Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 16/11/2017)

As a storm brews overhead, siblings Henry (Jason Clarke) and Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) dig a grave for their late father, Pappy (Jonathan Banks). They find the chains of a runaway slave buried on their land and Henry has to fetch a ladder to help Jamie clamber out of the hole, as it starts to fill with water. The next day, Henry's wife, Laura (Carey Mulliga), walks behind the coffin with their two daughters and tries to intervene when Henry stops African-American neighbours Hap (Rob Morgan) and Florence Jackson (Mary J. Blige) to ask them to help lower the crude wooden box into the ground.

This opening segment is narrated by Jamie, but the story is taken up by Laura, as we flashback to 1939, when she had first met Henry as a virginal 31 year-old teaching graduate living with her parents in Memphis. He was her brother's new boss and their mother had spent supper extolling her virtues and persuading her to play some hymns on the piano. A bluff man with fewer words than social graces, Henry had started courting Laura and had watched intently as she got to know his actor brother and danced with him at a society gathering, to which he had worn a lounge suit while Jamie had sported white tie and tails. The band, as well as the waiters, had all been black, while the guests had all been white and life in their corner of Mississippi seemed set to follow its familiar path until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) joins the 761st Tank Battalion and Florence concedes in voiceover that she had prayed solely for her son during the conflict, even though she had three other children, Marlon (Frankie Smith), Ruel (Joshua J. Williams) and Lilly May (Kennedy Derosin), who wanted to be a stenographer. Hap dotes sternly on his offspring and curses the fact that his family had been cheated out of the deeds to the land they farmed during the Reconstruction. Consequently, he is a tenant rather than a sharecropper and he is less than amused when Henry fetches up in Marietta as his new landlord a couple of years into the war.

Laura is even less impressed when Henry informs her during a post-coital chat that he has bought a farm and plans to move the family south in the next three weeks. She holds her tongue when she discovers that her bigoted father-in-law will be living with them and that Henry has been conned into putting a down payment on the rental of a large house that already belongs to someone else. But, while she remains calm on seeing the ramshackle property that she will now have to call home, Laura loses her temper when Pappy insists on having a bed in the living room and he winds up in an outhouse so that her piano can bring a civilising touch to the chaos and decay around her.

As his tenant, Hap is dragged from the dinner table to help Henry unload the truck carrying their belongings and he quickly realises that this city slicker is out of his depth when it comes to farming. In voiceover, Henry reveals that Pappy had sold the family farm after the Great Flood of 1927 and he intends to restore his grandfather's pride in the land. But, while he rides his tractor into the fields, Jamie flies a bomber over Europe and Ronsel drives a tank through Belgium. He writes home regularly and even alludes to the warm welcome that black soldiers have received from liberated German frauleins.

While Hap is reading one of these letters to his family, Henry calls to ask Florence to help Laura because Amanda Leigh (Elizabeth Windley) and Isabelle (Piper Blair) have contracted whooping cough. As a midwife whose own mother had been a nanny to the children of a white couple, Florence had always promised that she would devote herself to her own. But, with the bridge down in a storm, she feels she has no option but to go with Henry in the dead of night. She also decides to accept a job as Laura's home help, as they could save her wages and put it towards a plot of land. Having just preached a sermon about breaking the chains of oppression, Hap is against the idea. However, he recognises that his wife is a resourceful woman and he comes to rely on her to tend to the crops after he injures his leg.

His fall from a ladder is cross-cut with Ronsel's tank coming under attack and Jamie being forced to crash land after losing the rest of his crew. Unable to afford a doctor, Hap has to rest in bed and weave baskets to pass the time. But Henry is aware that time is running out to get his fields planted and he visits Hap to badger him about buying a new mule to speed up the seeding. Left with no option than to pay for the beast in instalments, Hap tries to get up to help Florence. But the pain is too severe and he is only helped when Laura learns about his condition and steals money from Henry's safe to pay for his treatment.

With victory secured in Europe, Jamie and Ronsel come home. The former has been drinking heavily to cope with the stress of his bombing raids and he gets into an argument with his father over the scale and nature of his heroism, as Pappy had only killed one German as a Doughboy in 1917-18, while he had slaughtered civilians without being able to look them in the eye. Henry attempts to mediate, but it's clear that tensions are only going to increase while the pair are under the same roof.

A die-hard segregationist, Pappy also has a run-in with Ronsel after he stops him from leaving the store owned by Rose Tricklebank (Kerry Cahill) via the front door. Laura witnesses the showdown, which Henry defuses after Ronsel gives a defiant speech about General Patton having no problem with black soldiers leading the line in whooping the Germans. But Henry calls on the Jacksons that night and demands an apology for Ronsel's arrogance and Hap has no hesitation in ordering his boy to make his peace. He reminds him that he is back in Mississippi, but Ronsel declares that the time for backing down are over.

The next day, Jamie is leaving Tricklebank's when a car backfires and he throws himself to the floor. His neighbours regard him with scorn, as the war hasn't touched them in the slightest. But Ronsel offers a trembling hand and Jamie recognises a fellow veteran and follows a warm handshake by offering Ronsel a lift home in his truck. Under the jaundiced eye of the townsfolk, Ronsel climbs into the back of the vehicle. Once on the road, however, Jamie orders him into the cab and they trade war stories and share a drink before Ronsel gets dropped at his door. Hap is astonished to see such open interaction, but says nothing.

As time passes, Laura becomes pregnant after resuming marital relations with Henry, who had spurned her after she had helped the Jacksons. However, he gets it into his head that something is going on between his wife and brother after he sees they hugging after Laura had woken Jamie from a drunken nightmare. But Laura loses her child after the pregnant Vera Attwood (Lucy Faust) - who had once pleaded with her to dissuade Henry from firing her husband, Carl (Dylan Arnold) - murders her spouse and the shock of seeing Vera coming towards the house with a knife had caused Laura to miscarry. Florence comes to minister to her and confides that she had endured the same pain and Laura clings to her, as she sobs in grief and despair.

Ronsel buys his mother a bar of chocolate and insists that she eats it herself, while Jamie builds Laura an outdoor shower so she doesn't have to put up with the indignity of Pappy staring at her during her Saturday bath. The friends also spend a lot of time together at an abandoned farm and knock back the booze while reminiscing about the European girls they met and the sense of purpose that they had in uniform. Hap lectures Ronsel about rising late and leaving his siblings to do the chores and Florence suggests that it would be kinder to let him leave and start up on his own. But Hap promises that he will help the boy make a life for himself, as they dance by moonlight on the porch.

Henry is also getting tired of Jamie mooching around and is ashamed of him when he nearly steers their car into the creek while coming home intoxicated. When Jamie knocks over a pail of milk, however, Henry squares up to him and knocks him down into the mud. Jamie gets up to hold his ground, but Henry orders him to leave and never come back. While Henry is away on business, Jamie goes to see Ronsel and asks about the worst thing he has ever done. Ronsel shows him a photograph of the baby delivered by his German lover, Resl (Samantha Hoefer), and he admits to being torn about what to do for the best. The pair shake hands, as Jamie thanks Ronsel for being a friend and he urges him to go back to Europe and make a fresh start.

However, he leaves the snapshot on the front seat of the truck, where Pappy finds it after slapping Jamie around and accusing him of cuckolding his brother. Laura is dismayed to learn that Henry has sent Jamie away and she kisses him and they make passionate love. But Pappy wakes his son from his slumbers and drags him into the barn, where his Ku Klux Klan pals have brought Ronsel after catching him on the open road. He has been badly beaten and is kneeling with a noose around his neck when Pappy shows the assembled the damning photographic evidence of his miscegenation.

Jamie speaks up for him and tries to use reverse psychology by suggesting that Ronsel defiled Resl as an act of anti-fascist heroism. But Pappy refuses to listen and, when Jamie grabs a gun and points it at his forehead, he mocks him for his inability to kill anyone up close. The KKK men wrestle him to the ground and force him to choose whether Ronsel should be punished by losing his eyes, tongue or genitals. He strains to remain silent, as his head is held so that he has to watch his friend suffering. But, as Ronsel is cut down by his family and cleaned up by his mother, Jamie smothers his father with a pillow in the night and, when Henry returns the following morning, Laura breaks the news the Pappy passed away peacefully in his sleep.

We return to the opening scene of Henry asking Hap for help lowering the coffin into the ground and he climbs down from his cart loaded up with his belongings. He speaks at the graveside, quoting a passage from Scripture warning that not all men will enjoy eternal life. As he returns to his family, Jamie walks away from his and he is seen besuited in Los Angeles looking up an old service buddy. While his family settle into their new farm, Ronsel (who had been lying inside the cart when Henry had waylaid his father) heads to Germany to surprise Resl and their boy. As the film ends, father and son embrace and the now mute Ronsel declares in voiceover that love has somehow managed to triumph after all.

Retaining the novel's Faulkner-meet-Malick use of separate narratorial perspectives, Dee Rees and co-scenarist Virgil Williams (a veteran of episodic television drama) present their complex tale with a literate elegance that contrasts tellingly with the milieux captured by production designer David J. Bomba and cinematographer Rachel Morrison, as the monied refinement of Memphis gives way to the hardscrabble realities of the Delta. The effect is like listening to John Steinbeck over a montage of Walker Evans photographs or the artworks of Whitfield Lovell and Mose Tolliver, as Rees explores themes recently covered with equal potency in Jeff Nichols's Loving (2016).

But, while it errs towards melodrama in places, this is a much more persuasive recreation of the Jim Crow-inspired tensions that gripped the United States in the middle of the last century, if only because the bigots led by the chillingly good Jonathan Banks are so much more terrifying in their rapid hatred and sickening brutality. The KKK barn sequence is particularly horrifying, if only because events over the past 18 months have suggested that such a mood remains current in certain rundown quarters of the country and that it wouldn't take much of a spark to ignite the powder keg.

Having made a mark with her pre-Moonlight lesbian drama, Pariah (2011), and an HBO Bessie Smith biopic, Bessie (2015), Rees is clearly a fearless film-maker and it would be harsh in the extreme if she failed to join the select band of women who have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. Budgetary restrictions obviously forced her to make compromises in shooting the unconvincing combat sequences, particularly when inside the cockpit of Garrett Hedlund's XB-51 bomber. But she makes atmospheric use of the cramped interiors of the McAllan and Jackson shacks and unflinchingly conveys the sense of struggle that each family faces in making anything grow on soil that is either parched or sodden. With the exception of a few cotton plants, we see next to nothing growing in these fields and this makes each setback feel like a hammer blow.

If the script (which also incorporates some stories supplied by Rees's grandmother) does have a weakness, it lies in the characterisation, as none of the principals is presented in much depth and Carey Mulligan occasionally over-reaches in trying to make Laura seem less of a cipher, as she shakes off her own shackles and self-image doubts and begins to assert herself and act upon her own desires. By contrast, R&B singer Mary J. Blige (whose eyes are often hidden behind rimless sunglasses that are something of an affectation) underplays to the point of opacity, unlike Jason Clarke and Rob Morgan, who deliver textbook portrayals of what are essentially master and servant types. Jonathan Banks is also asked to play something of a caricature, but he does it with a seething menace that reinforces how prevalent and entrenched his poisonous prejudices are.

In many ways, Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell are also required to play variations on familiar sorts. But it's the ease of their rapport that makes their scenes so fascinating, especially after the tank sergeant lets his guard down because he realises that the bomber captain needs someone to talk to about his experiences as much as he does. Having expanded their horizons, the pair share a sense of being trapped in a rural backwater whose insular inhabitants have no concept of what they have been through fighting for the liberty that they take so much for granted that they are ready to abuse it. Yet in becoming so relaxed in each other's company, they become complacent and fail to notice the ripples that their flaunted bond are causing.

Rees might have dwelt more on the backbreaking effort involved in farming, but, despite the occasional swelling of Tamar-kali's score, she avoids sentimentalising life on the land and anticipating feminist mores. Moreover, she and editor Mako Kamitsuna make some judicious comparisons between fighting on the front line and the home front. But, apart from the odd scene outside the store, they never quite succeed in capturing the racial make-up of Marietta or the layout of its surrounding farms. Thus, the McAllans and Jacksons sometimes sit in a glorious isolation that makes the climactic eruption of KKK savagery feel as forced as it is inevitable.

The plays of William Shakespeare have long provided film-makers with inspiration. Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa kept returning to the First Folio, with Throne of Blood (1957), The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Ran (1985) being respectively based on Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear. The Scottish play has also been reworked in Ken Hughes's Joe MacBeth (1955) and Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool (2003), while the Elsinore saga resurfaced in Edgar G. Ulmer's Strange Illusion (1945) and Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business (1982). Lear has been relocated to Iowa and Liverpool for Jocelyn Moorhouse's A Thousand Acres (1997) and Don Boyd's My Kingdom (2001), while London and Villepreux replaced Venice as the setting for the Othello-like scenarios in Basil Dearden's All Night Long (1962) and Claude Chabrol's Ophelia (1963).

Elsewhere, Romeo and Juliet (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story, 1961), Henry IV (Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, 1991), The Taming of the Shrew (Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999) and Twelfth Night (Andy Fickman's She's the Man, 2004) have all been re-imagined in modern settings. Perhaps The Tempest has been most imaginatively rethought in Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956) and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1996). But first-time solo director Shakirah Bourne has largely been content to make the odd tweak in bringing A Midsummer Night's Dream to Barbados in A Caribbean Dream.

As Theseus (Aden Gillett) returns to his Bajan home to marry Hippolyta (Sonia Williams), he is asked by Egeus (Anthony Troulan) to speak to his daughter, Hermia (Marina Bye), about her refusal to marry Demetrius (Sam Gillett) because of her fixation on Lysander (Jherad `Lord Zenn' Alleyne). Aware of the rumour that Helena (Keshia Pope) has designs on Demetrius, Theseus urges Hermia to think carefully about committing to a relationship that could cost her dear. But she decides to elope and tells Helena that she is leaving the way clear for her to make a play for Demetrius.

Meanwhile, Theseus has announced a talent contest to help celebrate his nuptials and a group of fishermen from Six Men's Bay decide to enter, with a production of a new play entitled, The Untold Love Story of King Ja Ja and Young Becka. Peter Quince (Simon Alleyne) appoints himself director and he casts Bottom (Lorna Gayle) as King Ja Ja and has to persuade her to focus on her own part rather than also try to play the roles given to Hook (Angelo Lascelles), Line (Ishiaka McNeil) and Sinker (Matthew Murrell).

As night falls, the fairies come out in the woods and King Oberon (Adrian Green) berates his queen, Titania (Susannah Harker), for refusing to hand over a young boy (Mikkel Broby) she has taken under her wing. Therefore, he orders his mischievous servant, Puck (Patrick Michael Foster), to source a flower whose essence has the power to make a slumbering soul fall in love with the first living creature it sees upon waking. Oberon touches Titania's eyes as she sleeps and she is woken by the sound of Bottom singing nearby. The fishermen have come into the forest to rehearse their play, but Puck has turned Bottom into a donkey and it's in this guise that he enchants Titania when she stirs.

While Bottom is led away by fairy acolytes Peasblossom (Shakira Forde), Cobweb (Kaya Bellori). Moth (Tiffany Skinner) and Mustardseed (Shannon Arthur), Oberon overhears Helena pleading with Demetrius to accept her devotion. The king commands Puck to coat the youth's eyes so that he becomes besotted with Helena. But the sprite mistakes the couple for Hermia and Lysander, who are sleeping at a chaste distance from each other in a glade, having got lost during their flight from Egeus. Thus, when Lysander wakes on hearing Helena's voice, he is transfixed by her and Oberon is furious with Puck for having made such a foolish mistake.

In a bid to rectify the situation, Oberon puts the spell on Demetrius and orders Puck to bring Helena to his side. But, while Demetrius becomes instantly smitten with Helena, Lysander feels slighted and brushes Hermia aside when she demands to know why he suddenly has the hots for Helena. As the men fight, Hermia tries to scratch out Helena's eyes and Puck watches on in bafflement at the oddness of human behaviour. However, he also grabs a picture on his phone so Oberon can see Titania canoodling with the asinine Bottom. The king is pleased with this outcome, but he dispatches Puck to lift the curse from Lysander. On his return, Oberon uses the flower to restore Titania's vision and they embrace, as Bottom is restored to normal while he dozes.

Following a downpour that clears the air, Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus come across the young lovers spooning on the edge of the woods. As Demetrius insists that his love for Hermia has melted away like the snow, Theseus suggests a triple wedding and, later that afternoon, the brides and grooms leave the church to the cheers of the locals. However, the talent show laid on by events manager Phil (Levi King) proves less successful and the bored Theseus selects Quince's players in the hope of livening up proceedings. He is rewarded by Bottom and Hook inexpertly exchanging words of love through Sinker's galvanised fence panel before tragedy overcomes them hard by Line's Emancipation Statue.

With the revelries over, the newlyweds repair to bed with the blessing of Oberon and Titania. Surveying the scene, Puck asks forgiveness if the play has offended and reminds viewers that it has been nothing but a dream. As, indeed, it proves, when the young boy who has been fought over by the fairy monarchs wakes on the beach beneath a fishing net blanket to the sound of the gently lapping waves.

Conceived and adapted by Shakirah Bourne and Melissa Simmonds, this may not be the most polished Shakespearean palimpsest to ever reach the screen. But it's certainly one of the most charming, as it reflects the amdram willingness of the rude mechanicals in bringing a little Bajan spirit to the fantasy. Despite the exotic setting and the carnivalesque atmosphere, Bourne and cinematographer Robin Whenary resist the temptation to over-foreground Barbados, although the lilting tunes dotting Andre Woodvine's score serve as a recurring reminder of the milieu, alongside Leandro Soto's thoughtful production design. Bourne similarly reflects on the island's colonial legacy in making all three romances inter-racial and in having Theseus's domestic staff double up as Oberon and Titania's retinue. She also allows herself a little political joke by having the fishermen keep referring to the Bridgetown monument of Bussa the slave breaking his chains as the `Constipation' rather than the `Emancipation' statue.

As is often the case with this play, Peter Quince and his pals steal the show, with the larger-than-life Lorna Gayle revelling in the role of Bottom. If she evokes memories of James Cagney as the energetic weaver in William Dieterle's 1935 adaptation for Warner Bros, Patrick Michael Foster suggests how Quentin Crisp might have played Puck. Susannah Harker is also suitably regal as Titania. By comparison, the love-crossed quartet seem a little stiff, as do their elders. But the exuberance of the material and the novelty of Bourne's approach ensure that this remains delightfully amusing, particularly in the kitschily cartoonish depiction of the startling impact of the potion, as it epitomises the cheap-and-cheerful way in which costumiers Leandro Soto and Luna Blandford and special effects artists Dan Pryor and Berta Valverde made light of their meagre resources.

As mentioned in last week's review of Kate Brooks's The Last Animals, we return to the complex issue of wildlife conservation in Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau's Trophy, which seems set to spark as much heated debate as Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani's The Ivory Game (2016). Examining the impact that hunters, poachers, philanthropists and NGOs are having on the fight to save a growing number of species from extinction, this is a documentary that presents conflicting arguments without proffering any solutions of its own. But, while some may discard this as an instance of infomercial fence-sitting, Schwarz and Clusiau succeed in demonstrating that there are no easy answers when it dollars speak louder than sense.

Somewhere in Texas, sheep breeder Philip Glass takes his son Jasper to a hide in order to shoot his first deer. The boy is excited and talks like a veteran hunter who considers life cheap. Bristling with a sense of entitlement, he holds up the antlers of his kill to pose for photographs, as his father gushes with pride that his boy has bagged his first trophy.

In South Africa, John Hume and his team ride across the veldt in search of a rhinoceros requiring its biennial horn shearing. Having tranquilised the magnificent beast, a ranger saws off the horn in order to make it less prone to poaching. Hume considers this sacrifice a small price to pay for survival and declares that no species has ever become extinct while a farmer is profiting from it. A caption informs us that rhino numbers have declined from 500,000 in 1900 to under 30,000 today. However, this is hardly surprising, as over 60% of the world's wild animals have disappeared since 1970.

Showing off the black-headed lambs he breeds, Glass scoffs at those who sentimentalise animals and view them as pets. He considers this mentality to be infantile and baldly states that domesticated creatures exist solely to be bred and eaten. This approach is shared by Christo Gomes, a hunting outfitter who runs Mabula Pro Safaris outside the South African town of Bela-Bela. His rangers are shown capturing and measuring a furious crocodile prior to its relocation. Reminding us that animals remain wild in captivity, Gomes insists that their purpose is to improve human life, whether they are being viewed, cooked or skinned for clothing. He takes the camera on a tour of the Safari Club International Convention in Las Vegas, as four snarling stuffed lions are being arranged for a display. Joe Hosmer explains that there are 2000 stalls in the vast hall and admits that it might seem odd for hunters and conservationists to share an event. Yet every penny raised from the $50,000 auction of an elephant hunt will be reinvested in Africa. Despite his reassurances, however, the sight of a table made from a rearing crocodile and the braying of two women announcing their plans to kill a croc and a zebra leave the impression that the majority of delegates are simply seeking an experience to boast about on social media rather than showing a concern for the long-term welfare of animals in the wild.

Reiterating this sentiment, Adam Roberts, the CEO of Born Free USA, reveals that clients can book any kind of hunt they want and can even select the species, age and fur colour of their quarry. Ecologist Craig Packer denounces the convention as a meat market and describes how people are willing to pay big bucks to land the Big Five of a buffalo, a leopard, an elephant, a lion and a rhino. He curses the macho kudos that such hunters acquire, but being known in the hunting community inspires Glass, who is fretting about a potential ban on shooting lions and decides to step up his training by visiting a facility that mounts buffalo and elephant heads on to pulley-powered targets to hone his reflexes.

In a den filled with animal trophies and a poster for Osama bin-Laden. Tim Fallon, a hunting instructor at the SAAM Safari School, proclaims his excitement at helping people prepare for the trip of a lifetime. He guides Glass through a session in a mocked-up wilderness, where he whoops with delight at feeling the adrenaline rush and admits that he hasn't experienced hunter's remorse since he was a kid. But, while Glass prattles on about realising his dream, Fallon insists that animals need to be managed, as their terrain is being reduced by mankind. In his eyes, while they may be enjoying their sport, hunters are also performing an important ecological task in helping to keep down the excess number of elephants in places like Botswana.

Clearly seeing himself on some sort of heroic mission, Glass lands in Namibia and tells a story about defying his mother to shoot a red bird. He recalls loving it as much dead as he had done when it was alive and concludes that his respect for Nature in all its forms has subsequently prevented him from having a conscience about killing, especially as he is only out to kill one each of the Big Five rather than slaughter them en masse. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that a species could still be wiped out one bullet at a time, but Glass is not a deep thinker for all his protestations of being someone who has delved into the subject of hunting.

His attitude contrasts markedly with that of Hume, who is distraught at having to build a funeral pyre for the mother of a two year-old rhino calf whose frightened whimpering is heartbreaking. He damns the poachers who orphaned this vulnerable creature and, yet, still saws off the horn rather than leaving it to burn with the carcass. Under Hume, the Buffalo Dream Ranch near Kierksdorp has amassed the world's largest private collection of rhinos and he tries to breed 200 a year in order to maintain his stocks. Vet Michelle Otto commends his efforts and hopes more people will follow suit and open their own sanctuaries.

But Hume's motives are not wholly philanthropic, as he is well aware of the value of rhino horn and the fact that there are more people in Asia who believe in its healing power than there are Christians. He deplores poaching because the animal is invariably killed during the robbery, whereas he uses humane methods to sedate creatures that he hopes will keep on supplying him with horn for many years to come. Son Richard approves of his father's methods and they curse the fact that it is currently illegal to trade in rhino horn in South Africa because of a government moratorium. They argue that the shortage caused by this ban has led to an increase in poaching and a dramatic depletion in numbers, while they have 40 tons of horn stockpiled in a maximum security facility with a market value in excess of $60 million.

The notion that rhino horn is worth more than gold or heroin is staggering, but the statistics provided in the next caption make for even more dismaying reading. In 2007, only 13 rhinos were poached in South Africa. However, this figure increased to 83 in 2008, 122 in 2009, 333 in 2010, 448 in 2011, 668 in 2012, 1004 in 2013 and 1215 in 2014 and Hume is convinced that poaching would stop if the trade was legalised, as no one would want kill the goose that lays the golden egg. His logic seems sound, but wildlife charities worldwide decry it, as the animals would be removed from their natural habitats and would, therefore, cease to be wild.

The ironically named Captive Strip in Namibia is one of the few areas in Africa without fences and hunter Gysbert Van der Westhuyzen reassures us that Glass will have to work hard for his trophy in this kind of environment, as it has been designed to give the animal a chance while also giving the visitor a thrill. As he has been planning this trip for 18 months, Glass feels he has earned the right to walk-and-stalk the terrain and pull the trigger. He tries to describe how anticipation turns to joy and then relief after a creature buckles. But nothing beats touching a kill for the first time and making it your own. On this occasion, however, Glass is prevented from shooting a bull elephant because it is too young. This doesn't stop him from lining up the creature in his sights in order to reassert his sense of power as to whether it lives or dies.

Roberts laments that hunting has long been a test of manhood and, over monochrome images of Teddy Roosevelt with a rifle in his hand, he despairs that British and American males with more money than brains come to African in search of a life-defining adventure. He finds triumphalist literary accounts of bagging a trophy nauseating and trashes the myth that hunting is part of the conservation industry. Packer agrees that the new breed of `shooter' doesn't want to see majestic creatures in the wild or savour the spirit of exploration in travelling to remote forests and jungles. They simply view an animal head as a commodity to hang on the wall for their friends to admire and will make a dash for Africa as soon as their permits arrive and head home the moment they have their bounty. In his view, this isn't hunting, it's designer killing.

Mabula Pro Safaris operates according to the pen principle. Thus, we get to see a group of Africans throwing rocks into a pond to force a crocodile into the open so that a man can shoot it in front of his female companions. He proves an inexpert marksman and has to put his beer down in order to take proper aim. When the crocodile swims away and slithers on to the opposite bank, the park rangers capture it and bind its jaws so that the heroic huntsman can fire a bullet into its brain and pump his fist and emit a volley of expletives, as though he has accomplished something monumentally brave. As he rides back to the compound, the unnamed American sees white lions in an enclosure and asks how much it would cost to add one of them to his bill. He sniggers when he is informed that Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer paid $50,000 to gun down Cecil the lion in 2015, and one of the women jokes that she would need to extend his trophy room if he ever added a giraffe to the warthogs and baboons he has already bagged.

Such insufferably boorish behaviour will only make the hunting constituency seem more loathsome to many. But Gomes, a former cattleman who realised that there was a fortune to be made from customising safaris, regards such yahoos as valued customers. He takes us on a tour of his estate and confides the importance of providing clients with an authentic experience. Hence he has constructed a drinking hole to accommodate those who want to pick off their prey while they are going about their everyday activities. He has also opened a taxidermy workshop to that guests can pose with their trophies in the safe knowledge that everything has been carefully labelled so that animals can't be mixed up. One visitor kisses his wife beside his stuffed prize and quickly consults his phone to see if oil prices have risen sufficiently for him to nab another before he heads home.

This philistinic ostentation will rile the vast majority of viewers. But Gomes thrives on such vulgar braggadocio and he attends the Stud Game Breeders auction in the hope of improving his bloodlines. Pecker dismisses his intentions as capitalist cynicism, however, as safari owners have realised that they can make more money with buffalo or sable antelope than ordinary cattle and have now started breeding them with outsize antlers to make them more desirable to trophy hunters. Yet ranchers returning wild animals to land that they had once cleared to rear cattle are boosting numbers and, ironically, there are now more lions in South Africa than there were a century ago. Thus, farming wild animals might just be a feasible option in the race to save them. But this solution becomes harder to swallow when Gomes presents pictures of a buffalo that had sired over 50 offspring before he was sold to a Canadian client for `harvesting'. He suggests that the animal's legacy is honoured each time the hunter shows off his trophy and he asks for filming to stop when he becomes overwhelmed by the thought of all the creatures he has loved and let go when the time was right.

Many will see these as crocodile tears, but there is no doubting the exhilaration that Glass feels when he kills his elephant. He sees no shame in the fact that he felled it as it was running away and takes the congratulations of his aides, as the creature bellows in agony before Glass unloads another bullet into his chest and takes a well-earned cigarette break as his victim lets out a long sigh of expiratory pain. With incredible patience, Glass lingers while the wounds are cleaned up so that he can pose for photographs. As plaintiff strings lament on the soundtrack, Van der Westhuyzen mumbles his regret that Glass had chosen such a young animal before an aerial shot looks down on the carcass in a little patch of scrub. The savage pointlessness of the kill is inescapable, as, even though claims could be made about over-population, this particular elephant lost its life to satiate a buffoon's bloodlust. As the horror of the previous scene sinks in, a caption reveals that elephant numbers have fallen from 10 million in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1979 and 350,000 in 2015. Eleven hundred elephants are legally hunted in Africa each year, but a further 30,000 are poached for their tusks. As villagers inspect the carcass of Glass's elephant, some mourn the fact it had not fully grown. But one man is glad to see the back of it, as it had been stealing his watermelons. Van der Westhuyzen explains that the locals had once poached elephants for their meat, but they have now been taught that they are more valuable alive. Nevertheless, they crowd in, as the elephant's ears are sliced off and its body is hacked to pieces with an axe. Moreover, they all grab their share of the spoils and one fellow grumbles that Glass should have killed a full-size bull so that there would be more to go around.

Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley, wildlife officer Chris Moore visits a village in which five goats have been mauled by a lion. The residents are aware that it's illegal to kill lions, but they are afraid and some have started keeping their cows in their house in order to protect them. Moore admits that he often has to take tough decisions, but would always conclude that a dead lion is preferable to a dead human. He claims it's all part of life and that wild animals are predators who will kill domesticated animals. Colleague Charles Khumalo is more openly conflicted, as he sympathises with people who are being told to stop poaching after their livelihoods have been destroyed.

Back in Kierksdorp, Hume finds some butchered female rhinos. Two were pregnant, while another was with her calf. He despairs that they have been gunned down in cold blood when they might have gone on to produce many more babies. Some of his neighbours question his tactics and Hume becomes animated as he insists that legal trading in rhino horn would put the poachers out of business. But the stark truth about why locals risk their life and liberty to poach is laid bare when Moore raids a village and tries to intimidate a suspect's wife into revealing where her husband keeps his guns. He lectures the villagers that they face long jail sentences if they are caught, but he also worries that the balance between human dignity and species survival also needs to be maintained.

Hume suspects that one of his own security team has been assisting the poachers and this is confirmed by the police. Li Lotriet offers to provide a better service, as Hume reveals that he has over $50 million in trying to protect his rhinos with choppers, alarmed fences and an elite response unit. He wants to teach the poachers a lesson not to mess with him, but Lotriet urges caution. As Hume scratches a young rhino who clearly enjoys the fuss, his sister Pam praises his ranching efforts and Richard promises to do all he can to build on his legacy. But he knows that his father receives regular death threats and is concerned that he will run out of money unless he can start dealing the horn in his warehouse. So, having raised $24 million by selling one of his safari resorts, Hume launches a campaign to persuade the South African government to lifr the ban to ensure he can remain in business and keep the poachers at bay. On the Zambezi, Moore describes ambushing some poachers during a midnight sting. He also recalls having to shoot a rogue elephant and wonders whether hunters become addicted to the sense of tension they must feel while stalking their prey and the relief they experience when their mission is over. Despite celebrating his birthday, the sole sensation that Glass feels is frustration that a petty bureaucrat in Africa has dared to deprive him of his inalienable right as a citizen of the United States to kill a lion by placing the species on the endangered list. Such Trumpist fulminating only serves to make Glass more resistible. But the South African Predator Association is also unhappy with Pretoria because 70% of hunters come from the US and Canada and SAPA President Pieter Potgieter asserts that his industry will die unless hunters are given free access to lions that they will have to cull themselves and sell their bones for a fraction of the fees that foreigners are prepared to pay to hunt them.

Gomes concurs that animals only have a value as trophies, as they are otherwise too expensive to keep. But Will Travers, the CEO of Born Free, says that Cecil helped create a groundswell among social media types raised on The Lion King. A witty YouTube bowdlerisation of Disney mocking Palmer as a swaggering popinjay is shown alongside raving denunciations, which serve to show how the modern media works. But the furore persuaded the three largest US airlines to ban carrying trophies back from Africa and Travers hopes that the big companies involved in the hunting chain will step back from the negative publicity and dent the industry's allure.

Travers considers Hume to be more interested in profit than conservation and we see a street demonstration in London against his rhino ranch. The pair debate before an audience and there seems little sympathy for Hume's approach, as Travers condemns the mantra, `if it pays, it stays'. A shot of a man in a cherry picker tossing meat over the fence into a lion enclosure at Gomes's compound seems to back up this view of commodified Nature. But, as a rhino roams freely on Hume's property, the direct comparison between the two business plans seems hard to draw.

The scene shifts to the High Court in Pretoria, where Isabel Goodman struggles to make her case while representing the Minister of the Environment, as the judges find it baffling that evidence that the moratorium has led to an escalation in poaching isn't regarded as a bad thing by the ministry. Mike Maritz for Hume declares it despicable that the minister is willing to let his client offer rhinos for hunting, but not for him to sell horn and keep the beasts alive.

At the Vegas convention, protesters accuse hunters of greenwashing their psychosis and Glass grins from a distance as he watches fellow hunters being accused of being murderers. As he mingles with the demonstrators, he calls himself `a conservation hunter' and swears that he is helping fund the conservancies. But one man confronts him and states that he is merely fostering corruption among those interested in profit.

Packer opines that animal rights groups tend to be naive in their advocacy, as they focus on the creatures being protected in reserves while ignoring the forests that are being chopped down around them and driving lions and elephants into the space that indigenous peoples need for their crops. He suggests that Western do-gooders and Africans living with reality have different value systems and seems to draw the conclusion that vehement opposition to hunting misses the point, as does the hunting lobby's claim that they are the last legitimate conservationists. In his eyes, the real issue is that corrupt governments are destroying their countries in return for corporate cash. Back in Zimbabwe, Moore admits that it seems perverse that his anti-poaching unit exists to preserve wildlife for hunters to kill. But that is his reality and he would rather have carefully monitored hunting than unrestricted poaching with no sense of control.

While others struggle with their consciences, Glass returns to African to claim his lion. He gloats about having killed a hippopotamus basking in a lake and it's sickening to watch this noble creature recoil and sink beneath the water so that a jackass can feel good about himself. In order to lure the lion into the open, impala are hauled into trees as bait, as Glass quotes Scripture in proclaiming that God gave Man dominion over all the animals and that it would be disrespecting the Creator if we didn't show our appreciation by killing them. Such terrifying logic reveals much about the American conservative psyche, particularly when Glass denounces those who believe in evolution as fools who are too arrogant to recognise that God created everything in the heavens and on the earth. As he sits in a jeep waiting for his team to set up a hide, Glass reminisces about childhood hunts with his father, when he had been forced to work things out for himself rather than having someone else flush out his quarry so all he had to do was pull the trigger. Oblivious to the irony, he tears up in thanking his father for the valuable lessons he had taught him. But, rather than witnessing Glass claim more undeserved glory, the co-directors cut away to taxidermist Travis Courtney putting the finishing touches to a lion. He dabs at the eyes, as he laments the desecration of natural habitats, as animals are invariably driven into human areas, where they will always come off second best. Continuing to work, he dismisses the absurd medical fallacies that cost so many creatures their lives and ponders the possibility that animals will ultimately be kept in zoos and museums. This thought saddens him, but it also inspires him to do justice to each animal he stuffs, as it might turn out to be the last record of its existence.

John Hume feels sure that rhinos know they are endangered and places the blame squarely on humankind for doing too little to help people like him save them from extinction. Back in the jungle, Glass bags his lion and sobs as he crouches beside it. He strokes its mane and examines its paws and seems awed by the beauty of the creature he has just massacred. As he remarks upon the red and black in the fur, the camera fixes on the glassy stare of the lion's eye. But Glass is quick to shift the focus back on to himself, as he gives the carcass a proprietorial slap and hollers that no African bureaucrat is going to take his trophy away from him.

A closing caption reveals that Hume won his case and that it's now legal to sell rhino horn within South Africa. However, opportunities to ship to the booming markets in Asia are still restricted and the future of his ranch remains in doubt. As for Glass, he only needs a rhinoceros to complete his Big Five. Few will wish him well in his endeavours after watching this sobering documentary, as even though Schwarz and Clusiau set him up as the villain of the piece, Glass keeps making it difficult to take him seriously, let alone to respect his standpoint.

Christo Gomes also struggles to make a morally credible case, but John Hume's rhino initiative appears rooted in a sincere desire to do the right thing and, on the evidence presented here, many will find it hard to fathom the intransigent hostility of his opponents. But that is the key to this carefully constructed and often compelling study of the moral contradictions thrown up by these emotive issues, as it's hard to see how meaningful solutions can emerge from such entrenched positions. One can only hope that the ominous ticking of the eco clock will focus minds before it's too late for so many precious species.

Two documentaries examine the impact of the Hillsborough Disaster this week. But, while the loss of 96 Liverpool supporters adds a dash of poignancy to 89, Dave Stewart's account of Arsenal's dramatic 1988-89 title win, it forms a crucial part of a wider picture of tragedy in Stewart Sugg's Kenny, as Kenny Dalglish had the misfortune to be in the dugout in Sheffield after having been on the pitch in Brussels four years earlier and in the stands in Glasgow in 1971, when 39 and 66 more fans lost their lives after leaving home to watch a football match.

Opening on 22 February 1991 with Kenny Dalglish's shock resignation as manager of Liverpool Football Club, Chapter One:, `When You Walk Through a Storm'', takes us back to 29 May 1985 when the Reds played Juventus in the final of the European Cup at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Fans were already aware that this was to be Joe Fagan's last game in charge and hopes were high that his all-conquering team would give him a rousing send-off. What they didn't know is that the board had already approached the team's iconic No.7 to be his successor.

Teammate Alan Hansen recalls wandering around the stadium in the shadow of the Atomium and being surprised to find a half-brick from the crumbling terraces on the pitch. Dalglish had also been concerned about the fact that a large contingent of Juventus fans had found their way into what was supposed to be a neutral zone between the two sets of supporters. Peter Hooton (the lead singer of The Farm and a ubiquitous figure in LFC documentaries) recalls that many in the Liverpool contingent feared that trouble would erupt and Phil Scrafton (the author of Hillsborough: The Truth) describes how a wall collapsed after a wave of Liverpool fans charged across the terracing.

Watching from the main stand, Marina Dalglish remembers hearing that there were casualties and John Barnes asks Dalglish and Hansen about how they felt about being made to play in the knowledge that people had lost their lives. Goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar remembers walking on to the pitch and seeing the evidence of carnage in one corner. Dalglish admits to playing in a daze because no one knew the full facts and it scarcely seemed to matter that Juve won 1-0 after the dubious award of a penalty for a trip outside the box on Zbigniew Boniek. As Barry Davies averred at the end of his BBC commentary, football didn't matter much in the face of such a tragedy.

Marina recalls going shopping the next day with a sense of shame and Scrafton reveals that Heysel had a dreadful impact on both the club (which was barred from all European competition for five years) and its following, as it had acquired a reputation for violence after previously being known for its good humour and banter. It was in this atmosphere that Dalglish took the reins as player-manager at the age of 34. But he was more concerned with the families of those who had lost loved ones and vowed to make the best of the hand he had been dealt.

As we learn in Chapter Two, `Walk On, Walk On', this steel was instilled in the young Kenny Dalglish by his parents in the East End of Glasgow in the 1950s. He returns to the family home in Dalmarnock to meet his sister, Carol, and they reminisce about their happy childhood. Dalglish was taught to kick a ball as soon as he could walk and he played after school with his pals and followed his father in supporting Rangers. Indeed, they had been in the crowd at the Old Firm game at Ibrox on 2 January 1971 when a late Colin Stein equaliser for the home team had caused to a surge of fans trying to get back into the ground around Stairway 13 and 66 fans were killed in the resulting crush. As Dalglish rightly says, there but for the grace of God went he. But what Sugg doesn't mention that the youngest fan to perish that day was a nine year-old Liverpudlian named Patrick Pickup, who was attending his first match with his stepfather.

Shortly afterwards, the Dalglish family moved to a block of flats overlooking the Rangers training ground. But, as Sir Alex Ferguson remembers, Sean Fallon, Jock Stein's assistant at Celtic, had been keeping tabs on his schoolboy progression and Dalglish had no hesitation in signing for the Parkhead club in May 1967 after Fallon had come to the house and left his wife and kids in the car for an hour while he negotiated a deal. Over a soft-focus reconstruction of the meeting, Dalglish remembers his father refusing to remove a photo of Rangers captain from the mantelpiece. But nothing is said about Celtic's European Cup triumph that spring or how Dalglish was able to bridge the religious divide that existed between the two clubs. Moreover, there's no mention of the fact that he had failed to impress fellow Scot Bill Shankly while on trial at Anfield the previous year.

But details are not Sugg's strong suit and he overlooks both the successful season-long loan that Dalglish had at Cumbernauld United and the stint he enjoyed in the Celtic reserve team that was so good it had earned the nickname `the Quality Street Gang'. However, Dalglish recalls Stein informing him that he would be making his debut against Hamilton Academical in the Scottish League Cup and jokes that Lisbon Lion Bobby Murdoch had noticed that he was so nervous that he had put his boots on the wrong feet.

Kenny and Marina go on a sentimental journey to the Glasgow they had known when they were courting. They pop in the Beechwood pub, where she had worked behind the bar while still at school. She recalls that Celtic players often used to drink in there and, after she teases him about the fact that he was always blushing, he snipes back that her father had warned him off her because she was a handful. As they recall their first date - the pictures and chips on a rainy Saturday - they get the giggles because she had been speculating about his car with a friend when he had walked up to the house after catching the bus.

If Marina and Kenny were a match made in heaven, so were Dalglish and Celtic. But a quick montage of TV clips and black-and-white photographs is all we get before Captain Kenny informs Stein that he wants to leave at the end of the 1976-77 season. Having just lost Kevin Keegan to Hamburg after Liverpool had won the European Cup for the first time, manager Bob Paisley had no qualms about splashing out a British record £440,000 to bring Dalglish to Merseyside and it proved to be one of the shrewdest investments in the club's history. Hooton and Scrafton recall the excitement felt on the Kop when Dalglish hit the ground running and they realised what a talent he was.

As football highlights were highly selective 40 years ago, not all of Dalglish's goals have been recorded for posterity. But there are some crackers in the montage that follows, as George Best proclaims Dalglish the best player in the country because he has so much time on the ball and sees things mere mortals miss. Among his most important goals was the winner in the 1978 European Cup Final against Bruges and he recalls how he gave away the Mini he had been awarded as the match winner to pay for a night out with the boys. As open-top bus parades were forbidden in Glasgow, he finally got to fulfil a dream and he comments on the generosity of the Everton fans who turned out to share in the city's moment of glory.

These were dark days for Merseyside and Ricky Tomlinson quotes from a letter that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received from Chancellor Geoffrey Howe about the option of imposing a policy of `managed decline' upon the region to stop wasting precious financial resources in a bid to make water flow uphill. Scrafton and Hooton concur that Liverpool FC raised the spirits of their downtrodden supporters and, as montage of civil unrest and glorious goals plays out, Dalglish and Hansen were well aware that the trophies they kept winning provided a light in the gloom.

At this point, Ian Rush joined Liverpool from Chester and took a good deal of ribbing from Dalglish while he found his feet. But they quickly formed a deadly partnership that often seemed almost telepathic and some of the goals shown here are simply sublime. They agree that the atmosphere in the dressing-room was key to the team's success, as everyone knew they were in it together, and a caption reels off the four European Cups, five league titles, four League Cups and one European Super Cup that Liverpool won between 1977-85.

But, as Chapter Three, `Hope in Your Heart', demonstrates, Dalglish took the team to new heights in the season that followed Heysel. As Hansen tells Barnes over a cuppa, he thought his friendship with Dalglish was going to end with his promotion. But they became closer, as Dalglish made Hansen captain and kept playing so that he had a foot in both camps. Things didn't start well, however, and Hansen confided in his pal that this was the worst Liverpool team he had played in. But Dalglish was confident that things would perk up if they could go on a winning run and it took them to the title, with Dalglish scoring the winner in a 0-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The team completed the double by beating Everton 3-1 in the FA Cup Final, with Rush scoring twice.

Off the pitch, Marina was surprised that Kenny took the manager's job, as he had promised to walk away from football after he finished playing. They meet up with daughters Lynsey, Lauren and Kelly and, over a takeaway, they agree that he could be difficult to live with, as he was often unhappy with the performance even when the team won. We see home movies of a family Christmas and the kids (including son Paul) complain that their father is always busy and Marina avers that there's no point bending the truth just because they are on camera. However, he reminds her that football is one of those jobs that it's impossible to escape because everyone is talking about it all of the time.

Teammate and friend Graeme Souness concurs that Dalglish could be an awkward customer with those he didn't know and trust and had a prickly relationship with the press. Hansen jokes that Dalglish thinks weakness is a weakness and did everything he could to present a show of strength. He also knew that tough decisions had to be taken for the good of the club and this earned him a reputation for being ruthless. His daughters suggests that he liked to play down his intelligence in public, but this was all part of a defence mechanism because he has always been as sharp as a tack. They enjoy watching footage of Eric Morecambe trying to translate Dalglish's speech at an awards ceremony and Sugg slips in the famous dressing-room clip when he pretends he can't understand what an English interviewer is saying. But, what is clear from this segment, is that the pressure on a manager is always greater than that on a player and the Dalglish family as a whole had to learn on the hoof how to cope with the change.

Following the Boot Room example of reshuffling the pack, Dalglish brought John Barnes, John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley to Anfield for the 1987-88 season and Barnes jokes about his part in `The Anfield Rap', which Australian midfielder Craig Johnson had penned prior to the Cup Final against Wimbledon. No mention is made of this blip in a campaign characterised by one-touch brilliance that included a 5-0 victory over Nottingham Forest that Preston North End legend Tom Finney described as the best performance he had ever seen.

Dalglish reckons that the reason that team was so successful was that everyone was good at their jobs and Sugg makes a digression to explore how it must have felt to be Paul Dalglish, who was a decent player, but not on a par with his father. He travels with Kenny and Marina to Ottawa, where Paul is coaching Ottawa Fury with Bruce Grobbelaar. Father and son are equally determined to win on the golf course and Kenny fails to remember a story Paul tells about reprimanding him for getting a red flash on a pair of custom-made boots. Paul also tells a story about Kenny lecturing a teenage pal's dad for congratulating his son on a good shot during a golf game. But Kenny insists that Paul would have learned nothing if everything had been handed to him on a plate.

As it is, he is proud of him trying to make a career in a sport where people accuse him of cashing in on a famous name. He also feels glad he has Grobbelaar to guide him, as he was a trusted teammate with whom he shared the nightmare of Hillsborough. But, as Chapter Four, `The Dark', begins, Paul reveals that he never speaks about the tragedy with his father, as he knows he has never recovered from the events of 15 April 1989 and their aftermath.

Driving to Sheffield, Dalglish recalls the preparations made for the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest and how optimistic he was about the game. He has never been back to Hillsborough and he parks on a hill overlooking the ground and the pain is etched on his face, as he declares in voiceover that nothing would make him set foot inside it again. Some have suggested that this is because he has failed to deal with his post-traumatic stress, but he knows his mind is made up.

BBC footage shows how the game continued for some time after it became clear that something was happening on the terracing behind Grobbelaar's goal. Kelly Cates remembers her mother shouting that this wasn't hooliganism, but an emergency and we see Dalglish stood on the touchline trying to see what was going on, as fans scrambled to safety and ambulances drove across the pitch. Aware that Paul was with his friends in that part of the ground, he had to balance his concern as a parent with his duty as the Liverpool manager. Thus, he had to address the fans over the tannoy to urge them to remain calm and the relief is palpable when he was reunited with Paul in the tunnel.

Unable to comprehend the grief of the families of the 96, Dalglish was determined that the club was going to do everything it could to support them. He reveals that he received a phone call from Kelvin McKenzie, the editor of The Sun, apologising for the tissue of lies he had printed under the headline, `The Truth'. But he had hung up on him when he declined to print a retraction. Instead, he made sure that players and officials attended the funerals of every victim and Scrafton declares that the burden that he and Marina took upon themselves was superhuman. Kelly suggests that he never dealt with his own feelings because he believed it was his job to remain steadfast for their sake and didn't feel entitled to the same concern.

Hansen recalls returning to Sheffield to see those in hospital and being asked by one mother to say goodbye to a 14 year-old son before his life support machine was switched off. He also remembers a father grieving for his 17 year-old when Anfield was opened up to the fans and he shrugs that nothing could prepare anyone for dealing with the agony of loss on this scale. Dalglish took Kelly and Paul to Anfield on the last day before the tributes were cleared. He reveals this was his first time on the Kop and he was deeply moved by the sense of community revealed in the messages. Paul remembers leaving his Celtic and Liverpool teddy bears and Dalglish chokes back tears as he thinks back on the realisation of how much Liverpool FC meant to the bereaved.

Five weeks later, the team rallied to beat Everton 3-2 in the Cup Final, with the returned Ian Rush again scoring twice. But Hillsborough continued to haunt Dalglish and we see home movies of Christmas 1990, as Marina claims that away from the limelight her husband was falling apart. Things came to a head during a 4-4 draw at Goodison Park in 5th Round FA Cup replay on 20 February 1991 when Dalglish realised that he no longer felt sufficiently in control to make decisions to change the course of a game. Two days later, he resigned.

Scrafton opines that only he can know the hell he endured during this period and this clearly isn't the time and place for him to reveal all. But Sugg opts to leap forward 27 years rather than explore how Dalglish rediscovered his love of football by steering Blackburn Rovers to the Premiership title in 1994-95 and, in the process, becoming only the fourth man in history (after Tom Watson, Herbert Chapman and Brian Clough) to win the league with two different clubs. He also ducks the difficult spells at Newcastle United and Celtic, as well as the mixed fortunes he enjoyed during a return to the Anfield hot seat following the sacking of Roy Hodgson in October 2010.

Instead, he comes right up to the present day in Chapter Five, `The Sweet Silver Song of the Lark', as the Justice for the 96 campaign finally pays off and Kenny and Marina were awarded the freedom of the city along with the victims they had done so much to commemorate. Mothers Jenni Hicks and Margaret Aspinall thank him for what he has done for them and echo Scrafton in emphasising the esteem in which they are held on Merseyside. He is also still beloved by the club, who renamed the Centenary Stand in his honour on 13 October 2017. As Gerry and the Pacemakers swell on the soundtrack and a final montage is intercut with this happy event, a closing caption reveals that Dalglish won 27 trophies during his 15 years at Anfield, including the club's last league title in 1990.

Since 2005, the Marina Dalglish Appeal has also raised £8 million for cancer research. In other words, if anyone deserves a knighthood, it's Kenny Dalglish. But, knowing him, he would much rather go about his business without the fuss. Long may he continue to do so, as he will always hold a special place in the hearts of Scousers everywhere.

This fittingly low-key tribute clearly has his blessing and Sugg and editor David Freemantle make a solid job of piecing together the superbly sourced archive material. As with Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire, there are flaws and omissions. But the films share an understanding of their subjects and an appreciation of the duo's standing with Koppites. Although he treads carefully in assessing the personal legacy of Hillsborough, Sugg deserves credit for touching on the impact that Dalglish's suffering in silence had on his wife and kids. From the charming scenes of family cosiness, it's clear the worst has long passed. But this thoughtful documentary reminds us that King Kenny should be cherished for much more than his prowess on a football field.

Marking the centenary of the British invasion of Mesopotamia, Fiona Murphy's Remember Baghdad is an intriguing and often disconcerting account of how the Jewish population that had lived peacefully with its Gentile neighbours for 2600 years became increasingly isolated after the founding of Israel in 1948. Indeed, following the Six-Day War in 1967, the dwindling enclave came to be actively persecuted by the Ba'ath Party under Saddam Hussin. Making astute use of personal testimony, home movies, photographs and newsreel, Murphy examines how ostracisation impacted on a number of Jewish families and shows how one reluctant exile is determined to reclaim a little piece of his homeland.

Over two millennia, Babylon evolved into Shinar, Chaldea, Al-Jazireh, Mesopotamia and, finally, Iraq. During all these changes of name, border and regime, the Jews (who had initially been enslaved after their defeat by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE) played a key role in the life of the kingdom. Indeed, the Babylonian Talmud was drawn up there in the third century AD and, even after the formation of the Muslim Caliphate, the Jews continued to make significant social, cultural and economic contributions following the founding of Baghdad on the River Tigris in the 8th century. Surviving the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, the Jewish community endured its second-class status. But things took a turn for the worse during the Great War.

Murphy begins her film by watching North Londoner Edwin Shuker pack for a flight to Iraq in order to buy a house to show that the Jews have no intention of abandoning their legacy. Yet, as David Dangoor plays volleyball with his friends, Murphy reveals that there are more Jews on the court than there are currently in Baghdad. Murphy had first become interested in the subject when Dangoor asked her to catalogue archive of photographs and home movies amassed by his parents, Naim and Renée. She had been struck by the couple's radiance, as they attended chic social functions with their affluent friends and became hooked when she learned that Renée had won the first Miss Baghdad contest in 1947.

There were 140,000 Jews in Baghdad when Naim was born and they made up nearly half the city's population. Yet, apart from lines in the Psalms about the waters of Babylon and the odd building, it's almost as if they have been erased from history. This is why Shuker has taken a considerable risk to return to Iraq.

Back in London, Murphy visits Dangoor's aunts, Eileen and Doreen Khalastchy, who show her a large painting of their grandfather, the Chief Rabbi of Iraq, standing beside King Faisal I. They explain how they had been forced to take the picture down following the 1958 coup. But, for much of the period following the establishment of the Hashemite monarchy in 1921, they had enjoyed peace and prosperity in their paradise away from the Promised Land. Seen as a boy in a monochrome home movie, their cousin, David Khalastchi, has equally happy memories. He recalls how his family exploited their good relations with both the British overlords and their Arab neighbours to make a handsome living off the land.

Salim Fattal came from one rung down the ladder, however, and deeply resented the British stealing Iraqi resources and for interfering in the oil business after their formal withdrawal in 1932. But Saul Menashe remembers how Adolf Hitler also had designs on the country's oil reserves and sent the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to stir up anti-British feeling when the Second World War broke out. He had been campaigning against the foundation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and wasted no time in stirring up anti-Semitic feeling after he moved into the house next door to the Dangoor family.

Eileen recalls having acid thrown at her in the street. Yet, Esperance Ben-Moshe claims that her suburban family barely knew there was a war on apart from the odd beating. Living in the city centre, however, Eli Amir got to witness the rising tide of violence as boy king Faisal II fled with regent Prince 'Abd al-Ilah and the British had to invade to drive out the Nazis before they could back the Mufti in starting a jihad. Nevertheless, in 1941, 180 were killed and 2000 more were injured during the violent Farhud that came to be known as Baghdad's Kristallnacht. Both Amir and Menashe describe how lucky they were to survive assaults on their homes. But Fattal lost a loved one and still feels that the British betrayed the Jews after the restoration, even though others like the Dangoor prospered to the extent that they were able to purchase the Mufti's former home.

Neighbour David Shamash suggests that the wealthier Jews in Baghdad lived in a bubble and knew little about the wider war, let alone the Holocaust. Consequently, they were happy to remain once Faisal had returned. But poorer people like Zvooloon Hareli feared that the Farhud was a sign of things to come and he joined an armed guerilla group that was trained by Zionists from Palestine. But, while many answered David Ben-Gurion's call to fight in the Arab-Israeli War, those left behind face persecution, as they were fired from government jobs and had their shops boycotted. Eventually, with Zionists and Communists being hanged by the Iraqi authorities and bomb attacks increasing in Jewish districts, American Zionist organisations funded an airlift code-named Operation Ezra and Nehemiah that saw 120,000 leave for Israel. Yet, rather than being welcomed with open arms, the Iraqi exiles were billeted in tents and treated with contempt on account of their clothing, language and culture.

Meanwhile, 7000 remained in Baghdad and their lot began to improve, as they were invited to play a more prominent role in the state after Faisal II came of age in 1953. The Shukers were among those to stay and Edwin ventures out to the area around Sadr City in a bid to find his old family home and the synagogue where his ancestors had worshipped. The taxi driver is nervous, as the streets are controlled by Shi'a militiamen, but Shuker is overjoyed to see his old home is still standing. It's also boarded up and for sale, but he knows this would not be a shrewd investment. Nevertheless, he persists and pays a call at Meir Tweg, the last maintained synagogue in Iraq, and sheds a tear for the relatives whose graves he has had to abandon.

Back in the mid-1950s, the Dangoors were thriving, with Naim even landing the Coca-Cola concession for Iraq. Shamashs father became a member of parliament and he recalls Muslim ministers coming to the house for all-night card games. Danny Dallal's family also did well from the boom, with his father importing tyres from Japan, while his Uncle Isaac owned a chocolate factory. They were members of the Mansour Club and mixed with the Muslim and Christian élite, as well as the British and American oil executives. But the mood changed after Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser challenged the British over the Suez Canal in 1958 and Dangoor recalls hearing gunfire on the morning of 14 July 1958, as Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim led a left-wing military coup that claimed the lives of King Faisal and `Abd al-Ilah, as well as Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, whose body was tied to a car and dragged through the capital beneath the Shuker balcony.

This barbarism proved the last straw for Naim and Renée and they holed up in Lebanon while awaiting their papers to emigrate to Britain. The Khalastchy clan remained among the rump of 4000 Jews, however, and Eileen's son Freddy claims that Qasim tried to improve conditions for the poor. But he was also a pragmatist and David Khalatschi made a killing selling American cars to diplomats based at the various Soviet bloc embassies. However, the CIA conspired with the Ba'ath Party to overthrow Qasim in 1963 and Khalatschi started making plans to leave. He flew out in March 1967, just three months before the Six-Day War, and Dallal recalls being stopped at a roadblock by Iraqi troops convinced that Palestine was going to be liberated.

When the Israelis won, the 2000 remaining Jews in Baghdad had their telephones confiscated, as they were now considered to be fifth columnists. Shuker, Dallal and Eileen Khalastchy remember the sense of being under siege, while Shamash reveals that the chief of police frequently had to intervene to protect his mother, as they remained close personal friends. However, there was no chance of calling in old favours when Saddam was asked to co-ordinate a show trial of pro-Israeli spies in January 1969 and 14 victims were publicly hanged in Tahrir Square. Dallal's uncle was executed during a second wave of attacks that saw 90 Jews disappear. But leaving the country proved exceedingly difficult, as Jews were not permitted to have passports and Shuker, Shamash and Dallal describe how their families had to pretend to be going on holiday to northern Iraq in order to be smuggled over the border into Kurdish territory.

When Eileen left in December 1974, there were 280 Jews in Baghdad. Within three months of leaving, the Khalastchys had their property confiscated and their nationality cancelled. But the Jews remained symbols of better times and Dangoor reveals that the photograph of his mother with her Miss Baghdad sash went viral following the 2003 US invasion. He has no desire to return and his reluctance is shared by Eileen, Dallal and Amir. But Shuker manages to find a property in Erbil in the north and Murphy joins him as he takes possession and looks out from his window at the uniform buildings in his gated estate. In all probability, his act of defiance will not be widely replicated. But he is proud to have done something to demonstrate that the Jews still belong in Iraq. Anyone unfamiliar with the history of Iraqi Judaism will find this memoir as informative and cogent as it is riveting and restrained. But even those better versed in the events of the last century will be moved by the reflections of the dozen exiles who reminisce about halcyon days and brutal upheavals with a clarity that is tinged with wistfulness, pain and anger. Murphy might stick to the tried and trusted chat and clips format, but she makes evocative use of her archive material and is extremely fortunate in her choice of eloquent eyewitnesses, who avoid hyperbole, invective and rose-tinted nostalgia in describing how their world fell apart.

Do note that Remember Baghdad is screening at the Ultimate Picture Palace at 6:30pm on 22 November, complete with a Q&A with director Fiona Murphy (http://rememberbaghdad.com/screenings/details/826679/939586).

Kenya has been much in the headlines of late because of the disputed election between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former MP, Harun Mwau. However, the focus falls firmly on farmer Kisilu Musya in Thank You For the Rain, a frontline report on the impact of global warming that took some six years to make after Norwegian director Julia Dahr entrusted Musya with a camera to record daily life during the drought that had descended upon Mutomo in the south-east of the country. Showing under the Dochouse banner in London over the next week, this intimate and revealing video diary follows the example of Guy David's 5 Broken Cameras (2011), in which Palestinian smallholder Emad Burnat chronicled Israeli encroachment on to his land in the West Bank.

Dahr was 23 when she went to Kenya to make a study of global warming. She had been marvelling about the number of stars in the sky when Kisilu Musya pointed out that the sky was a problem because it had stopped sending down rain. Having studied farming techniques and spent a long time struggling to persuade his neighbours to listen to his ideas, Kisilu readily agreed to let Dahr film him, his wife Christina and their seven children. But he also insisted on having a camera of his own, so he could record his everyday activities, as he tried to make a living from his mango and cassava crops.

During the first three weeks of their collaboration, Dahr was content to film Kisilu doing chores and playing with his adoring children. He confides to his camera over shots of his offspring sleeping soundly that he used to have to hide from his drunken father and hopes always to be a good dad. However, when the oldest are sent home from school because their fees haven't been paid, Kisilu decides to take the bus into town to get a loan to purchase a motorbike and start a boda-boda taxi service. But his application is turned down and he has to walk home and break the bad news to Christina.

Throwing himself into digging under a blazing sun, Kisilu manages to smile when his young daughter Grace asks him not to die. A few days later, the wind begins to whip up and the long-awaited rain arrives. The children dance with excitement, as puddles form on the parched red dust. But Dahr becomes concerned that the storm is getting heavier and there is genuine terror when the roof of the family home blows off and everyone has to take cover in a rickety outbuilding.

The following morning, Kisilu strides out to inspect the damage. He is surprised how far the roof has been blown from the house and he shows Dahr the large rocks that have landed inside the house. But, while he is able to joke with the children about them having a new kind of home and laughs with the neighbours about his underwear being on show, he tells his camera that being homeless is no fun and that it seems unfair that the rain should have caused so much damage after everyone had rejoiced at its coming.

Luckily, a neighbour gives him some tree branches to help repair the roof and Dahr films Kisilu banging nails against the setting sun. He tells her that he had spent nine years away from home after completing his education in the hope of finding a good job. But he had returned home after his father's death to do his bit for his community and now hopes that his neighbours will listen to him during Sunday's church service. He pleads with them to start planting trees on their land, as they offer shade, but also help bring the rain. Dahr is delighted that he appears to get a sympathetic hearing, as she is about to return home and hopes that Kisilu will not forget her.

She shows her footage to eco activists in Oslo and they invite Kisilu to speak at a conference. His speech is well received and a group buys him a motorbike. During their travels around Norway, Dahr is worried that Kisilu will be intimidated by the consumer lifestyle. But it inspires him to return to Mutomo and spread the tree-planting message across the district. A year later, he sends Dahr tapes revealing his progress and explains that he is using the bike to call on the villages that have started nurturing saplings.

Dahr and her crew return to see the family and receive a warm welcome. But all is not well, as Christina is frustrated that Kisilu is spending so much time away from the farm when there is work to be done. She also wonders why he is investing so much time in this unpaid voluntary scheme when he could be earning a decent wage in the city, like many of the other men in the area. Indeed, the issue of putting in so much effort for no monetary reward is beginning to bother some of the group members and Kisilu admits to his camera that he is concerned that their enthusiasm is waning and that his initiative will fall by the wayside.

With funds running low, Kisilu is forced to sell all five of his goats. But he has high hopes for his crops, which have flourished, thanks to the efforts of his family. However, when the rain comes, it floods the smallholding and washes away the maize crop. It also brings down a fertile papaya plant and Kisilu despairs at the way in which they Kenyan climate has become so unpredictable. That night, he films insects scurrying across the ground and wonders why humans can't co-operate in the same way, as the situation has become a matter of life and death. Christina worries about him, but accepts that he is a man on a mission and she is prepared to change her expectations of what a husband should be in order to support him.

Following lobbying by Dahr and her activist friends, Kisilu is invited to speak at the United Nations Farmers Conference in Paris. He goes to town to buy new clothes and his children laugh at him because he looks like a grandfather. On arriving in France, he watches the world's leaders arriving for the COP21 climate talks and feels that this is his chance to alert everyone to the plight facing his country. He is interviewed for an English-language television station and feels positive that he can make people listen.

In the grand hall, he hears Barack Obama urging the world to rethink its energy policies in order to save the planet for future generations and Kisilu becomes something of a celebrity himself after he addresses a meeting and is interviewed by numerous media outlets. He calls Christina to let her know how he is getting on and he enjoys a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night. But, most importantly, he has realised that he is not alone. He is part of a vast global movement to fight climate change and he returns to Kenya with renewed determination to make a difference.

However, the negotiations behind closed doors are not going particularly well and Kisilu and Dahr wander the convention centre hearing conflicting reports about whether a deal can be agreed. As India demands the right to develop fossil fuel facilities and Donald Trump calls out Obama for wasting time discussing the weather, Kisilu starts to feel disillusioned. He also gets news from Christina that the children are sick and he is concerned that she doesn't have enough money to get them all to the doctor in the town.

Unable to understand why people are being selfish when there is so much at stake, Kisilu suggests that too many people are saying and doing the right things without intending to follow through and change their policies. He wishes that leaders would act like parents and do their duty to help their children and he believes the protesters denouncing the fat cats blocking change to protect their profits are right. Moreover, he is baffled why people refuse to listen to his testimony when he has first-hand experience of global warming and deserves to be taken seriously.

Dahr tries to sympathise with him and he says he wishes he had the power to take the leaders who are playing hard ball and leave them in an arid place to see for themselves what it feels like to starve. There is fire and fury in his eyes, as he fights back his disappointment that the world doesn't really care what happens to people like him so long as they are comfortable. He rides the Métro to the airport in silence.

Captions reveal that a deal was struck after the conference overran. But, while the signatories slapped each other on the back, experts and activists alike insisted that it didn't go far enough to prevent a calamity. Back home, Kisilu continues to preach his message and his various groups have started to grow enough produce to sell. He invests his share in his children's education and hopes they will be able to make others see sense. But, while he is alive, he will continue to do his best, as it is the duty of everyone who is aware that an evil exists to speak out about it.

How one wishes those in power could be forced to sit down and watch this film and be made to justify their reasons for condemning millions like Kisilu Musya to lives of struggle, poverty and hunger. Julia Dahr deserves enormous credit for finding such an eloquent advocate and for persisting with this project for over half a decade. But her most inspired decision was to let Kisilu and his family film themselves, as their pieces to camera provide a window on to a world that is both joyous in its simplicity and distressing in its rigour. The love shown between the family members is humbling, as is the readiness of Christina and the children to make sacrifices so that Kisilu can help their neighbours. The wider world has a lot to learn.

Co-written producer Hugh Hartford, Dahr's narration has its emotive moments. But her commitment to Kisilu and his cause is unwavering. She also has a fine eye for a telling shot, most notably in the opening sequence when cinematographer Julie Lunde Lillesæter captures the starry sky. Editor Adam Thomas and composer Chris White also merit mention for their deft contributions to a film that brings home the gravity and urgency of the situation with more humanity and immediacy than any number of Inconvenient Truths.