Siberian auteur Andrei Zvyagintsev has steadily become one of the most significant voices in Russian cinema. Since winning a Golden Lion at Venice with his feature debut, The Return (2003), he has held up a mirror to the regimented and detached society being fashioned by Vladimir Putin in The Banishment (2007), Elena (2011) and Leviathan (2014), which was nominated for an Academy Award. Subtlety has never been a Russian screen trademark and Zvyagintsev's symbolism is a little laboured in his latest Oscar-nominated outing, Loveless. But there is no denying the artistic integrity and political potency of this intense blend of social realism and procedural noir.

Following shots of gnarled trees in a frozen landscape on the outskirts of Moscow, 12 year-old Matvey Novikov heads home from school alone. He pauses to pick up a strip of police cordon tape and wraps it round a branch jutting over a stretch of muddy brown water. As he tries to do his homework, mother Maryana Spivak shows some potential buyers around the flat she is selling because she is about to divorce husband Aleksei Rozin. She teases Novikov about being a cry baby and pays him little further heed before Rozin gets home. They discuss custody of their son, with Spivak refusing to take him on because she feels entitled to a fresh start after putting up with Rozin for so long. Unaware that the boy is sobbing behind the door, they consider sending him to boarding school, but Rozin is aware that his boss is a fundamentalist Christian who insists that he is married with children.

Novikov can barely get out of the apartment fast enough the next morning, while Rozin listens to news on the car radio about a Mayan prediction of the end of the world. Eyes glued to her phone, Spivak takes a train into the city to spend the morning in her beauty salon. She coos about her new lover and despairs of Novikov while chatting to stylist Evgeniya Dmitrieva, who is equally dismissive of her 19 year-old daughter. Meanwhile, over lunch in the office canteen, Rozin consults colleague Roman Madyanov about company policy on divorce and remarriage. They eat joylessly, while gossiping about a worker who hired a fake family for a corporate function in order to keep his job and Rozin's terror of being unemployed with debts is contrasted with Spivak's hope that he loses everything for making her life a misery.

After work, Rozin goes supermarket shopping with pregnant girlfriend Marina Vasilyeva. As her mother is away, they have the apartment to themselves and make love before Vasilyeva tearfully asks for reassurance that Rozin isn't going to abandon her and the baby. Across the city, Spivak leaves the salon and is collected by Andris Keišs, her wealthy older lover, who takes her to a posh restaurant. As the camera prowls through the room, a woman gives a stranger her phone number while on a date and a group of singles cluster together for a selfie. Spivak plays footsie under the table while flirting with Keišs and they return to his luxurious pad for energetic sex. Returning to bed with some wine, Spivak tells Keišs that she loves him and confides that she has always found intimacy difficult because her mother showed her such little affection, while she quickly realised that marrying Rozin and having a child was a mistake. She recalls the agony of giving birth and the sense of revulsion she felt for Novikov, who has barely crossed the mind of either parent, while they spend the night away from home.

Returning after dawn, Spivak checks her phone before curling up in bed. But she is woken later in the morning by a teacher asking after Novikov, as he hasn't been to school for two days. Spivak calls Rozin, who is in the canteen queue and is quick to blame his wife for failing to notice if their son was home. He is convinced the boy has simply run away and will soon return and cop Sergei Borisov is of the same mind, as he explains to Spivak how staff shortages and a need to tackle more serious crimes prevent him from doing anything more than logging the notification. But she is stung by the suggestion that she might have reported Novikov missing to cover a murder and Borisov suggests that she goes online to find a local search team if she is so concerned that something untoward might have happened.

By the time Rozin gets home, Spivak is already being interviewed by search chief Aleksei Fateev, who is dismayed by how little the pair know about their son and his life. While he initiates a search of the neighbourhood, volunteer Varvara Shmykova accompanies Rozin and Spivak to see if the latter's mother, Natalya Potapova, has seen Novikov. They argue incessantly during the three-hour car journey, with Rozin playing loud rock music and Spivak wanting to smoke. Eventually, they arrive and have to climb a fence and bang on the door to make Potapova respond. She is more concerned about her lost phone than her missing grandson and berates Spivak at the kitchen table, while Rozin half-heartedly joins Shmykova in searching the grounds. Potapova spews bile at Spivak, who similarly lays into Rozin on the way home, as she bemoans the fact she didn't have an abortion and allowed him to ruin her life because he needed a wife and child to boost his job prospects. She pities Vasilyeva for falling for his spiel and suggests he'll dump her when it suits him. But this remark pushes the usually placid Rozin over the edge and he pulls off the road and orders Spivak out of the car. Left in the middle of nowhere, she lights a cigarette and tries to call Keišs to rescue her.

While Spivak sleeps, Rozin joins a search of the parkland near the high-rise estate. He also joins Fateev and Borisov in checking CCTV footage and they reach the conclusion that Novikov either disappeared or was kidnapped. Out shopping with mother Anna Gulyarenko, Vasilyeva interrupts the meeting to complain that she feels neglected and Rozin has to reassure her that things will return to normal soon. She smiles with relief and takes a selfie with Gulyarenko, who mumbles that all men are the same and that Vasilyeva must be mad for thinking Rozin is any different.

Having tracked down Novikov's only school friend, Artyom Zhigulin, Fateev coaxes him into revealing that they hide out in an abandoned apartment block in the woods. They launch a search around the building and Rozin (who has taken time off work) remains stoic as he wanders through rooms piled high with rubble and with leaking ceilings. There's no sign of his son, however, and Spivak's trip to a nearby hospital with Keišs and Shmykova proves to be another dead end.

As snow falls, both parents help put up posters around the neighbourhood and accompany Fateev to the morgue, where they are so relieved that a badly decomposed body isn't their son that Spivak lashes out at Rozin and he cowers crying in a corner. But this is the last time they join forces to look for Novikov. Tajik builders renovate their flat and Rozin moves in with Gulyarenko. However, as his toddler son gets in the way of the television as he watches news reports from Ukraine, Rozin unceremoniously deposits the boy in his cot and leaves him to bawl for his mother. Across the city, Keišs watches the same bulletin. But Spivak is unconcerned and, putting on a tracksuit top with the word `Russia' emblazoned across it, she goes for a jog on the running machine on the balcony. As she slows down, she looks directly into the camera, with a look that is both despondent and accusatory.

Ending with a shot of the police tape fluttering from its branch close to a lamp post bearing Novikov's missing poster, this is a grindingly sombre snapshot of modern Moscow. Disquieted by the lack of empathy in Putin's Russia, Zvyagintsev uses the story of a lost soul to deplore the deterioration of community spirit amongst a rising bourgeoisie preoccupied with easy living and instant gratification. Countless characters are shown glued to their phones, as the world passes them by. But Zvyagintsev and co-scenarist Oleg Negin are just as concerned by the mundanity of the content they look at when the country is beset by corruption, avarice, religiosity, self-obsession and neglect. With government agencies understaffed and the military interfering in the affairs of sovereign states, this appears to be a Russia that has gone backwards since the collapse of Communism. Yet, while he dots the action with barbed criticisms, Zvyagintsev has no solutions to offer other than the population remaining united.

He similarly avoids speculating on Novikov's fate, although he suggests in the closing coda sequences that Spivak and Rozin have learnt nothing from their experiences. The ferocity of their mutual loathing was inspired by Ingmar Bergman's From the Life of the Marionettes (1980) and Spivak and Rozin bring a chilling intensity to their antipathy towards each other and their indifference towards a son whose existence and absence is little more than a nagging inconvenience. Yet, while the passively aggressive Rozin is undoubtedly a nasty piece of work, there's a disagreeably chauvinist undertone to the depiction of the female characters, with only Shmykova's volunteer possessing untainted decency.

Elsewhere, Zvyagintsev does little to disguise his disillusion and occasionally allows his frustration to coarsen his allegorical finesse. But his artistry remains impeccable throughout, as he channels the influence of Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni and Michael Haneke, as well as Romanian new wavers Christian Mungiu and Christi Puiu in capturing the sinister undercurrents of everyday life. In this regard, he is superbly served by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, production designer Andrei Ponkratov and editor Anna Mass. Andrei Dergachev's sound design and Evgeni and Sasha Galperine's score are also admirable, as they reinforce the sense of unease that permeates both the dysfunctional drama and the vigilante search. Yet, while this treatise on the demise of love is primarily Russocentric, it also has a universality that makes it even more soberingly resonant.

Having forged a solid reputation as a documentarist with My Marlboro City (2010) and From the Depths (2013), Valentina Pedicini makes her feature bow with Dove Cadono le Ombre/Where the Shadows Fall, which is the latest offering from CinemaItaliaUK. Screening at the Genesis Cinema in London on 11 February, this is a laudable attempt to expose the policy known as Kinder der Landstrasse (`Children of the Road'), which was pursued by successive Swiss governments between the 1920s and 1980s in a bid to eradicate the travelling Yenish population by institutionalising expectant parents and confiscating their children with the aim of normalising them and having them adopted by ordinary citizens. Similar in theme to Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), this is much more stylistically ambitious, as Pedicini and co-scenarist Francesca Manieri seek to show how the past impinges upon the present.

Anna (Federica Rosellini) works at the Salus Care Home in Switzerland. She supervises treatments, mealtimes and exercise sessions for the elderly residents and carries out her duties with unsmiling efficiency. Despite her stern demeanour, she is fond of Ilse (Raffaella Panichi), who has reverted to childhood and thinks Anna is her mother, and a triumvirate of rascals, who sneak along to her room in the dead of night to play poker. Anna is also friends with Hans (Josafat Vagni), an intellectually disadvantaged odd job man whom she has known since they were children together in an orphanage. Under cover of darkness, he goes digging around the grounds to find bags of bones, which he brings to Anna for her inspection.

One morning, Gertrud (Elena Cotta) arrives in reception and Anna realises she knows her. Aware that the old woman has also recognised her, Anna goes to her room and flashes back to when she was a young girl (Danila Di Simio) and Gertrud was in charge of the orphanage. Hans also remembers her and is reduced to tears when Gertrud beckons him over and inspects his face, as though he was still a child. She treats Anna with similar hauteur and, when Anna comes to Gertrud's room one night, she tuts that she is still having trouble sleeping and starts to sing her a lullaby.

During visiting hours, Anna decides to confront Gertrud, who ticks her off for smoking. She complains that she finds it depressing having strangers milling around the house and Anna reminds her that the orphanage used to have open sessions. But Gertrud taunts her that she only liked them because it gave her a chance to find a family so she could escape. When Anna flinches, Gertrud excuses her because she comes from a race of liars and reprimands her for having a physical relationship with Hans. She notices him digging in the garden and sneers at Anna for always looking in the wrong places. As she leaves, she also callously remarks that Hans can do no harm, as he has been sterilised, but that Anna should be ashamed for her impurity.

Having secured permission to spend extra time with Gertrud, Anna wheels her chair into the west wing. She imagines seeing two lines of barefooted children in nightgowns sidling along the corridor and looks back at them with regret, as they seemed to ignore her. Once inside the bathroom, Anna has a flashback to when Gertrud used to make the Yenish girls sit in tubs filled with ice cubes to cool their temperament and help improve their pronunciation. She orders Gertrud to stand in a bath filled with water and scoops ice cubes from a bucket so she can experience the humiliation that she and her friend, Fransiska (Elena Maria De Luca) had felt as helpless children.

As she sits down, however, Gertrud exacts her own revenge by informing Anna that she withheld a letter that Fransiska had sent her after Anna had left the orphanage and she cruelly mocks her accent in reciting the opening lines. Anna demands to see the letter, but Gertrud insists it is locked away in files to which she no longer has access. She baits Anna by saying she has no right to feel superior to her, as she had been her assistant and had given injections and used scalpels to help correct nature. Enraged by the accusation that she had been willingly complicit, Anna storms off to find Ilse, who has had a fall. While tending to her knee, however, Anna suddenly remembers that she has left Gertrud in the ice bath and rushes back to help her. But Hans has already come to her aid and is warming her by the fire when Anna arrives.

That night, Anna chastises Hans for being kind to Gertrud and reminds him to fill in the holes he digs around the grounds. She makes him cry and forces him to his knees to perform oral sex on her and she hates herself for exploiting him in this manner. Her mind goes back to the day when Matias (Federico Tocci) an had chosen her for adoption over Fransiska and she had given her friend her set of angel wings in promising that someone would come for her. That night, at a fancy dress party at the home, Gertrud returns the wings to Anna and asks her to sing a song. This sparks a memory of meeting Matias's wife (Giorgia Filanti) and getting used to life on his small farm. He had taught her to play poker and had been proud of the way she fleeced his friends at the local inn. But he had returned her to the orphanage after she had stolen a guest's watch in reprisal for him renaming her Klara. On rushing back to the dormitory, however, she finds that all of the other children have left, with the exception of Hans and she sits on Fransiska's bed in despair.

A few days later, Ilse dies and Anna takes great care over washing her and laying out her body for the other residents to pay their respects. She also helps Gertrud when she has a choking fit in the day room and wets herself. Anna carries her to the shower and holds on to her so she can wash her under the cascade of water. But Gertrud recovers her composure and her waspishness and Anna feels belittled. She puts on make-up for that night's poker game and lets down her long hair and flirts shamelessly with Paul (Pietro Biondi), Thomas (Ugo Innamorati) and Mario (Alessandro Bressanello), who enjoy seeing her behave so wantonly. As she finishes humming an old song, however, she reveals that she is the daughter of a Yenish mother who was detained in a camp near Thomas's home, while her mother was locked away in an asylum near Paul. She also condemns Mario for letting his daughters collect money for the orphanage and asks if they have ever given a thought to the crimes that were committed in their names and under their noses. Ashamed, the trio slip away and Anna slugs back her whisky with a grim sense of satisfaction.

The next day, she puts Gertrud in her wheelchair and makes her show her where Fransiska is buried. But, after teasing her for a while, Gertrud confesses that Fransiska is alive and well and suggests that Hans has been lying to her all these years so they have a special bond. Furious, Anna subjects Hans to a beating and calls him a monster. Moreover, when Fransiska (Lucrezia Guidone) comes to see Gertrud (who had adopted her), she denies knowing Anna and refuses to accept the beloved rag doll she proffers. In asking that Anna remembers to wash behind her mother's ears, Fransiska lets slip her name and leaves hurriedly with tears in her eyes, as she has never forgiven Anna for deserting her and has sent Gertrud to the care home as a punishment for them both.

Alone in her room that night, Anna weeps over the collection of bones she has treasured under false pretences and decides to leave the home. As she clears her desk, Gertrud comes to sit beside her and offers her a sweet. She passes on her duties to Hans and hugs him before walking along the gloomy corridor for the last time. Pausing in a shaft of light, she pulls back all of the curtains to let the sunshine in.

Closing captions reveal that between 700 and 1200 Yenish children were subjected to unspeakable cruelty by the Swiss authorities from 1926. Around 100 were still interned six decades later and, while the Helvetic Federation has since apologised for misappropriating the Pro Juventute charity, no doctor, civil servant or politician has ever been prosecuted for what was essentially an attempted act of ethnic cleansing. Among the victims was poet Mariella Mehr and Pedicini dedicates this harrowing film to her for her courage in speaking out about her ordeal.

Hugely impressive and deeply involving, this is a bold exposé that deserves to be widely seen. Pedicini and Manieri avoid sensationalising the subject matter and impose a dramatic restraint and aesthetic rigour that is eminently suitable for the gravity of the revelations. Cinematographer Vladan Radovic deftly lights Cristino Del Zotto and Alessandro Vannucci's forbidding interiors to contrast the tone of the orphanage and the care home, while Stefano Grosso and Alessandro Paolini's score provides an unsettling link between Federica Rosellini's vivid memories and her dawning realisations. But, even though takes stylistic chances by switching between time frames (and sometimes allowing them to overlap), Pedicini retains a documentarist's eye for the authentic details that enhance the immediacy and intimacy of the storyline.

With her hair swept back to enhance her air of severity, Rosellini excels as the victim of abuse who can't bring herself to leave the site of both her torment and her perceived treachery. Eighty-seven year-old Elena Cotta is equally outstanding, as she enhances the impression made in Emma Dante's A Street in Palermo (2013) by not only seeking to regain control over Rosellini from a position of vulnerability, but also in managing to retain a secret that she knows will have devastating consequences. Josafat Vagni is less persuasive in a difficult role, although Pedicini refuses to flinch from depicting the sordid truth about his relationship with Rosellini. Such commitment to unpalatable facts is admirable. But there are moments when the pacing and the symbolism seem self-consciously deliberate, most notably during the fancy dress party and the second poker game.

The misadventures of doomed round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst seem to exert a ghoulish fascination on film-makers. A decade on from Jerry Rothwell and Louise Osmond's excellent documentary, Deep Water (2006), both James Marsh and Simon Rumley have attempted to fathom the psychological state of a weekend sailor who allowed a combination of hubris and honour to determine his fate after the press got wind of his bold bid to enter a race he knew from the outset he could never win. Having bankrolled Marsh's The Mercy, Studio Canal acquired the rights to Rumley's Crowhurst in an effort to control the competition. There is no sign of the latter to date on the weekly release schedule, so Marsh has clear blue water into which to launch his earnest, but often becalmed account of an enterprise that remains shrouded in mystery.

Attending the Earl's Court Boat Show in the hope of selling his latest sailing aid, the Navicator, Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth) is intrigued by a challenge issued on behalf of the Sunday Times by Sir Francis Chichester (Simon McBurney) to beat his record by sailing non-stop around the world. The first and fastest competitors in the Golden Globe Race will win £5000 each. But Crowhurst wonders whether participation will boose his profile and help promote his inventions.

Young sons Simon (Kit Connor) and James (Finn Elliot) have great faith in their father and help him demonstrate his device to a potential customer. But sales are sluggish and they return to Teignmouth in Devon, where Crowhurst goes sailing with the boys, as well as his wife, Clare (Rachel Weisz), and daughter Rachel (Eleanor Stagg). Clare films her husband with a home movie camera, as he talks of adventure and making his family proud. However, she is shocked when he tells friends in the pub that he has entered the single-handed race and intends to win.

Clare reminds him before bed that he has a family to provide for and should be satisfied that he has fought for his country and served on the local council. But Crowhurst is convinced he can prevail, even though he has rarely been further than Falmouth. Concerned, Clare confides in sister-in-law that she hopes her spouse will lose interest, as he has always been one for grand schemes that never get off the ground. However, Crowhurst goes to see local caravan salesman Stanley Best (Ken Stott) and convinces him that a trimaran with pioneering buoyancy features of his own devising will give him stability and speed. With his backing, Crowhurst announces his entry in an effort to drum up some publicity and serve notice to potential rivals like Bernard Moitessier and Robin Knox-Johnston that he means business. Sceptical press agent Robin Hallworth (David Thewlis) doubts Crowhurst's talent, but admires his Churchillian pluck and sees him as the embodiment of a lost British spirit that would go down well in the papers.

Having landed sponsorship deals with Crosse & Blackwell and Oxo, Crowhurst negotiates with the BBC about a programme that will utilise images filmed during the voyage. The producers ask him to make tape recordings and keep a journal, so that he will return home an author, as well as a hero. But Clare struggles to compose herself during an interview with a BBC reporter about how she will cope during her husband's six-month absence. By contrast, the boys are thrilled and get their father to trace his route on a large map of the world.

Delays in building the boat, however, mean that several Golden Globe competitors set off before Crowhurst and Best becomes concerned that he has thrown away his investment. But Crowhurst convinces him to stump up more money in return for a contract stipulating that he will receive the deeds to his house if he fails to complete the race. Without telling Clare, he signs away their future. But he promises her that he will return safely and they embrace.

On 29 October 1968, two days before his planned and much-delayed departure date, Crowhurst is informed by the boat builder that he has not been able to get hold of the best rubber seals for the doors and portholes. So, despite giving a TV interview in which he claims he is ready, Crowhurst tells Best and Hallworth that he would prefer to wait until the spring. However, Hallworth reminds him that he would be up to his neck if he let his sponsors down so late in the day and suggests that he should leave them to take care of his doubts while he sets sail in pursuit of his dreams.

After a sleepless night beside a silent Clare, Crowhurst dresses in his yellow oilskin (over a shirt and tie) and greets the press at the gate of the family home. The Teignmouth Electron is towed into view. But Crowhurst seems like a beaten man before he sets out and can barely bring himself to acknowledge the small crowd in the harbour and the brass band playing him off. Hallworth introduces him to the mayor and Best wishes him well, as he goes out to the trimaran in a small launch with his loved ones.

He seems not to have been aboard on the water before and steps on to the deck without conviction and Clare has to reassure the boys that their father won't need the lifeline he trails over the side in case he falls overboard. She wipes away a tear, as they turn for land and Crowhurst is left to his own devices. He is silent, sullen and completely lacking in confidence at the daunting task he has set himself.

As he gets his sea legs, Crowhurst dispenses with the tie and throws up over the side. He also has to bail out a leaky compartment and cuts his hand with a knife. But, while he stomps around the cabin, he also thinks back to practicing ship-to-shore phone calls with his children and he does get to call Rachel on her eighth birthday. But the signal fades and - as Day 13 dawns and he finds himself 72 miles north of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean - he turns to making tape recordings for the BBC. He admits he has been unprepared for the voyage and has lost all romantic notions of messing about in boats on the Solent. But, while he feels alone and is getting tired of everything being wet, he is determined to get the boat ready for the Cape of Good Hope.

Making steady progress, Crowhurst sees whales and dolphins leaping out of the water alongside him. However, his generator gets wet during the night and Hallworth fumes when he sends back a dull Morse message about stripping and drying the engine when he needs stories about Krakens to keep the press interested. He is also concerned Crowhurst Donald is still off the coast of Portugal when everyone else is rounding Africa and his assistant senses Hallworth's growing frustration that he has saddled himself with a duffer.

During a phone conversation with Best, Crowhurst complains about every difficulty and his sponsor inquires whether he has decided to quit. But Crowhurst is nettled by Best sensing his opportunity to claim his assets and declares his readiness to keep going and asks him to convey his best wishes to Clare. A short while later, however, he hits the kind of storm that he had discussed with the kids and the trimaran is buffeted about in the squall. The buoyancy device on top of the mast is broken beyond repair and Crowhurst feels alone and defeated, as he clings to the pole and surveys the vast expanse of ocean around him.

Despondancy hits hard and Crowhurst sits in his cabin with the toaster the family had bought for him as a going away gift. He and Clare fought to turn tears into smiles at the breakfast table and both had seemed to sense that this was not going to end well. Rousing from his reverie, Crowhurst radios Portishead to put a call through to Clare, but there is no one home and he contents himself with asking the telephonist to say he is well. Looking at his charts, he knows he will be ruined if he turns back, but will have only a 50:50 chance if he tries to tackle the Cape in a boat completely unsuited to the task. Consequently, Crowhurst debates misreporting his position, knowing that no one can gainsay him so far from land, and he ponders the awful choice of being a hero or a wretch.

A towering aerial shot shows the tiny boat in the dark waters and the awfulness of Crowhurst's plight is laid bare. Suddenly, he starts reporting progress and Hallworth seizes on the speeds he has started to achieve and dictates stories about Crowhurst solving his problems and beating daily mileage records set by Chichester. Clare and the children are thrilled and people are so relieved to be getting good news that nobody checks the claims with any great care. Even the national press latch on to the story. But, as Christmas Eve arrives on Day 54, Crowhurst starts to feel the strain of his isolation and his deception and thinks back to informing a TV interviewer about the need to improvise and stay mentally strong when challenges arise. He plays `Silent Night' on a harmonica on the deck, as Clare hoovers and peels potatoes back home. The family chat on Christmas Day and he checks if Portishead is listening in when he contemplates coming clean about his ruse. But the pride he hears in his sons and wife prompts him to bite his tongue and the agony of the gambit begins to weigh ever more heavily upon him.

By Day 84, Crowhurst is 200 miles north of Brazil and he hears a radio broadcast that Hallworth has placed him closer to the Cape than his calculations would allow and he is furious with him for putting him in such a predicament. He decides to wire back that he intends maintaining radio silence until he has returned to the South Atlantic. But, as Clare poses for photos with two of the wives of the other three competitors, Hallworth ignores his assistant's judgement and sends out a press release that the radio is out of action because a huge wave in the Indian Ocean has damaged the generator. He also forces Clare to do a press interview and, while she is happy to recall how she met her husband, she is reluctant to talk about the worrying she does and asks Hallworth not to subject her to such ignominy again. Naturally, he insists he is only doing his job and is trying to make them all rich. Moreover, with Crowhurst out of contact, it's up to them to keep the public happy.

On Day 123, with Crowhurst off the coast of Argentina, he springs a leak in one of the side hulls and realises that he is in serious trouble. Recalling his last conversation with Clare, in which he confesses that he doesn't want to go, she reminds him that she is only concerned with him and knows that he will feel the disappointment more than anyone else if he fails. Yet, he takes a small boat to the shore and wanders inland where he is picked up by the coastguard. He explains that he didn't bring a passport, as he had no intention of stopping. But he is in difficulty and needs assistance. As he sits in a small bar, he fishes an insect out of his beer. Having checked the story, the officer finds him material to repair the hole in the hull and, as James and Simon celebrate the news that the Frenchman has dropped out of the race, Crowhurst finds himself back on the ocean with a patched up craft and no idea what he is going to do next.

He knows that he has to play things carefully and come home in last place, so as not to arouse too much suspicion (despite the fact that he has been keeping a true record in his logbook). Thus, he is relieved when Knox-Johnston returns in triumph after sailing non-stop and Clare smiles bravely at a gathering in front of the television to watch the news. But Hallworth keeps reminding everyone that Crowhurst still has a chance of being the fastest competitor (as the Argentines have clearly kept quiet about their encounter) and Clare seems uneasy with Hallworth's efforts to drum up positive publicity every step of the way.

Moreover, she is running out of funds and has to go to the dole office to claim benefits. But the clerk knows nothing about Crowhurst's expedition and, thus, can't understand why she can't say where her husband is or when he will be coming back. The humiliation bites deep, but Clare gets a joyful phone call from Portishead that Crowhurst is alive when he passes Diego Ramirez and sends a radio message to an Argentine station. Once again, Hallworth makes the most of the situation and the press is all too ready to ignore the imprecision of the log readings being provided to them and to lap up the news that the intrepid novice is safe and seemingly on course for a record speed.

On Day 214, at the Horse Latitudes some 320 miles south east of Bermuda, Crowhurst decides to down his sails to ensure that Nigel Tetley comes home second, as he would be less open to question as a doughty loser than someone who overcame all adversity to triumph. Thus, he drifts for a while and remembers telling the children how the Spanish sailing to the Caribbean for the first time had eaten their horses when they ran out of drinking water, as people had to come before animals. He promises them that he has lots of fresh water and will be fine. However, as he hears the news that Tetley has capsized and been rescued, Crowhurst is freaked by the prospect of being the last man in the race and thinks he can hear horses hooves clattering on the deck above him, as he tries to coax the Argentine listening station into getting him a direct line to Clare so he can tell someone else the truth without being overheard.

Clare is sipping champagne with Best and Hallworth, however, as Tetley's misfortune makes the feat of the Devon outsider seem all the more remarkable. The Sunday Times makes Crowhurst a front page story and Hallworth reads it to the Teignmouth locals in the pub, with his own part in proceedings giving him particular satisfaction. But, adrift on the ocean, Crowhurst is in torment, as he tries to get radio contact with Clare on a private line and becomes increasingly concerned, as he makes into busier waters, that his luck of not bumping into anyone who can expose him might run out. Musing to himself while soldering, he decides that the worst sin of all is concealment and strides on deck to cut his grabline at the rear of the boat. Now he knows that he has left himself no safety net, no matter what course of action he eventually decides to take.

Cutting his hair with a knife blade, Crowhurst prepares himself to end his torment. He talks to Clare on an unconnected phone and sees her in a coat and scarf sitting in the entrance to his tiny hold. In reality, she is on the pier at Teignmouth with the children looking out with binoculars in the hope of spotting him and speculating whether he will get back before the Moon landing. In his imagination, he touches her hand and hopes that she can forgive him for his failings and for putting her through such an ordeal. Struggling to hold his emotions in check, Crowhurst writes the final entry in his journal: `It is finished. The mercy.' He consults his clock and looks up into the sky before jumping overboard.

His suicide cross-cut with Best coming to the door to inform Clare that the boat has been found and she slowly lowers her eyes. Hallworth goes out to see the boat and enters the cabin, where the salvage skipper suggests that Crowhurst had made the whole thing up and left the logbooks in plain sight so that his deception could be discovered. But Hallworth insists that he had no intention of sailing round the world at all and that he had hoped to fool everyone in the hope that no one would consult the log of the last man home.

Hallworth shows the documents to Best, but stands outside the gates as Clare greets the press and accuses them all of having helped push her husband overboard and then held him down. She loathes how papers praise one day and blame the next and apologises to them that the grieving widow makes such a poor story. But, she concludes, the truth often does. As we hear Crowhurst's last message exhorting Clare to raise the children as symbols of their love and never let anyone tarnish their happiness together, she tells Simon, James and Rachel to welcome their father home every day, as that is what one does with people who have gone away.

Closing captions reveal that Crowhurst sailed for 13,000 miles during his seven months and two days at sea and that his body was never found. Moreover, in an act of chivalric generosity, Knox-Johnston (the sole finisher) donated his prize money to Clare. She is now in her mid-eighties and only learned about this project when shooting was underway. It seems as though a little Firth charm was used to alleviate her fears, but it can't be easy being forced to relive an ordeal that will have haunted her daily for the past five decades.

In fairness, Marsh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns take few liberties with the story outlined in tomes like The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, which was written by journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ronald Hall (who is played here by Mark Gatiss, alongside Oliver Maltman as fellow reporter Dennis Herbstein). But, in lacing their speculation with discretion, the pair tone down Crowhurst's more delusional ravings and make them seem no more devastating than Clare's embarrassment in making a benefits claim. Similarly, their decision to depict Crowhurst as a maverick rather than anything less flattering allows them to turn their ire on the media, which is blamed in Clare's wildly emotive speech for tipping her husband over an edge he had willingly skirted.

Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz do well enough in difficult roles. However, the former never quite emerges from the shadow cast by Robert Redford in JC Chandor's All Is Lost (2013), while the latter is saddled with too many token scenes that offer little or no insight into Clare Crowhurst's mindset before, during and after a reckless endeavour that could have been stopped had the race organisers conducted background checks with due diligence into the maritime and emotional suitability of the competitors. To a degree, Marsh and Burns also let Hallworth off the hook by letting David Thewlis play him with a comic bravura that recalls Sidney James promoting the Miss Fircombe Beauty Contest in Gerald Thomas's Carry On Girls (1973).

The craft credits are all strong, with production designer Jon Henson and cinematographer Eric Gautier capturing the cramped vulnerability of life aboard Teignmouth Electron. The sound mix devised by Johnnie Burns and his team also plays a crucial role in conveying the cocoon in which Crowhurst slowly disintegrated. But, as was the case with the Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything (2014), Marsh tells his tale with a deliberation that was absent from such sure-footed documentaries as Wisconsin Death Trip (1999), the Oscar-winning Man on Wire (2008) and Project Nim (2011).

The current events in South Africa give this week's Dochouse presentation a certain topicality. However, its difficult to avoid drawing the conclusion that Pascale Lamche's Winnie is a propagandist apologia designed to restore the scuffed reputation of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Lamche is no stranger to this part of the world, having previously directed Sophiatown (2003) and Accused #1: Nelson Mandela (2004). But she makes little or no attempt to balance the testimony given by either Madikizela-Mandela or her effusive supporters. Consequently, while this allows the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela to give her side of a complex and often contentious story, it's of limited value as either a work of reportage or as an impartial profile.

Presuming a huge amount of foreknowledge, Lamche leaps between Winnie Madikizela's childhood as the daughter of a school principal from Pondoland in Transkei, her marriage to Nelson Mandela in 1958 and his detention in 1964. According to biographer Anné-Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, Winnie was surrounded by spies on the orders of Hendrik van den Bergh, the head of the Bureau of State Security, who hoped to undermine the African National Congress by breaking her spirit. In 1976, she was sent into exile in Brandfort in the Orange Free State with her daughters Zindzi and Zenani and was only allowed to visit her husband on Robben Island twice a year.

Jolist Sophia Mokoena, neighbour Norah Moahloli and Anton Harber, the editor of the Weekly Mail, testify to how difficult life was for Winnie in urnaa place where she had been demonised as a Communist. Yet, she remained an eloquent advocate for her husband and the African National Congress, while remaining a fearless critic of the regime enforcing apartheid. But, following these vague paeans, we leap to 1985, when Winnie met Senator Edward Kennedy. The full significance of this visit is only referenced in passing, as Lamche, while archive interviews with Foreign Secretary Pik Botha and ANC activist Dr Nthato Motlana are similarly left in isolation during a discussion of the civil disturbances that followed the imposition of a state of emergency in 1986.

Activist Dali Mpofu recalls Winnie returning to Soweto (but no reason for her release is given) and praises her for wearing ANC colours and addressing meetings in the face of police intimidation. A couple of supporters are shown wearing yellow Mandela United tracksuits, but this reference is not explained. A clip from a Ronald Reagan speech backing Prime Minister PW Botha's suppression of a pro-Communist terrorist group needs little comment and the same goes for remarks about the murder of young children by ANC leader in exile, Oliver Tambo. But shots of Winnie at funerals and protests and references to her relationship with Chris Hani, the leader of the Communist Party and the armed Umkhonto we Sizwe wing of the ANC need context and comment. Even an interview snippet with Vic McPherson, the director of STRATCOM operations, admitting that Winnie was under surveillance requires footnotes, as we learn nothing about the information the spies were seeking to ascertain and what (if anything) the security forces did with it.

Lamche moves to story to 1988 when Mandela was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was moved from Pollsmoor Prison to a hospital in Cape Town. Winnie spent the flight in conversation with Minister of Justice Adriaan Vlok, who wanted to know what he had to do to shut her up and move towards the release of her husband. Zindzi notes that this proved a pivotal conversation in the forging of a line of communication between the government and the ANC, but bemoans the fact that her mother is given little credit for her helping launch a crucial initiative.

McPherson concedes that talks began at this point between Mandela and National Intelligence Service head Niël Barnard, while Bezdrob declares that it was only now that the ANC leadership in exile began to recognise the importance of Mandela to the cause and credits Winnie's ceaseless advocacy with prompting both sides to see her husband as the best chance for a peaceful solution to the country's problems. However, when Mandela was moved to a bugged house in the grounds of Victor Verster Prison, she refused to move in with him, as she felt the government was trying to soften him up and had separated him from the rest of the jailed leadership to convince him to protect the white population once majority rule had been implemented.

This is the film's first fascinating insight and Bezdrob also highlights the gulf between the ageing ANC leadership and the new generation of members that wanted to speed up the process of transition. Winnie recognised their importance and backed them and, in return, they offered her protection following the assassination of lawyer Victoria Mxenge before the trial of two United Democratic Front members facing a charge of high treason. Among those to rally to Winnie were Teboho Murdoch, a member of both Umkhonto we Sizwe and Mandela United, who insists that they stopped wearing their distinctive tracksuits when they were copied by crooks intent on committing crimes.

In 1989, PW Botha set up Covert Strategic Communication (STRATCOM) to wage a psychological war against the ANC and, according to McPherson, Winnie was targeted under a counter-revolutionary operation codenamed Romulus. One of his initiatives was to publicise the investigation into the kidnap and murder of 14 year-old Stompie Moeketsi (who was suspected of being a police informant), which she claims was falsely blamed on her football club bodyguards in a bid to create divisions between the black communities. Speaking for both the United Democratic Front and the Mass Democratic Front, Murphy Morobe distances the parties from her sphere of influence and Barnard regrets that she alienated herself from certain groups, as he was hoping she would be First Lady and mother of the new nation, as she had the charisma to be South Africa's Jackie Kennedy.

Eventually, Mandela was released on 11 February 1990 and Winnie held his hand as he walked to freedom. Bezdrob notes that he used her glasses to read his speech and feels that this is symbolic, as he had seen the world through her eyes for the last 27 years, as one of his few trusted emissaries. She berates him, however, for failing to give his wife credit for her role in continuing the struggle in his absence and for helping to secure his release. He also overlooked her suffering and sacrifices during this period and it's intriguing to hear her lament that she lost her identity on his release because she reverted to being his wife and not his political partner.

Yet, having had her name removed from a list of international terrorists so she could accompany Mandela to the United States, she told chat show host Phil Donahue that she is much angrier and less trusting than her husband and would have no qualms about returning to the bush to resume the armed struggle. But, in 1991, Winnie was charged in connection to the Stompie Mokoetsi case and Zindzi reiterates accusations made at the time that this was a politically motivated action designed to drive her parents apart by depicting them as the saint and the sinner.

There was discontent in some quarters at the fact that Mandela was making concessions to Afrikaaner nationalism and global capitalism in order to preserve the peace and Bezdrob and Harber suggest that ANC leaders wanted Winnie sidelined to prevent her from rocking the boat during the sessions held by the Convention for a Democratic South Africa. Ultimately, she was acquitted of all charges except kidnapping and she was given a prison sentence. Nevertheless, she left court with a beam of vindication and vowed to appeal.

As black-on-black violence continued in the townships, the Botha government was accused of trying to divide and rule by pandering to Chief Buthelezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party as a possible alternative to the ANC. But STRATCOM continued to attack Winnie to discredit her and McPherson boasts of publishing in the Sunday Times an explicit letter she wrote to Mpofu. Mandela's lawyer, George Bizos, who asked her to confirm if it was genuine. He says she burst into tears and claimed to have been betrayed. But Mpofu insists that this subterfuge was designed to stymie radical elements within the ANC, while Bezdrob alleges that Mandela was given an ultimatum: drop Winnie or you don't get to be president.

A short time after Mandela announced their separation, Winnie also lost Hani, who was gunned down in his own driveway and she still avers that a sinister conspiracy of friends and foes was behind his death. With tensions rising in the country, Winnie's court appeal was heard and Bezdrob intimates that her custodial sentence was commuted to a fine to prevent a bloodbath. She also claims that she was removed from the inner circle of the ANC before the election in 1994 and, thus, she was denied the opportunity to become Vice-President. More insultingly, she was kept off the podium when he was sworn in and Bezdrop accuses him of being small-minded in allowing a slight against his masculinity to cloud his judgement of her usefulness to the ANC and the country.

There may be something in this unusually forthright criticism of Mandela, but it's delivered without any acknowledgement of any mistakes that Winnie herself might have made and, thus, feels equally blinkered, especially as the 81 year-old Winnie insists she bears no grudges, as all she had been fighting for had been achieved when her ex-husband took the oath. Nevertheless, she regrets the fact that he couldn't see that he was being manipulated by those who wanted her off the scene. Indeed, according to Henk Heslinga, who served with the Soweto Police Squad between 1985-93, Minister of Safety and Security Sidney Mufamadi ordered his superiors to reassess all charges against Winnie, including the Moeketsi case.

Heslinga believes this to have been a politically motivated decision, especially after convicted murderer Jerry Richardson confessed that he had killed Stompie to stop him revealing that Richardson was an informer. Attention then turned to `missing witness' Katiza Cebekhulu, who had been given sanctuary in the UK by Baroness Emma Nicholson. Advocate Ishmael Semenya denounces a book on Cebekhulu to be a cynical act of character deformation and he claims that the Truth and Reconciliation Committee hearings were used to re-try Winnie in order to neutralise her. She concurs and Zindzi suggests that this was an attempt to silence her mother because of the respect she commanded in the townships. Winnie is particularly bitter about Archbishop Desmond Tutu's request for her to apologise for things that might have gone wrong and she hisses her rage at his temerity for judging her when there were times when she alone was keeping the ANC and its struggle together.

As the film draws to a close, Harber and Mpofu question the wisdom of the 1994 compromises, as they allowed the white elite off the hook and kept the black majority in the doldrums. Winnie reveals that each vote in parliament pains her because so much blood was shed for so little change. She dreams of a South Africa in which the wealth belongs to the people and it seems clear that she has by no means given up on her vision.

There is little question that the contribution of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to the democratisation of her country has been denigrated and may well have been consciously played down by the ruling ANC. However, her cause would have been better served by more rigorous scrutiny than that to which she is subjected in this hagiographic tribute, which frequently steers clear of controversy and frustratingly avoids any objective analysis of Winnie's achievements and demerits. As with Darrell Roodt's biopic, Winnie Mandela (2011), which was based on Anné-Mariè du Preez Bezdrob's book, this author-psychologist is given a platform to espouse her ideas without challenge from either non-aligned commentators or from Lamche herself, who appears to have given Madikizela-Mandela a relatively easy ride during the four interviews she conducted over a two-year period following the death of Nelson Mandela.

Lamche also glosses over Madikizela-Mandela's views on necklacing (the practice of setting light to victims wedged into tyres) and her conviction in the early 2000s for defrauding a funeral fund that resulted (on appeal) in a suspended three-year sentence. As she saw fit to resign her parliamentary seat and the presidency of the ANC Women's League in the wake of this incident, it seems disingenuous at worst to overlook it so completely. Otherwise, editors Giles Gardner and Paul De Heer make potent use of the available archive material. Perhaps Lamche just needed more time to do full justice to all aspects of a remarkable life that seems far from over yet.