Am Belfast (2015). But he adds a fictive element to Stockholm My Love, which revisits some of the landmarks captured by Arne Sucksdorff in his Oscar-winning short, Symphony of a City (1948). Also known as People in the City, this 11-minute monochrome gem followed the example set by such silent masterpieces as Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's Manhatta (1921), Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Dziga-Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929) in employing editorial strategies to capture the rhythms of everyday urban existence. A year after the fatal accident in which she ran over an elderly dog walker, 47 year-old architect Neneh Cherry goes for a walk on a misty grey Stockholm morning. She is supposed to be giving a lecture, but would rather commune with her late African immigrant father while walking along the Söder Mälarstrand waterfront, where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea. As she feels the breeze on her face, she admits that her life has been crawling by since the crash and the crossing ropes of two moored boats seem to prevent her from crossing in the direction of the stadhus city hall that dominates the skyline. She feels as helpless as the dangling corpse that is used to advertise a popular restaurant and keeps flashing back to the oranges that bounced out of her victim's hands when she hit him.

But Cherry perks up a bit when she reaches the skateboard park underneath the Västerbron bridge. Her mood further improves in Vällingby, which was designed in the early 1950s by Sven Markelius to be the first `ABC City' (Arbete, Bostad, Centrum - Work, Housing, Centre) that would accommodate people from all classes in a space full of amenities they could cherish. Prime Minister Olof Palme and ABBA's Benny Andersson lived here and Cherry people watches above the main square, with its church, cinema and community centre. She wonders if this is what happiness looks like, while at the same time fretting that this utopia might come to seem like a prison to the next generation of kids and immigrants. This proved the case with the uniform houses designed by Markelius and Uno Åhrén that chimed in with the Folkhemmet (People's Home) policy pursued in the 1930s by Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, who lived in one of the identical white houses that Cherry scrutinises.

She also finds beauty in the tenement blocks in Rinkeby, even though much less thought went into their construction. Wandering through the estate, Cherry wonders if the 90% immigrant population is happy, as riots had recently taken place (perhaps the ones Donald Trump would later misunderstand). Noting that Rinkeby is twinned with the pyramid city of Giza, Cherry extols the virtues of the Stockholm Mosque, which occupies the old Katarinastationen power station that had been designed by Art Nouveau architect Ferdinand Boberg, who had been greatly influenced by Islamic art. She looks up at the chandeliers inside what still feels like an industrial building and wishes she could forget the awful accident that continues to haunt her.

Cherry strolls through a yellow-walled subway tunnel that was bulldozed through a hill before she pops into the Storkyrkan to see the oldest image of Stockholm, Jacob Elbfas's 1630s copy of `Vädersolstavlan' (`The Sun Dog Painting'), which was painted by Urban målare (aka Urban Larsson) in 1535. She recalls her father telling her that the circles in the sky were made by aliens and she muses on the possibility that we are all alien in some way. As she arrives at the Public Library built by Gunnar Asplund in the 1920s, she wishes he had shown more imagination. Yet she adores the Skandia-Theater, a cinema dating from 1923 and wanders past the spirals in the dark green and white walls and along the cool corridor before emerging in the red auditorium that offers her a sanctuary from the outside world. She wishes Swedes had more of an escapist nature and were more spontaneous. But not everyone is playing hookey.

Having looked at some statues dotted around the city centre, Cherry arrives at the spot where Olof Palme was assassinated on 28 February 1986 as he came out of the cinema with his wife, Lisbet. As she sees someone put a flower on the commemoration stone, she thinks back to the accident. Light and shadow play on her face, as she remembers Gunnar, the 79 year-old man who had darted into the road after his runaway dog. He had bent down to pick up the lead and she had hit him with some force. She had dashed to his side and he had winced with pain. But he died three days later and Cherry has lived ever since with the guilt of something that wasn't her fault.

Strap-hanging on the subway, she speak sings about her pain before she starts addressing Gunnar in Swedish. She revisits the scene of the accident in Björkhagen and is tormented by uncertain memories of whether she had turned off the radio before jumping out of the car to help him. Eyewitnesses had glowered at her, with one accusing her of being a murderer. But she also remembers little details like the dog eating the ham from a dropped sandwich before wandering off without its owner. She had also picked up the oranges, as if this would make things better. She feels the earth spinning around her as she recalls the 15 seconds that changed both of their lives.

The sound of her phone ringing shakes Cherry out of her reverie and she goes to Markuskyrkan (St Mark's Church), which was designed by the 75 year-old Sigurd Lewerentz in 1956. She notes the Persian brickwork and they way it contrasts with the bark on the birch trees before wandering inside. As the music of Berwald swells on the soundtrack, she asks Gunnar if he was an emotional person and wonders why Sweden has had so few public tragedies. Lighting a candle, she tries to fathom whether she and Gunnar would have got along. But she also wants him to see Engelbrektskyrkan, which was designed by Lars Israel Wahlman and completed in 1914. Feeling like a foreigner inside this vast church, Cherry enjoys being alone with strangers.

However, she has one last place to show Gunnar and walks along an avenue of trees like Alida Valli in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) to the Uppståndelsekapellet at the Skogskyrkogården (the Resurrection Chapel at the Woodland Cemetery). Also designed by Apslund and Lewerentz in the 1920s, this is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, as she looks through a peephole in the locked door, Cherry asks Gunnar for forgiveness so that she doesn't have to atone for her sins in a limbo for accidental killers. As dusk falls and she hurries home, Cherry sings to the old man about the pleasure of spending the day with him and the regrets she will always feel.

The next morning, for reasons known only to herself, Cherry starts communicating only in Swedish text messages that are translated in the subtitles. It's a capricious decision that feels so much more contrived than when Godard first used slogans and captions in the 1960s. But, on we go, as Cherry vows to look and listen rather than speak and, as Benny Andersson's keyboards begin to tinkle on `Sorgsmarch', she looks past the cross of ropes to city hall and decides to go in search of happiness. She wonders if it lies in the skateboard park and lingers overlong for an awkward sequence (made bearable only by the wonderful klezmer-like music), as she spins round with her arms extended as the wind ruffles her hair. Peering down from a bridge, she debates whether happiness lies in skinny-dipping in freezing water.

Continuing her walk, Cherry fetches up at the Lumafabrikens (Luma Factory) in Hammarby Sjöstad. Designed in 1930 by Artur von Schmalensee and Eskil Sundahl, this former light bulb factory has been gentrified into luxury apartments. But it provides a beacon of light for Cherry, as she seeks a new direction for her life and she feels inspired to sing the title song as she looks out over the city. Following a montage of unidentified sights that plays out over Cameron McVey's instrumental outro, Cherry takes a ferry to the Gröna Lunds Tivoli fun park on Djurgården Island, where she screams while riding the rollercoaster.

Walking on a bridge, Cherry thanks the people of Stockholm (particularly the old) for helping her regain her mojo. She thinks fondly of how the city responds to snow and rain, as a blue balloon floats past in the gutter. A time lapse shot shows boats bobbing on the tide is cross-cut with a jagged handheld shot of Cherry running and a scene of downtown traffic, as a caption claims that she has fought off the primitive emotions that have been blighting her life to recapture her sense of modernity. As the film ends with another Cherry song, a pair of ducks swim past on the smooth water and we are left with the impression that life will go on with a renewed spring in Cherry's step.

In one of the mood boards on the film's website, Cousins quotes a maxim by Michel de Montagne: `Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.' And this proves the key to an odysseian rumination on inner worlds, grief, women alone and the comfort of the familiar that switches between English, Swedish and captioned communications to the musical accompaniment of 19th-century composer Franz Berwald, pianist Benny Andersson and Cherry herself (singing Cousins lyrics).

Cousins may not be able to follow Arne Sucksdorff in having a stern church warden bend down to help some boys gather their dropped marbles or a gnarled fisherman comb his moustache so he looks good in a picture being painted on the bridge. But he does take inspiration from Patrick Keiller's London (1994) and Terence Davies's Of Time and the City (2008), as well as a range of artistic, literary and cinematic works that includes Johannes Vermeer's `Woman Holding a Balance' (1662-63), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925), Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), Julian Barnes's Levels of Life (2013), Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), David Lean's Summertime (1955), Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Agnès Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961), Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue (1993), Jonathan Glazer's Birth (2004) and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity (2013).

At times, the action meanders, as Cousins wanders off at a philosophical tangent or indulges in gnomic displays of intellectual braggadocio (some of which are directed at Ingmar Bergman for his failure to recognise the vitality of city dwelling in the latter stages of his career). But, as was the case with his perambulations around Tirana and Belfast, he mostly makes a fascinating travelling companion, as his infectious curiosity and keen eye for a telling image force the viewer to rethink their relationship with their own environment and what makes their lives worthwhile. The notion that this is any sort of fiction is specious in the extreme, as a middle-aged architect's cogitations on the impact of a road accident on her psyche are hardly the stuff of gripping drama. Moreover, Cherry is less required to give a performance than respond to instructions in what are essentially a series of meticulously lit modelling assignments.

Nevertheless, she has a fascinating face and Christopher Doyle photographs it with the same care and flair he brings to the cityscapes. It remains to be seen whether Cousins will venture into this hybrid territory again or whether he will restore his own sing-song brogue to the soundtrack. But, whatever he does, the chances are high that the results with be slightly smug, infuriatingly provocative and utterly compelling.

To the casual observer, comedians forever seem to be popping up on game shows or recording their sellout tour videos in large theatres or arenas. But, as Lloyd Stanton and Paul Toogood reveal in Dying Laughing, most stand-ups spend their time driving themselves across Britain or America to check into cheap hotels in order to play bijou venues where the punters demand value for money from the big star off the telly. This isn't the first documentary to hit the road with those (fool)hardy souls who make a living trying to raise a smile at the end of a hard working day. Indeed, there's little here that hasn't been touched on before in the likes of Christian Charles's Comedian (2002), Robert Townsend and Quincy Newell's Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy (2009) and Kevin Pollak's Misery Loves Comedy (2015). But the 50-odd familiar (and not so familiar) faces who make the cut get their quips and anecdotes across with the polished panache one would expect of natural born performers and, as a consequence, this amuses rather more than it enlightens.

The structure is straightforward to the point of repetitious. Speakers are photographed in moody monochrome in front of a blank screen, while their natural habitat is shown in grainy colour to make the real world of highways, motel rooms and poky clubs look mundane and tawdry. Indeed, few of the comics stray from the party line that being a stand-up is tough and demands a peculiar blend of wit, arrogance, vulnerability and resilience. Some confess to demons, others to a desperate need for approval. But few advance any theories on why comedy has become the new rock`n'roll and its value as a political check and a social safety valve.

In the opening spiel, Chris Rock suggests that stand-ups are the last philosophers, as they are the only people with a licence to say what is on their mind without resorting to a pre-approved script. Billy Connolly believes society needs nutters prepared to talk without fear about anything and claims only poetry matches comedy as a form of individual expression. Jerry Seinfeld calls the ability to make a large crowd of people laugh a magic trick and Paul Provenza agrees that there's something weird about being able to make hundreds of strangers have the same involuntary response to a thought. Sarah Silverman puts this down to a craving for acceptance, but Kevin Hart and Rick Overton enjoy the feeling of being in control while doing what you want to do. Jamie Foxx also testifies to the freedom involving in self-expression and Jerry Lewis concurs that raising the roof while taking risks produces a unique `hallelujah' moment that nothing else in life can provide.

Following these introductory remarks, the focus turns to debuts and Seinfeld sets the record straight by stating that most comics walk on to a stage to face a wall of hostility, as miserable people who have had a few drinks at the end of a lousy working week demand to be entertained. He reveals that he fell on his face the first time he performed and Dave Attell, Bobby Lee and Jim Jeffries share similar experiences. But Hart was dismayed when what he thought was a good set was dismissed by a booking agent. However, he, Connolly and Steve Coogan all remember the glow of getting a response and becoming hooked on laughter.

Tom Dreeson suggests all comics start out emulating their idols and only grow into their own style over time. Overton and Provenza concur that maturity depends on stage and life experience, while Kirk Fox, Cocoa Brown and Stephen K. Amos agree that cleverly crafted material often works less well than honest discussion of relatable topics. Rock and Lewis also aver that a good routine combines the scripted, the spontaneous, the shocking and the sincere. Frankie Boyle, Amy Schumer and Bonnie McFarlane disclose that gags need honing and that discipline is often required to make things work. But Keenan Ivory Wayans would rather riff on a theme than rattle off polished gems, while Silverman once informed her audience she didn't feel funny and shaped her act around their response.

Despite Dom Irrera mocking the notion of suffering for his art, Seinfeld agrees that self-editing is a painful process. The likes of David A. Arnold, Hart and Grant Cotter jot down ideas on their phones, while Russell Peters prefers to trial and error from a standing start. Foxx and Hart also road test material and Emo Phillips declares that he feels sorry for the audiences who have to suffer through the initial phase of what he calls writing with chalk.

Sam Tripoli claims that comics are like Jedi playing mind tricks on the audience to make them think as one. But, as Dreeson, Seinfeld, Garry Shandling and Eddie Izzard imply, the secret lies in lulling punters into your sense of rhythm. This means being attuned to the mood in the room, although Tommy Davidson avows that the best way to keep the comedy zombies under control is to keep shooting at them. Kim Whitley admits to trepidation before she goes on stage, while Shandling tells a story about an aspiring comic asking him about the shortcuts to the top. But there is no way round schlepping across the country and staying in godforsaken motels, as Schumer, Overton, Suli McCullough and Kira Soltanovich recall from bitter experience. Kevin Christy, Brown, Boyle, Silverman and Jason Manford highlight the loneliness of the road, while Theo Von cracks wise about having to share rooms with strangers who might be gay or psychotic.

Gilbert Gottfried and Jeff Joseph question whether it takes a little insanity to go alone to backwaters where there is no guarantee of a good reception. Overton, Wayans and Soltanovich all tell tales about belligerent crowds, while McCullough and Tripoli wonder why stand-up is the only artform that attracts hecklers. Connolly explains why interruptions are infuriating because they shatter the sense of intimacy, while Coogan recalls having chairs thrown at him. Amos, Stephen Kramer Glickman and Cedric the Entertainer muse on racist insults, while Neal Brennan admits it's scary performing to all-black audiences.

Soltanovich recalls a man taking a phone call on the front row of a gig and yelling his replies, while Connolly describes how an Australian nutted him for sullying the ears of his wife. Tripoli claims he is too dead inside from years of abuse to let it bother him any longer, while Jo Brand says everyday slurs meant she had already heard the worst that people could hurl at her. She enjoys biting back, while Silverman opts to humiliate them by dwelling on their need for attention. Most amusingly, Stewart Lee reveals that he responds to remarks as though they deserve exhaustive analysis, while Tiffany Haddish offers hecklers the chance to come on stage and give it a go themselves.

Amos and Tripoli respectively tell longer stories about dealing with a bigot and a woman shouting `joke thief'. The latter anecdote borders on smug chauvinism and there is something distasteful about the interviewers sniggering off-camera. Cedric restores a sense of decorum by suggesting that an audience is like a team of wild horses and that a good comic will grab the reins and roll with the bumps in the road. Peters, Manford, Silverman, Lee Mack and Frank Skinner suggest that a humane put-down or a tut is more brutal than a mouthful of bile. But Hart, Manford, Cedric, Bobby Lee, Mike Epps, Jay Phillips, Omid Djaliliand a tearful Royale Watkins tell horror stories about bombing on stage and having to deal with the shame.

Paul Provenza makes the sobering point that punters doesn't just dislike the material when a comic flops, they also reject the human being with the microphone. Others have experienced similar existential crises, including Epps, George Wallace, Felipe Esparza and Allan Havey, who compares the feeling to dropping without a parachute ad infinitum. Foxx jokes that having money dulls the pain, but he recalls the pain Robin Williams endured and concedes that a little part of a comedian dies each time they get booed. Bobby Lee insists that failure is crucial to success, John Thomson opines that it's better to quit than face constant flack. Attell, Izzard, Rock and Hart all confide that they have coping methods to deal with bad shows, while Stewart Lee jokes that his stage self is too conceited to notice if he's not gone down well, as he blames the audience for not being smart enough to get his material.

Jay Phillips suggests that negativity is a good way to measure how thick your skin is, as survival in this business depends on not getting too up or down. Shandling avers that stand-up is a vocation and Epps and Haddish concur that it's also a good way to deal with inner demons. Wayans suggests that comedians are damaged people and Haddish claims that humour kept her out of jail, as her options had been so limited by a troubled childhood. Von, Joseph and Jeffries reckon comedy helps them feel normal, but they often find themselves battling the blues. Although Coogan and Victoria Wood suggest much comedy is rooted in dysfunction, Rock plays down the tears of a clown cliché by stating that stand-ups are bound to feel glum from time to time because think harder about the world around them than the average idiot.

Faizon Love protests that the school of hard knocks isn't the only proving ground and Hart agrees that he has a ball come what may. But, while DL Hughley has no regrets about missing key family moments, Bobby Lee and Amy Schumer lament the effect that the lifestyle has had on their romantic options. Skinner and Coogan are grateful for the benefits fame has brought and feel a responsibility to give their comedy a message so that it has more than a disposable feel-good purpose. Peters, Boyle and Sean Lock agree that they are in a privileged position and should use the freedom to speak their mind for the greater good.

Comparing being on stage to being at the wheel of a speeding car, Jay Phillips asserts that adrenaline highs are addictive and Seinfeld, Bob Saget and Sarah Bernhardt agree that there are few feelings comparable to being on form. Davidson suggests that surfers experience a similar rush, while Rock, McFarlane, Foxx, Joseph, Lewis and Seinfeld conclude by acknowledging that nothing can beat hearing a laugh and feeling the love in the room and only fellow comics can know what they are talking about.

Following with a colour montage of laughing patrons, Stanton and Toogood close by listing the 100 or so comedians who were interviewed for the film. This must be excruciating for the likes of Simon Day, Rich Hall, Justin Moorhouse and Pauly Shore who were presumably deemed insufficiently witty or insightful to be included. Given the number of token appearances and sagebrush moments, this is pretty damning. But, for the most part, this is a genial overview that confirms the suspicion that most comics take their art too seriously to be funny while analysing it. As professional performers, the majority are too switched on and guarded to give much away, while others trade in quips rather than ideas. Consequently, this raises the odd smile, but it falls short on soul-baring revelations and philosophical profundity, while Edward Shearmur's jaunty score quickly becomes as irksome as the iterative nature of so many of the sound bites.

The latest offering from CinemaItaliaUK screens at the Genesis Cinema in London on Sunday 18 June. Directed by Mariangela Barbanete and Antonio Palumbo, Varichina: The True Story of the Fake Life of Lorenzo de Santis harks back to the southern Italian city of Bari in the 1970s to profile a flamboyant and sometimes cross-dressing homosexual who dared to flaunt his sexual identity at a time when there was no such thing as LGBT rights. Inspired by a newspaper story by Alberto Selvaggi, this is a freewheeling amalgam of dramatic reconstruction and talking-head recollection that makes few allowances for those unfamiliar with Lorenzo de Santis and the times in which he lived. However, by approaching its vivacious subject with plenty of innovation, wit and vim, this makes for engaging, if sometimes bemusing viewing.

As the film opens, Lorenzo de Santis (Totò Onnis) is cooking meatballs in his tiny room, which is only accessible by a ladder. Dressed in a slinky nightgown and with his shoulder-length hair in curlers, he is singing along to the radio when he knocks the pan over in terror at the sight of a masked robber at his door. Much to his relief, the intruder turns out to be best friend Rosaria Caldarola (Ketty Volpe), who howls with laughter as Lorenzo regains his composure.

The real Rosaria recalls the incident outside the much-changed building with Marcella Volpicelli, who used to enjoy teasing Lorenzo with her siblings. However, he always gave as good as he got, as he demonstrates while sashaying down the street with his shirt knotted over his hairy beer belly firing back at insults with a foul-mouthed good humour that was rooted in his conviction that even the most macho man was more than a little bi-curious.

Born in the Libertà district in 1938, Lorenzo had been frightened by the bombs and enchanted by the GIs during the war. He had acquired the nickname `Varichina' for selling bleach door to door as a boy (Claudio Brunetti), but he could never resist telling the local girls that they were brushing their doll's hair the wrong way. Journalist Alberto Selvaggi appears to describe how Lorenzo had been a local celebrity and he was keen to keep his memory alive. Lots of people around Piazza Cesare Battisti (where he had worked as a parking attendant) chip in with their recollections and their admiration for someone who lived gay pride every day and used to joke that women would become extinct because their menfolk would all want to sleep with him.

The speakers are not identified and no attempt is made to fill in their background. So, while they have nothing but affection for Lorenzo, the casual viewer will be none the wiser about the wider social significance of their remarks. A younger man recalls him telling the local kids stories and explaining how he used to tug on his underwear to please a client who wanted him to look like a real woman. Another describes him doing a nightly striptease around a street lamp, while another still remembers him kidding an ambulance crew into thinking he was a pregnant woman. However, some kids tipped a bucketful of crabs into his room, while more malicious ones pelted him so badly with stones that he needed stitches in a head wound.

One man claims that Lorenzo bore the brunt of people's frustrations with the rich and exploitative. But Rosaria and daughters Marcella and Amalia remember him being one of the gossiping girls, who used to fall in love with handsome recruits doing their army training. But his romantic adventures always ended badly, with one soldier threatening to kill him when he called him on the phone and a local baker getting his nephews to beat him up when he started spreading rumours that they were lovers. Rosaria had to help him home and change his torn clothes because he was in so much physical and emotional pain.

A couple of middle-aged men in baseball caps drive out to the site of a former brothel and recall that Lorenzo used to man the reception desk. They joke that he often pointed out the best girls to sleep with, while Rosaria and her daughters laugh about the fact that he used to come back and give them fashion tips he had picked up from the prostitutes. Indeed, he was such a member of the family that he was allowed to see the wedding dress Amalia (Federica Torchetti) had chosen before the big day. Yet, when it came to take the photos, her father insisted that the photographer cut him out of the shot.

Marcella notes that it was agreed that they wouldn't acknowledge each other in the street, as it would only cause trouble and she suggests that he was often lonely. We see Lorenzo walking along the promenade explaining in voiceover that he could never leave Bari, even though he might have been more readily accepted in the cosmopolitan north. But, despite the violence he endured, he felt he was like Wonder Woman using laughter instead of a lasso to tame his foes (even when they dumped him out of cars on waste ground after abusing him). This determination to amuse saw Lorenzo become a drag cabaret singer. But, as he does his make-up prior to going on stage, surgeon Renato Laforgia explains that he had the onerous duty to amputate his leg after Lorenzo was diagnosed with decompensated diabetes. He mastered walking with an artificial limb, but social services checked him into a hostel on 11 April 1995 and three members of his care team reminisce about his cheerful nature and insistence on male nurses giving him his bed baths before he lost the will to fight after his other leg was removed. He died in 2003. As a final tribute, Totò Onnis totters into the Bari cemetery where Lorenzo is buried and climbs a stepladder to his last resting spot before removing his wig and writing his catchphrase, `You'll All Come Here' in red lipstick on his headstone.

This contains the only image of the real Lorenzo de Santis that is shown in the entire documentary and he remains something of an enigma, despite the best efforts of Barbanete and Palumbo. Totò Onnis throws himself into the role, with the result that he often resembles John Hurt in The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and Brendan O'Carroll in Mrs Brown's Boys (2011-). But, while this curio leaves countless questions unanswered and remains very much a niche offering, the affectionate nature of the anecdotes confirms it as a fitting memorial to a man who remained true to himself to the very end.

The relationship between cinema and the Holocaust hasn't always been an easy one. As Andre Singer's Night Will Fall (2014) demonstrated, the Anglo-American governments were reluctant to release the Ministry of Information documentary, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (1945), in case it alienated a potential Cold War ally. Thus, while some of the footage emerged in Billy Wilder's Death Mills (1945), the first European studies of the camps came from Poland, with Aleksander Ford's actuality short Majdanek - cmentarzysko Europy (1945) being followed by Wanda Jakubowska's autobiographical drama, The Last Stage (1947), which was the first fictional feature to be set in Auschwitz.

Landmarks like Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955), Marcel Ophüls's The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) and Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985) have sought to warn subsequent generations against allowing a recurrence of such genocidal bigotry. But, while film-makers continue to pour over the Final Solution - with James Moll's Oscar winner, The Last Days (1998), and Lanzmann's Last of the Unjust (2013) among the most memorable - Claire Ferguson's Destination Unknown is one of the few to examine how the survivors came to terms with their experiences and managed to rebuild their lives. Combining archive and private footage with remarkable interviews conducted over 13 years by producer Llion Roberts, this may be stylistically conservative. But it provides an intimate and deeply moving insight into how 12 people dedicated themselves to defying Nazi ideology by living to the full.

Ed Mosberg was 13 when the Second World War broke out. He lived with his parents and two sisters in Krakow. But, as he tries on the blue-striped uniform he has kept from his time at Mauthausen, he reveals that he was the only member of his family to survive. As he refused to speak about his experiences for a long time after the camp was liberated on 5 May 1945, his wife, Cesia, believes that part of him remained behind to stay with his loved ones. Now, as they return to the camp, the tourists barely notice the old man pushing a wheelchair, even though he is dressed in his cap and jacket. He explains that the pain never goes away and that he is only ready in his twilight years to recall his ordeal and beseech the world to remember.

Having walked out of Mauthausen and Treblinka, Marsha Kreuzman and Eddie Weinstein knows exactly how he feels. As do Auschwitz survivors Stanley Glogover and Roman Ferber, and Victor and Regina Lewis, who were reunited at the end of the war and have been inseparable ever since. But, while Eli Zborowski considers the Poles who kept him hidden to be angels and Helen Sternlicht and Mietek Pemper remain grateful to Oskar Schindler for delivering them from Plaszów, Frank Blaichman continues to have regrets about leaving his family to fight with the partisans when he was just 19 years old.

Raising a family in New York in the 1950s, Glogover tried to suppress the memories and had his number tattoo removed to prevent people from asking him about what he had witnessed. He remembers his grandmother praying for the war to end soon so that life could return to normal, but it never did. As a redheaded Jew, Kreuzman had a tough time from the moment she went to school, while Ferber could never understand why his Polish nanny, Branka, had to stop working for the family after the Nazi occupation. Sleeping in a barn so he could escape without incriminating his protectors, Blaichman was given shelter by Polish farmers Aleksander and Stanislawa Glos when the Jews were deported from Kamionka in October 1942 and he remembers being told that his relatives had been herded on to a train whose destination was unknown.

Weinstein remembers the heat when he was rounded up in Losice in August 1942 and transported to Treblinka. Arriving in the darkness, he saw bodies piled high and ordered his younger brother to stop crying, as this was not a place for tears. Returning to the camp, however, he chokes on the memory of the three babies he saw a German officer shoot for the hell of it on his way back from lunch and recalls the vow he made never to forget them as long as he lived. After 17 days, he had hidden in a cattle truck removing the clothing of the deceased. But no one believed him when he tried to alert people to what was happening at the extermination camp. A caption states that an estimated 870,000 souls perished at Treblinka, while only 67 managed to escape.

Born in Krakow, Victor Leserkiewicz and Regina Steiner had known each other since they were 16 and she had been relieved to see him on Plac Zgody on 28 October 1942 when the ghetto was cleared. Her father had reassured her that he would survive and he had cut through the bars on the train and jumped with the blessing of his father, who had lamented that he was too old to run. Blaichman also decided to make a positive stand and he left the farm to join a partisan camp in the forest. Meanwhile, near Zarki in Central Poland, Zborowski revisits the house where Catholic bricklayer Josef Placzek had built a hideaway behind a cellar wall, where he hid with his mother and siblings when they were not living in the attic. He recalls envying birds their freedom, but also insists that the Poles who took risks to help the Jews should never be forgotten for their services to humanity.

Wandering the woodland that now covers Plaszów, Ed Mosberg contrasts the silence with the sounds that used to fill the forced labour camp. Steiner and Kreuzman remember being summoned for roll call and the random killings that would ensue if people failed to answer their names. But they were more afraid of Commandant Amon Göth, who used to enjoy shooting at the work details. Having been selected to be a housemaid, Sternlicht recalls how he lived in the lap of luxury and trained dogs Rolf and Ralf to tear victims apart. Ferber remembers running to escape them, while Sternlicht shudders at the thought of how evil Göth was.

Mosberg stands on the spot where he saw his mother for the last time in May 1944. But hope came to the camp in the form of Oskar Schindler. Sternlicht sensed he was a good man because he was always smiling, but it confused her that he was on such close terms with Göth. But he was plotting with camp scribe Mietek Pemper to switch from producing porcelain to military goods, so that he could arrange for 700 men and 300 women to be transferred to his Czech factory at Brünnlitz. Sternlicht knew nothing of the famous list, as she worked in the villa, but Schindler personally assured her that she would be delivered like the Israelites from Egypt.

Meanwhile, Blaichman had formed a defence unit within the forest camp and he swore to avenge those killed during an ambush. They were accorded a traditional burial, but thousands were cremated and Kreuzman and Steiner wince at the recollection of the awful smell that filled the air as the bodies from the gas chambers were incinerated. Ferber returns to Auschwitz-Birkenau and sighs because his father had reassured him that God would protect them.

Glogover also lost his father in the camp after he damaged his shoulder and could no longer work. So, when he contracted a fever, he hoped he would also die. Yet, despite being thrown on to a cart with the other corpses, he was plucked out by a camp doctor who needed a live subject on which to operate without anaesthetic. Glogover describes how they cut into the back of his skull and left him to die. But a Czechoslovakian Christian named Bruno, who worked in the infirmary, hid him under his bed and in a closet until he had recovered sufficiently to resume normal work. As he was a political prisoner, he was executed before the liberation and Glogover remains grateful for his selfless courage.

Many of the million people who died at Auschwitz were gassed without their names being recorded. But, as Mosberg demonstrates, new arrivals at Mauthausen had to carry a boulder up a flight of steps in order to prove they were fit for work. He sits with his wife to reflect on the time that he and many others were never allowed to rest. It's a wonderful gesture of passive renitence and it is made all the more poignant by the fact that he holds Cesia's hand as he performs it.

Blaichman preferred a more affirmative form of resistance and he remembers posing as a Russian paratrooper to confiscate guns from some Polish villagers. As the Red Army advanced, his unit was required to sabotage railway and communications links and he took great pride in fighting without fear and watching Germans fall dead with bullets fired by his comrades. With the Nazis in retreat, Steiner and Kreuzman were made to march west so they couldn't testify about the atrocities they had seen. But, with so many dying in the snow, Weinstein took his chance to escape and hid in the forest. Zborowski also found a second refuge with the Kolacz family and he points out the shed where the six surviving members of his family stayed until the Soviets found them on 17 January 1945.

Sternlicht was still working at the villa when Schindler added her and sister Bronislawa to the list for Brünnlitz and her relief was shared by Glogover and Blaichman, who becomes tearful while recalling the celebrations after meeting up with a Russian officer on horseback. Kreuzman puts her hand to her mouth, as she recognises herself in footage shot at Mauthausen by the liberating Americans and she admits that she had wanted to die during the last months of the war. She also recalls being helped to her feet by a GI and (although the film doesn't mention it), she would meet Joe Barbella again 68 years later when she spotted a notice about his 65th wedding anniversary in the local paper.

Ferber also found himself on camera as he stood behind the wire fence at Auschwitz on 27 January 1945. But, while he recalls how quickly the realisation set in that he would never see his loved ones again, Zborowski could only think of the future, while Leserkiewicz (who had spent the latter part of the war as an electrician at Brünnlitz) was reunited with Steiner and they have remained happily married ever since as Mr and Mrs Lewis.

Glogover scoured displaced persons camps across Germany, Austria and Italy looking for relations. On arriving at Bari in October 1946, he was told by a gypsy woman that he would be reunited with someone close to him and he found his father working with a medical unit. But, while they made their way to the United States (and the new life symbolised by the switch to colour home movies), Mosberg was unable to forget and took solace in the fact that he had been able to keep hold of the family photographs that now adorn his wall. Sternlicht met future husband Joseph Jonas two days after the liberation and he also felt survivor guilt to the extent that he committed suicide in 1980.

Victor and Regina Lewis also struggle to cope with their memories during a visit to the Belzec extermination camp, while Mosberg reveals that in trying to keep his sisters safe by putting them at the end of a marching line, he sealed their fate when the order was arbitrarily reversed and they were taken away. Kreuzman is also haunted by her past and frequently has nightmares or imagines she is walking on bones when she is out in the snow. As she confides that she is often visited by her parents, she shrugs and declares she is getting old.

Pemper (who died in 2011) testified at Göth's trial, while Mosberg managed to take photographs of him on the stand and he shows a picture of Göth smirking, as he always did when he was killing Jews. Sternlicht compares his wickedness with Schindler's philanthropy and hopes that everyone watching would know whose example to follow. Deciding to break his long silence, Zborowski (who died in 2012) reveals how he performed his own act of magnanimity when he saved a callow German soldier from being shot while translating for a Soviet officer bent on revenge for the death of his grandmother. Told with humbling modesty, this story alone makes this film unmissable. But Cesia Mosberg explaining from her wheelchair how her younger brother Joseph was sent to the gas chamber is just as touching, as the camera lingers on a face of smiling innocence. Her husband clasps her hand, as she recalls the sister who was thrown into the Baltic Sea and has to be reminded that she has three daughters to live for when she wishes she could be with her lost family. Over a montage of snapshots and happy home movies, Weinstein (who died in 2010) speaks with equal pride about his grandchildren being a riposte to Adolf Hitler and his Final Solution. Nothing else needs to be said.

Documentarist Steve James will forever be remembered for Hoop Dreams (1994), an epic Oscar-winning account of the efforts of two African-American teenagers from lowly backgrounds to impress the basketball coach of an exclusive Chicago high school. But, while he has often returned to sporting issues in films like Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis (2014), James has frequently focused on American attitudes to crime and punishment. He returned to Illinois for Stevie (2002), in which he sought to understand why an abused kid he had once mentored had gone on to face accusations of child molestation.

The notion of setting an example recurred in The Interrupters (2011), which profiled a group of ex-gang members trying to turn troubled Chicago youths away from violence and echoed the theme of At the Death House Door (2008), which explored why a Death Row chaplain from Texas had joined the campaign to abolish capital punishment. Now, following Life Itself (2014), a deeply personal tribute to Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert, James revisits the notion of injustice in Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which is this week's offering from the ever-questing Dochouse team. Eighty year-old Thomas Sung watches Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with his wife, Hwei Lin. He had always admired George Bailey (James Stewart) for trying to help ordinary people realise the dream of owning their homes and he had started the Abacus Federal Trading Bank in New York's Chinatown in 1984 with the same intention. However, on 31 May 2012, Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., announced that Abacus would face 184 charges, including residential-mortgage fraud, falsification of business records and conspiracy. But many felt that, in the wake of the 2008 subprime mortgage crises, the establishment was picking on Sung's company because, while the likes of Citibank Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were `too big to fail', Abacus was `small enough to jail'.

Born in Shanghai, Sung had come to the United States following the Communist takeover and had forged a reputation as a community lawyer in Chinatown. However, as daughters Vera, Jill and Heather reveal, it had frustrated him that banks were eager to open deposit accounts for Chinese customers while being reluctant to extend them loans. Initially, he had earned the trust of the community by offering them safety deposit boxes in which to store their valuables. But Sung had quickly convinced them to open checking accounts and, as the business boomed, he started to broker loans and mortgages. As he grew older, he brought his daughters into the firm, with Jill succeeding him as president and CEO, while Vera (who, like sister Chanterelle, worked in the DA's office) became a director.

Then, in 2009, Jill and Vera became aware that loan officer Ken Yu had gone rogue and title closer Linda Hall recalls that they acted promptly in firing him and bringing in an outside consultant to investigate whether others had been defrauding, stealing and money laundering. When two more junior bankers were exposed, Abacus informed the federally backed mortgage company, Fannie Mae, that some of their business had been compromised. Journalist David Lindorf insists that they acted impeccably, but New Yorker staff writer Yiayang Fan reveals that one customer who had lost their dream house had demanded that Abacus repay their 10% deposit. Suspecting they were in cahoots with Yu, the Sungs told them to make a formal police complaint if they felt the bank had deliberately defrauded them.

They promptly filed their case with at the 5th Precinct station and Polly Greenberg from the DA's Major Economic Crimes Bureau opened a case. Thinking they were as much victims of Yu as their clients, Vera and Jill had co-operated with the inquiry. But, when Chief Credit Officer Yiu Wah Wong refused to be interviewed, Greenberg concluded that the entire department was corrupt and that such was the extent of its activities that those in senior management positions had to know (or, at least, should have known) about it and that they, therefore, were liable for the embezzlement. DA Vance made a great show of handcuffing suspects together and marching them to the streets to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. He also called a press conference designed to make him look like a fearlessly crusading defender of the common folk against the fat cats.

While no case was brought against Jill Sung, Yiu Wah Wong and loan supervisor Raymond Tam were among those to face charges and Chanterelle sobs as she explains how she had to resign from the DA's office because her family was being subjected to what she considered to be unfair pressure. Journalist Matt Taibbi from The Divide was also unimpressed by the way Vance frogmarched 16 employees, with Lindorf noting that no one would have dared do the same thing with African-American suspects. Abacus defence attorney Kevin Puvalowski was dismayed by what he deemed a self-promoting photo opportunity that unnecessarily humiliated the people involved, while Wong's lawyer, Sam Talkin, points out that his client and Tam were forced to join the chain gang, even though they had already been charged.

Insisting that they played no part in a decision that was presumably taken for the best of reasons, Greenberg and Vance shrug off the tactics employed as being unfortunate and having nothing to do with them. By contrast, Chanterelle accuses them of arrogance and Lindorf suggests that Vance could make such a show of strength as the Chinese formed a negligible part of the electorate for his post. Activist Don Lee recognised this dismissive attitude as part of a wider contempt for his community and knew Sung and his daughters would not take the slur lying down. TV reporter Ti-Hua Chang suggests Vance picked the wrong people to shakedown, as they were all lawyers and relished the chance to have their day in court.

The trial began on 23 February 2015 and court drawings show the female prosecutor giving her opening statement accusing Abacus of systematically stealing funds from Fannie Mae. The defence countered by citing Abraham Lincoln's riddle, `How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.' An amusing interlude shows the family gathered in Jill's office for a debrief with doctor sister Heather on speakerphone. Everyone talks at once, as they debate the performance of their lawyer. But the sense of togetherness and confidence in the rectitude of their position is readily evident.

Greenberg stresses that they had 10 guilty pleas before the case began, but Lindorf and Talkin note that interrogations often took place early in the morning and exploited the fears of exiles from a police state. Yet, Ken Yu became the star witness for the prosecution and he took to the stand on Day 5. But the defence brought up a taped conversation about gratuities between Yu and Ariel Chi (one who had made the 5th Precinct complaint) and showed that the DA had tried to use this exchange to implicate Abacus in Yu's actions. But Yu kept perjuring himself and Puvalowski and fellow defence attorney Rusty Wing couldn't believe how readily he kept playing into their hands. They recall the jury laughing out loud on several occasions as he tied himself into knots. Indeed, jurors Roman Fuzaylov and Jessica Woodby-Denema recall how astonished they were that Yu appeared so comfortable lying on oath. Yet they had to remain focused on the possibility that the Sungs knew what he was doing.

Digressing away from the trial, Lindorf and Taibbi pick up on the fact that Abacus was prosecuted when the big banks issued $4.8 trillion in fraudulent mortgages. These toxic transactions saw a 555% increase in repossessions, but Neil Barofsky, former head of Mortgage Fraud at the US Attorney's Office, reveals that they couldn't go after them as the collateral consequences for the international financial system were too momentous. Thus, while they wound up paying $110 billion in fines, they received $700 billion in government bailouts. The US economy lost $22 trillion as a result and, with public anger rising, Vance felt that Abacus should have their role in the circus exposed, even though it only had six branches and was the 2651st largest bank in the country. He denies there was any racial motive in victimising the Sungs, even though they were offered no plea bargains or opportunities to pay a fine and move on. As Thomas Sung states, they were told to accept a guilty plea and a fine. But, by standing and fighting, he cast doubt on the motives of the DA's office and the legitimacy of attacking an enterprise situated between a couple of Chinatown noodle bars and a Wall Street behemoth.

As the trial reached Day 12, the prosecution used the office seating plan to insist that Tam must have known what was going on. But customers testify that Yu often met them away from his desk so that he could not be overheard. Indeed, Talkin avers that Wong often refused loans where income couldn't be verified. But Vance declares that Abacus was preying on its clients, even though Sung protests that they had do much to revive a decaying part of the city. Moreover, they had done everything in their power to help find branch manager Carol Lim, after she had absconded with $10 million in 2003. Chang had reported on the run on the bank that left it teetering on the brink of a liquidity crisis before Sung took a bullhorn and reassured customers à la George Bailey.

Hwei Lin was proud of his calmness under pressure, but she admits to disliking banking and wishing that her daughters had not entered its sordid. James sits in on a family pow-wow and Chanterelle voices her frustration at not being listened to because she is the youngest, even though she has knowledge of how Vance operates. During the trial, Jill and Vera tried to juggle daily duties with attending court and they concede that business was slow while Abacus was in the dock. But, as prosecution tried to demonstrate on Day 23 that borrowers like Dong Lin had all behaved honourably in making their applications, the defence proved that many had falsified information and Puvalowski became concerned that the jury would think that the bankers were incompetent for believing so much fabrication. But Sung was also worried that such testimony reflected badly on the Chinese community as a whole.

Yiayang Fan explains that trust rather than paper trails are key to Chinese deal-making and she suggests that many of the borrowers felt they were doing nothing wrong in tweaking the truth while making their applications. She also implies that tax evasion played a key role in the case, as Chinatown's cash economy allowed traders to hide money from the IRS. But Sung didn't feel it was part of his responsibility to police the tax affairs of his clients or to distinguish between gifts and loans. Fan explains that Chinese families are very relaxed about money being repaid, but Greenberg highlights that many of the gift letters they had seized gave bank employees as the donor. But Jill and Vera reveal that he used his Chinese name, Qi Bin Yu, to try and fool them into thinking he was a relative of the gift recipient. He also admitted on the stand that he often tampered with documents after loans had been approved so that he could bypass the system.

But the air of suspicion and uncertainty lingered and impact on the Sung family. Despite knowing her family was innocent, Hwei Lin felt great embarrassment during the trial and often had to bite her tongue when she wanted to shout out to defend the family name in court. Conversely, Thomas remained calm throughout. He is shown chatting with his barber during a haircut and only being bothered by the dryness of the chicken in his sandwich, while the sisters were drawing up a closing statement.

Vance claims that Abacus knowingly sold unsafe transactions to Fannie Mae, who bought them in all innocence. On Day 64, Fannie Mae risk director Susan Roma was cross-examined about the body's ethos and why this prosecution had been brought when only nine of around 3000 loans had been defaulted upon. But, even though Abacus had one of the lowest default rates in the country and Fannie Mae had profited from these deals, the jury was told to concentrate on the fact that many of them had been granted under false pretences and that this was the issue not whether a big institution had lost money. Vance insists that a crime has been committed if he steals from a wallet regardless of whether that money is then repaid. But Jill and Vera see no larceny in helping Fannie Mae make a profit when they had had no knowledge of any fraud and taken steps to remove wrongdoers to ensure their dealings were above board.

Barofsky states that fraud to secure a home might be a crime, but it's not worth wasting state or federal resources to prosecute each case. Vance sniffs at this opinion, but Barofsky suggests this was a butterfly on a wheel case and Puvalowski declares that there wouldn't have been a financial crisis if everyone had been as diligent as Abacus. As a result, he felt there was no point putting Jill on the stand, as Vance and Greenberg hadn't made their case. Wing, however, felt the jury would be swayed by seeing the human face of the company. Following a family conference call (in Jill's absence) it was decided to go to closing statements on Day 67 on 19 May 2015.

In summing up, Puvalowski produces a letter from Fannie Mae to Abacus praising them for being sensitive to the specific needs of Chinatown. He concludes from this that they felt there was no case to argue, but Greenberg counters by saying it is illegal to take risks with other people's money and not tell them. The Sungs dined as a family in a local restaurant before the judge gave instructions to the jury to stick to this case and not try to make a statement about the US banking industry or the effects of the credit crunch.

Deliberations lasted a week, with the jury requesting documents to aid their discussions. The Sungs were asked to attend court each day, with Jill and Vera trying to remain calm while working in their seats. Fuzaylov reveals that one juror wanted to make an example of Abacus on behalf of ordinary people who had been affected by the crisis, while Woodby-Denema discloses that she was one of those who voted for guilty with the jury locked at 8:4 in favour of acquittal. Eventually on Day 10, with one juror needing to see an ailing relative, the judge agreed to force a decision of verdict or mistrial. Woodby-Denema explains that they were instructed to change their minds if they felt the prosecution had failed to make its case on all counts without a shadow of a doubt. And, as a result, Abacus won the day and the Sungs posed for pictures in court to celebrate.

Fuzaylov finds it incredible that Vance felt he had enough evidence to win the case. But, somewhat peevishly, Greenberg insists that Abacus was not exonerated because its guilt had not been conclusively proved. Amusingly, Puvalowski and Wing brand her a graceless loser and few watching this film would disagree that Vance and Greenberg do themselves few favours on camera. In his press interviews after the verdict was handed down, Sung suggested the prosecution had been rooted in prejudice and complained that he and Abacus had been under enormous strain for five years. The victory cost $10 million and Don Lee berates the system for using its power to intimidate the little guy. Sung says going through fire should improve the mettle of his daughters and Jill concludes by hoping she can get back to serving her community.

Closing captions reveal that Vance revoked Ken Yu's witness deal and that he was jailed for six months (with five years probation) for Grand Larceny, Scheme to Defraud and Falsifying Business Records. No other Abacus employee served time and charges against eight were dropped completely. The bank has tightened its compliance practices, but all of the loans cited in the case were either paid off or remain on schedule. But no other bank has been indicted for mortgage fraud. It's not that long ago that the idea of basing a film around a sympathetic banker would have been unthinkable. But Steve James has chosen his subjects wisely, as, while the Sungs are clearly nobody's fools and give little away, they suit the underdog tag. They are canny enough, for example, to play up their status within a tight-knit community and contrast it with the haughty detachment of the establishment suits. But, while their victory makes for deeply satisfying viewing, James might have stamped harder on the fingers of the smugly evasive DA and his team and done more to outline the reaction to their failure and whether they were held to account for the manner in which they pursued the case. He could also have delved a little more deeply into Ken Yu's motivation, while some insight from the odd mainstream financial and/or legal commentator might not have gone amiss.

But, as is always the case, James tells his tale with clarity and control, while capturing the atmosphere of a distinctive locale and making some complex fiscal issues accessible to the novice. One would hope, however, that he would feel compelled to return with a follow-up investigation into Washington's relationship with Wall Street and the wider corporate network. But, if he does, he will have to make his case much more conclusively than he does here and hope that the drama is a touch more provocative. At once glamorous and dangerous, the recklessly derring-do lifestyle of the war photographer has been the subject of several films in recent years, including such documentaries as David and Jacqui Morris's McCullin (2012) and Sebastian Junger's Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013) and fictional offerings starring the likes of Juliette Binoche in Erik Poppe's A Thousand Times Good Night (2013) and Isabelle Huppert in Joachim Trier's Louder Than Bombs (2015). This week, Harold Monfils swells the ranks with A Good Day to Die - Hoka Hey, which profiles Jason P. Howe, a self-taught photographer from Ipswich, whose desire to alert the wider world to the grim realities of combat became corrupted by a growing need to become part of the story.

The film opens with footage of a British army patrol landing by helicopter at Loya Manda in the Nad Ali district of Helmand Province in November 2011. Cutting away to Check Point Karim the following day, Jason Howe recalls the experience of seeing Private Stephen Bainbridge lose his legs after he stepped on an IED at the entrance to a house being searched. Howe had helped carry the stretcher to the chopper and, even though he was dropped twice, Bainbridge was successfully evacuated. A montage of photographs and combat footage are counterpointed by recollections from unseen colleagues on the mission describing how they reacted to the ambush. Howe concludes his piece to camera by noting that this was an odd way to mark his 10th anniversary as a photojournalist.

Prior to this, Howe had been a travel photographer and he explains how he learnt his new trade while embedded with FARC guerillas in Colombia. Having initially been forced to sleep outside the camp, he gained acceptance and took a charming snap of Bernardo and his girlfriend Marie Sól kissing. But, when the peace process broke down, the government gave FARC a day to decamp or face the consequences. Unfortunately, some naive troops detonated a booby-trap placed inside a bus blocking the road and Howe recovered his composure after narrowly missing death to photograph the casualties and he realised later that this was the moment when he realised he had the mettle to do his job.

Fellow shutterbugs Eros Hoagland and Hector Emanuel recall Howe being the bravura type and describe how they were caught in the crossfire when government troops attacked a FARC convoy dealing with some refugees on a country road. Emanuel and Hoagland joined the non-combatants in a neighbouring field, but Howe joined the rebels until he realised that he was the only one being shot at. Relieved to have made it through alive, they all got drunk that night and couldn't wait to do it all over again the next day.

Speaking from his home in Andalusia in 2012, Howe remembers how Tim Page's autobiography had inspired him to venture into war zones and Page admits that his experiences in Vietnam were among the most thrilling of his entire life. Howe was also keen to show off his work and won a prize at the Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, where he was spotted by Seamus Conlan of the World Picture News agency, who became his agent.

Eager to tell the other side of the story, Howe returned to Colombia and went in search of the paramilitaries opposing FARC. He took a telling picture of a frightened young girl on a bus approaching a checkpoint. But another bus encounter near Puerto Asis in Putumayo started a romantic attachment with a village girl named Marilyn, who promised to put Howe in touch with the paramilitaries. Hoagland and Emanuel recall spending a day with her family and how clear it was that Howe wanted more intimacy with Marilyn than the paper thin walls of her parents' home would allow. However, as Howe's Spanish improved, he discovered that his girlfriend was an active participant in the conflict. Eventually, she confessed that she was an assassin and she allowed him to interview her wearing a balaclava to hide her identity.

Yet, even though she had 23 kills to her credit, the excitement of being in what felt like a movie scenario prevented Howe from hearing the alarm bells. Indeed, it was only after the interview was transcribed that he became aware of how cold, calculating and unrepentant she was. She invited him to cover her next mission, but he felt this would condone her actions. But, while Hoagland and Emanuel left town the moment they saw how the locals reacted to Marilyn, Howe stayed behind.

Eventually, Howe took a new assignment in Iraq in 2003 and Catherine Philp, the Middle Eastern Correspondent of The Times, recalls him being a fish out of water when he first arrived, as Iraq was such a different place to Colombia. He was embarrassed by his failure to exploit the discover of Saddam Hussein's spider hole in Ad-Dawr and realised that he had to up his game and dial down the machismo. His approach changed when he was sent into the heartland of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and he learned how to `out-crazy the crazies' by standing up to intimidation and pose as an Irishman when the going got particularly tough.

Argentine journalist Karen Marón recognised Howe's need to be in the heart of the action. It came to his doorstep in November 2005 when the insurgents used car and truck bombs against the hotel in which he was staying. He recalls being pleased the eggs had survived in his fridge, but he twisted both ankles jumping from his balcony into the rubble below and found himself being photographed by journalists from other press corps. In reflecting on this situation, he reveals that suicide bombers often wrapped their genitals in silver foil so they would survive the blast and they would be intact on meeting their promised 72 virgins in paradise.

The next segment rather rushes through Howe's experiences of Route Irish (the highway from the airport to the capital), the pictures squaddies stuck on their bunk walls and the infant cemetery in Baghdad. Philp concurs that the death of children hits home hardest and she pleaded with Howe to take a break. He decided to return to Colombia to check on Marilyn, as he felt guilty at not replying very sympathetically to an e-mail informing him that she was in potential trouble. Her father was surprised to see him and broke the news that she had been exposed as an informer and that her skull had been crushed with rocks before she had been shot, as a warning to others. He placed flowers on her grave with her mother and daughter and built his book, Colombia Between the Lines, around their relationship to give his images a human core.

Shifting the scene back to Camp Bastion in Helmand in November 2011, Howe explains to camera how he had been forced to ask the Ministry of Defence for permission to use his Loya Manda pictures. But, even though Bainbridge was now recovering at Headley Court and had been fascinated by the images, the MoD refused to let the Daily Telegraph print them. This annoyed Howe because he had been thanked by Bainbridge's comrades for helping to carry him, as they tended to feel that journalists were ghouls feeding off their misery rather than making their own contribution to the campaign.

Lurching somewhat, Monfils now takes us to Lebanon in 2006, where Howe, Hoagland and Marón came across a new breed of snap-happy freelancers who refused to respect their subject matter, let alone their peers. Howe denounces them as paparazzi for the dead and dying, while Conlan despairs of these thrill-seekers and suggests their pictures are closer to war porn than reportage. This experience prompted Howe to consider quitting. But, when his sibling, Andrew, was posted to southern Afghanistan, he pitched a `brothers in arms' idea to Arena magazine and he recalls them watching Fawlty Towers together on a portable DVD player when a bomb hit an adjoining building and they carried on viewing after donning their body armour and nodding `Don't mention the war' to each other.

During this period, Howe befriended James Starkey, the Africa correspondent of The Times, who suggests he had set himself the task of taking the picture that encapsulated the war. Ex-soldier AJ Vickers recalls him tagging along with his unit and being determined to show the side of war that the mainstream media so often avoid. Telegraph picture editor Matthew Fearn also thinks that the public paying for the armed forces should see what they are subjected to on the frontline and he persuaded his editor to run the Bainbridge story from injury to rehab.

Brandishing his rights as a freelancer, Howe insists his job is to tell the truth and it was in this frame of mind that he returned to Afghanistan with Telegraph defence correspondent, Thomas Harding. At the last moment, however, the MoD refused permission for Howe to travel and this blacklisting is roundly condemned by all and sundry. But, while Howe remains proud of keeping his promise to tell this story, some of his antics during R&R sessions in Bangkok between 2005-11 are less laudable. Photojournalist Roger Arnold suggested he was safer being shot at by the Taliban than he was among the fleshpots of the Thai capital.

Having been raised as a Jehovah's Witness, Howe has no fear of death and he attributes his success to this phlegmatic state of mind. But losing close friends like doctor Karen Woo (who was murdered by the Taliban for bringing medical supplies to outlying villages) cuts deeply and, over shots of him burning images on a bonfire, Hoagland. Emanuel and Page suggest that he suffers from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and that he needs to find a new path if he is to hold himself together. So, in a bid to find out what the demons pursuing him wanted, Howe took himself to Andalusia to detox with his dogs. Over time, his nightmares merely became weird dreams and crying jags during sentimental movies. But, while he may not be quite ready yet to take his next step, he does want to return to shaking people out of their `horrible little insulated bubbles'.

As the profile ends, Howe is shown snapping a black rhinoceros in the Liwonde National Park in Malawi. However, Monfils wants a shot of the `Hoka hey' tattoo on his right bicep, as this was the phrase meaning `a good day to die' that Chief Crazy Horse supposedly shouted before leading the Lakota Sioux into battle. Howe's reluctance to show it rather sums up the contradictory nature of this modest exhibitionist, who ultimately proves a bit too elusive for the Porguguese director, who hardly helps his cause with the jittery non-linearity of his storytelling.

He makes solid use of Howe's pictures and the archive material. But Howe (who is not the most animated of raconteurs) is given a relatively easy ride when it comes to justifying his actions behind the camera and while partying like Dennis Hopper during the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). No one doubts Howe's courage, conviction, commitment or compassion. But he is too canny an operator to let his defences down and little pressure seems to have been applied to stray off pre-approved topics. Consequently, we are left with the kind of official version that Howe claims to despise.