Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 27/4/2017)

On her wedding day, Katherine (Florence Pugh) looks around the empty parish church while singing a hymn and realises she is quite alone. The parents who settled a debt with the local mine owner, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), by marrying him off to his son and heir, Alexander (Paul Hilton), are notable by the absence. Yet, Katherine informs her black maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), that she is not afraid of becoming the mistress of a large house while still in her teens and is not intimidated by the fact that her new husband is twice her age. When he strides into her bedroom, however, Alexander reminds her not to get ideas above her station and recommends that she stays indoors to avoid catching cold on the moors. He looks her up and down with indifference and orders her to strip before climbing into bed and falling asleep.

The following morning, Katherine endures the discomfort as Anna straps her into a corset and brushes her long hair. But, with Alexander and Boris attending to their business, she has nothing to do all day but stare out of the window or sit primly on the drawing-room sofa. Eventually, she dozes off, only to be woken by her disapproving father-in-law, who growls that she has a duty to attend upon her husband whenever he requires her. Boris is equally unimpressed when Katherine excuses herself from a dinner party and sends Anna to ensure that her mistress stays awake. However, when a drunken Alexander blunders into her room some hours later he prefers to masturbate while his naked wife faces the wall than consummate their union.

Clearly dismayed by the calibre of man she has married, Katherine is relieved when Alexander is called away to deal with an explosion at the colliery. She is even more delighted when Boris travels to London and she is able to sleep late and explore the moors. On one occasion, she dresses as a maid so that Anna can accompany her and she takes advantage of her solitude to curl up on the sofa in bare feet for a nap.

The peace is disturbed, however, when Katherine hears a commotion in an outhouse and has to rescue Anna from the burly farmhands who have stripped her and hung her from the rafters in a blanket in order to `weigh the sow'. Taking exception to the cod deference of Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), Katherine orders him to set Anna free and makes the others turn their backs while the frightened servant flees. Holding her nerve, Katherine admonishes the men for wasting her husband's time and money. But she is intrigued by Sebastian and is taken aback when he sweeps her into his arms after she asks if he can gauge her weight. Pushing him away, Katherine promises that she will keep her eye on all of them before rushing back to the house to ask Anna for the insolent fellow's name.

It transpires that Sebastian is the new groomsman and, after a restless night, Katherine is delighted when their paths cross the next morning as she sets out for the moors. On returning, however, she scolds Anna for making her bath too hot and demands that she stops fussing and staring at her. As she dries herself by the fire in a silk robe, there is a knock at the door. She is surprised to see Sebastian and suggests that he focuses on his work when he impudently asks if she needs some help to relieve her boredom. But, as she tries to close the door, he calls her by her first name and barges his way into the room. Katherine bites his finger, but he forces a kiss upon her and, when he closes in for another, he allows her to push him down on the bed before rolling her over for animalistic sex that leaves them both gasping for breath. The following morning, Anna is shocked to find the robe on the bedroom floor and is embarrassed to discover that Katherine has slept naked. She holds her counsel, however, and slips away after opening the blinds to the sound of Katherine cackling with relish. The cat eats her breakfast, as she engages in vigorous intercourse with Sebastian before a deft cross-cut shows her taking tea with the vicar (Cliff Burnett). But she is not amused when he asks if ill-health has been preventing her from attending the Sunday service and dares to suggest that she spend more time indoors in quiet contemplation and less in striding through the countryside. Thus, she snatches the cup from the cleric's hand and immediately goes in search of Sebastian to satiate her lust.

One morning, while Anna is picking mushrooms in the woods, she bumps into Sebastian. She admonishes him for the way he has been treating the master's dogs and he smiles sardonically when she mentions a bitch that needs to be kept on a short leash. However, he is in no mood to take advice from someone he deems to be beneath him and makes sure that he fixes Anna's gaze later that night when she peeps through the keyhole at the fornicating couple. But Anna seems to have the last laugh, as Boris returns the next day and Katherine once more submits to being laced into her corset. However, she drinks expensive red wine while dressing and demands to know what is detaining Alexander when Boris tries to play the heavy father at supper. But her moment of triumph comes when Boris sends Anna to fetch a bottle of Fleury and, when she returns empty handed, he makes her crawl on all fours like an animal for not taking better care of his property Not to be outdone, Anna tattles to Boris, who thrashes Sebastian with his stick and locks him in a shed. When Katherine comes to find him, Boris slaps her across the face for shaming the family name and they argue over her failure to give Alexander a child. They exchange words again at breakfast when Katherine demands the key to the shed. But she calms down after Boris smashes a cup and goes to finish his meal in an adjoining room. Indeed, she props a chair against the door handle and invites Anna to sit at the table for a coffee and tell her about her family, while she waits for the poisonous mushrooms to take effect. Only when Boris's cries for help die down does she open the door and send Anna for the doctor. In her absence, however, Katherine rushes to the courtyard and kisses Sebastian's bruised back before taking her place as the grieving daughter-in-law.

The pious and dutiful Anna sobs on her bed and is so distressed at being forbidden from serving meals that she becomes mute. By contrast, Katherine lets the cat sit in Boris's chair and takes Sebastian back to her bed before posing for a photograph in full mourning beside her father-in-law's open casket. She assures her lover that Alexander will never return, as he hates her as much as he detested Boris. Moreover, she vows to follow Sebastian `to the cross, to the prison, to the grave and to the sky' rather than lose him. But Alexander makes a surprise return in the middle of the night and Katherine only just manages to smuggle Sebastian out of her room before protesting that she has been waiting chastely for her husband to come back to her.

He is not to be duped, however, and brands his wife a whore for cuckolding him with a mixed-race underling. She offers to make tea, but he accuses her of growing fat and malodorous and warns her that she will mend her ways after Sebastian is sent away. But Katherine has no intention of remaining indoors with a prayer book and strides to the cupboard where Sebastian has been hiding and straddles him on the bed in full view of the outraged Alexander. He slaps her and a fight breaks out that ends when Katherine caves in Alexander's skull with a poker.

Gambling on no one else knowing that Alexander had returned, the lovers bury his body in the woods and Katherine personally shoots his white horse and bathes in the lake after digging its grave with her own hands. She dresses Sebastian in her husband's finest clothes. But his conscience prevents him from sleeping and she has to reassures him that he will receive the respect she feels he deserves from eveyone, including the silent Anna, who is allowed to wait on them at breakfast.

Months pass and the white horse starts to decay in the undergrowth. But Katherine's hopes of being able to enjoy her ill-gotten gains are jeopardised by the arrival of Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel), a refined black woman who claims that Alexander fathered a son, Teddy (Anton Palmer), with her late daughter. She presents documents proving that Alexander had made the boy his ward and, thus, she demands the right to take up residence. Sebastian dismissed Agnes as a gold-digger. But she lets Katherine know that Alexander had informed her of his plans to return to the manor and intimates that she would have no qualms in going to the authorities unless she and Teddy are given the best rooms in the house. While Katherine maintains a frosty civility towards Agnes, she seems to warm to Teddy, who is impressed that she knows the names of all the birds when they go walking together. But Katherine is upset with Sebastian for returning to his billet and for dressing in his working clothes. She is also envious of Anna, as he has started following her to the woods when she picks mushrooms and he admits to being terrified that he will hang if Katherine's crimes are uncovered. Thus, even when she comes to tell him she is expecting his baby, Sebastian ignores her and Katherine is so crushed to see him consorting with Anna that she makes Teddy cry by pushing him over in her desire to follow her beau.

Teddy is also hurt when Anna barges past him playing cricket with maids Mary (Rebecca Manley) and Tessa (Fleur Houdijk) and he runs away. A search party is dispatched and Sebastian eventually finds him shivering by a waterfall. He carries the boy into the drawing-room, only for Agnes to reprimand him for treating the place as though he owned it. Tired of being bossed around by women, Sebastian threatens to leave. But Katherine pleads with him to trust her and, having persuaded Agnes to get some rest while Teddy sleeps on the sofa, she opens the window for Sebastian to hold the boy down while she suffocates him with a cushion.

While Sebastian waits for her signal, Katherine sheds crocodile tears when Anna finds her beside the lifeless corpse. She tells the doctor (Bill Fellows) that she must have fallen asleep and woke to find Teddy dead. But the physician notices bruises on the body and a policeman (Ian Cunningham) is summoned. Beside himself with remorse, Sebastian stumbles into the room and confesses to killing the child before accusing Katherine of murdering Boris and Alexander. He laments allowing her to pester him into submission and denounces her as an evil disease.

Without turning a hair, however, Katherine dismisses his charges as lies and suggests that he had been in cahoots with Anna, who is the only member of the household to pick mushrooms. Agnes consoles Katherine, as she recalls that Boris perished the day after he had beaten Sebastian and, when Anna proves unable to contradict her, she is bound to Sebastian and they are taken away in a cart. Mary and Tessa leave soon afterwards. But Katherine has no intention of moving out and, clad in black, she resumes her place on the sofa and stares unflinchingly into the lens.

Filmed at Lambton Castle in Durham for under £500,000, this is an intelligent period noir that dispenses with the trappings of the costume genre to examine attitudes to race, class and gender that continue to blight modern society. Alice Birch sometimes allows her revisionist slant on Victorian melodrama to drift towards penny dreadful territory. But her dialogue is crisp and economical, with Florence Pugh's terse exchanges with Christopher Fulford being particularly revealing. Yet the thud of boots on the bare floorboards in Jacqueline Abraham's sparsely furnished rooms proves equally effective in conveying the shabby grandeur of a setting that Oldroyd and cinematographer Ari Wegner often view with a Vermeer-like surface serenity that belies the seething passions being held in by Holly Waddington's restrictive frocks.

Despite the contrasts between the formal symmetry of the interiors and the Romantic wildness of the moors, Pugh is anything but a damsel in distress. Admirably nailing the Geordie accent, she flashes laden glances like a young Emmanuelle Béart as she holds her own against Fulford and Hilton, exudes contempt for Ackie and Rosheuvel, and simmers with lust for Cosmo Jarvis. In only his second dramatic role, the part-Armenian singer-songwriter fares better as a brash stud than he does as a remorseful victim. But sparks fly with the 19 year-old, Oxford-born Pugh, who builds on her outstanding start in Carol Morley's The Falling (2014) with a display of self-possessed socio-sexual mutiny that turns the exploitative hypocrisy of a patriarchal system against itself in order to flout it.

Arriving in cinemas in the week that Maylis de Kerangal's bestselling source novel wins the Wellcome Book Prize, Katell Quillévéré's Heal the Living is the latest in a string of Francophonic medical dramas. It's also by far the best, as while Axelle Ropert's Miss and the Doctors (2013), Thomas Lilti's Hippocrates (2014) and Irreplaceable, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Unknown Girl (both 2016) shifted between the personal and professional lives of their protagonists, Quillévéré's distinctive procedural approach keeps the focus firmly on the surgical and pastoral aspects of a heart transplant.

Waking before dawn beside girlfriend Galatéa Bellugi, 17 year-old Gabin Verdet dresses hurriedly and takes a snapshot on his phone before climbing out of the bedroom window and cycling without lights down the steep streets of La Havre. He races skateboarding buddy Titouan Alda to the van where Andranic Manet is waiting to drive them to the beach to go surfing. Changing into their wetsuits, they wax their boards and paddle into the cold dark sea. The camera bobs and ducks in the water, as they catch the waves and savour the thrill of being young and free.

As they drive home along a long, straight road lined with wind turbines, Verdet rests his head on Alda's shoulder and they doze off. But, despite being warned about black ice, a combination of exhilaration and exhaustion causes Manet to imagine the highway turning into the ripping sea and, as a roller breaks over him, the screen cuts to black as the noise of crunching metal and shattering glass rips through the soundtrack.

Across the port city, doctor Bouli Lanners drops his young daughter off with her mother and sings along to some rap on his drive to the hospital. He orders a CAT scan on Verdet and calls his mother, Emmanuelle Seigner (who is still asleep at midday), to break the bad news. Unable to get hold of estranged husband, Kool Shen, Seigner sees Lanners alone and he informs her that her son has suffered a major head trauma and that his condition is deteriorating rapidly. Anxiously awaiting Shen, Seigner bumps into the parents of Alda and Manet, who have only incurred minor injuries because they were wearing seatbelts.

As soon as Shen joins Seigner, they are taken to the room where Verdet is on life support. Nurse Monia Chokri talks to him as she checks for vital signs, but Lanners sweeps Seigner and Shen into his office. He explains that Verdet is brain-dead and introduces them to Tahar Rahim, who asks if they would be willing to donate their son's organs for transplant. Blaming himself for getting Verdet into surfing, Shen is too shocked to consent and storms out of the hospital with the crestfallen Seigner hastening behind him.

She takes Shen to the boatyard where he works and he insists on finishing a job while she drinks coffee. As they drive through the unprepossessing industrial part of town, Seigner's mind drifts back to the time when Verdet had waited for Bellugi outside her school and had raced the funicular railway uphill in order to meet her at the station. They had kissed and now Seigner is faced with the prospect of telling a girl she hardly knows that her boyfriend is gone. However, they are returning to the hospital in order to give their consent and they enter Rahim's office just as Chokri and Irina Muluile are leaving after teasing him about his fascination with goldfinches. He thanks them for their co-operation and explains that all donations must remain anonymous before offering to carry out their farewell wishes in the operating theatre. Leaving Shen and Seigner to say their goodbyes, Rahim gets a high-five from Lanners for talking them round. He suppresses a half-smile, as he goes to alert other facilities to the fact that he has organs for transplant, while Chokri (who had been ticked off by Lanners for talking to Verdet in front of his parents as though he was still alive) imagines her boyfriend seducing her as takes the lift downstairs for a break. She is still new to the hospital and getting to know its routines through lengthy shifts and she texts a romantic message, as she sees the devastated Seigner and Shen leaving arm in arm.

Meanwhile, 50 year-old violinist Anne Dorval leaves her home in a leafy suburb and takes up residence in an apartment close to the Paris hospital where she has an appointment with cardiologist Dominique Blanc. Sons Finnegan Oldfield and Théo Cholbi make a fuss over her - although Oldfield is cross with Cholbi for quitting college and with Dorval for pretending to be dead after a nap - and they huddle on the bed together to watch Steven Spielberg's ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). They wave Cholbi off on his bicycle from the balcony and Dorval reassures Oldfield that she is feeling confident that everything will be okay.

She is undeniably tense, however, when Blanc informs her that her sole chance of beating her degenerative condition is a transplant. Dorval wonders whether she could cope with having a dead person's heart inside her body and Blanc reminds her that species mutate in order to survive. She cites the example of the clownfish and makes Dorval smile by revealing that the male changes sex when its partner dies and continues to breed with its own sons. Shrugging her acceptance, Dorval meets up with Oldfield, who is cross with her for withholding the truth from Cholbi so as not to distract him during the exams he knows his sibling is not taking.

Dorval does confide, however, in pianist Alice Taglioni, who had been her lover until she had terminated the relationship on learning she was sick. They return to the apartment after Dorval goes to see Taglioni perform and has to be carried up the stairs to her circle seat. Taglioni had never understood the reasons for their break-up and she is clearly still in love. So, she texts her companion, and slips into bed beside Dorval, who jokes after their first kiss that she is not allowed to get overexcited.

Meanwhile, Steve Tientcheu pushes through a football crowd to work the night shift at the agency that acts as a clearing house for donated organs. He records that Verdet's heart, liver and kidneys are available and vapes as he scours the Cristal database to find suitable matches. Blanc is having supper when she gets the call that Tientcheu has a heart for Dorval and she sends Karim Leklou and Alice de Lencquesaing by a small private plane to perform the removal. Rahim greets them in Le Havre and they scrub up while Dorval takes an antiseptic shower in Paris and frets because she has not been able to say goodbye to Cholbi in person.

As Keklou prepares to operate, Rahim reassures Verdet that his family is with him and places headphones in his ears so that he can hear the sound of the sea as he leaps (from the crying Bellugi's window) into the unknown. He watches on as the procedure is shown in graphic detail to the accompaniment of Alexandre Desplat's plaintiff piano score before De Lencquesaing packs the heart in ice and they make a dash to the airport. Their ambulance receives a police escort, as Dorval is wheeled into theatre and Blanc makes the initial incision. This surgery is also shown in a top shot and Leklou allows himself a deep sigh of relief as the defibrillator jolts the heart into life.

Having washed Verdet's body with respectful care, Rahim texts Seigner to reassure her that her wishes have been carried out before riding home on his motorcycle. Seigner and Shen hold each other, while looking out over Le Havre, and their grieving process continues as Dorval comes round and allows a smile to play over her lips as she realises she has survived her ordeal and been given a second chance with Taglioni and her boys.

Although her third feature is less diegetically intricate than either Love Like Poison (2010) or Suzanne (2013), Quillévéré once again demonstrates her gift for storytelling with this deeply affecting docudramatic study of two souls linked by the cruellest of fates. The opening celebration of youth is utterly exhilarating, as Tom Harari's camera steeples after Verdet as he zooms down a winding road before plunging alongside him into the sea that will sweep him away in Manet's sleepily rippling daydream. But the hospital sequence that follows is also superbly constructed by editor Thomas Marchand to show how the tragedy confronting Seigner and Shen is just another case for Lanners, Rahim and Chokri, as they juggle professional pragmatism and compassion with their own quotidian concerns.

After such a masterly exhibition of dramatic intensity and stylistic dexterity, the sudden shift from Le Havre to Paris feels cumbersome by comparison and Quillévéré and co-scenarist Gilles Taurand initially struggle to involve viewers in the plight of ailing musician Anne Dorval. They never quite make sense of why she would need to move into a complete stranger's flat before knowing she requires a transplant and needs to relax in the vicinity of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. Moreover, they fail to prevent the reunion with Taglioni from feeling novelettish and make only a modest job of fleshing out Blanc, Leklou and De Lencquesaing's medics. Yet, the fact that Dorval is going to get Verdet's heart sustains the dramatic tension, as the audience wants to know that his unwitting sacrifice (and that of his bereft parents) has been worthwhile.

Ultimately, Quillévéré's touch proves as assured as the surgeons she so obviously admires. The more squeamish might wish she had been much less forensic during the climactic clinical sequences, but the close-ups emphasises her views on the fragility of existence (which are reinforced by the use of David Bowie's `Five Years' over the closing credits) and the extent to which the public weaned on hospital tele-series takes for granted the human and mechanical marvels of modern medicine.

The action centres on a markedly less dedicated doctor in Argyris Papadimitropoulos's Suntau. Continuing the Greek Weird Wave's penchant for exposing the flaws of middle-aged mediocrities, this stinging recessional allegory could form part of a potent `masculinity in crisis' triptych with Elina Psykou's The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013) and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier (2015). But, while Papadimitropoulos exposes the chauvinist attitudes that have contributed to Greece's ongoing socio-economic woes, he also considers the nation's standing within the European Union, the glum realities of life in an off-season resort and the perils of refusing to accept the passage of time.

Fresh from committing a mainland misdemeanour that is never fully explained, pudgy, balding 42 year-old Makis Papadimitriou takes the ferry to the Cycladic island of Antiparos. It's a grey, squally day and mayor Pavlos Orkopoulos welcomes the new GP with a promise that things liven up in the summer. A small Christmas tree twinkles in his new digs, as Papadimitriou settles into his exile with little enthusiasm. He dines at the restaurant, where lairy local Yannis Tsortekis also reassures him that the island is overrun with pretty girls during the season. But, for now, Papadimitriou has to make do with the ageing patients in a population that drops below 800 after he is called away from a New Year celebration to attend a deathbed.

The mood changes the moment summer arrives, however, as 21 year-old Elli Tringou comes to the surgery with a scraped side after falling off a scooter. She flirts with Papadimitriou, who is enjoying the consultation before Tringou's free-spirited pals, Milou Van Groessen, Dimi Hart, Hara Kotsali and Marcus Collen, burst into his office and start messing around with the equipment, while mocking the doctor for not being a bright young thing. Tringou continues to hold his gaze, however, and she seems sincere when she kisses his cheek and hopes that they can bump into each other again during her month-long stay.

Having failed to find her at the restaurant, Papadimitriou goes in search of Tringou on the nudist beach. He finds her naked and eating watermelon with her friends, but they don't notice him as he lays down his towel, strips off his shirt and applies plenty of sun lotion before waddling into the sea. Looking back at the shore in the hope Tringou has spotted him, he removes his sun hat before bobbing into the water. On returning to his place, he decides to ask Tringou for a light and pretends not to remember her when she seems pleased to see him. She invites him to sit with them, but he quickly realises they have nothing to talk about and, feeling embarrassed by her flaunted body, he shuffles off home.

He goes to buy some trendy summer shirts and heads to a busy nightclub, where he hopes to find Tringou. Instead, he runs into a drunken Tsortekis, who enthuses about the different nationalities milling around the island and boasts that his friend slept with a Japanese girl. Realising he's wasting his time, Papadimitriou heads home, stopping en route at a snack kiosk, where gets a free wrap from one of his elderly female patients.

Undaunted, he sidles back on to the beach the next day and is delighted when Tringou calls to him from the sea. He slops on his cream before galumphing into the water and is taken aback when the naked Tringou does a handstand in the shallow tide. Just as Papadimitriou submerges himself, however, they announce they are ready for lunch and he rides with them on the back of Tringou's quad bike, as they have a water fight on the winding road to a beachside taverna.

During the meal, the girls tease Collen about having a gay experience in a glory hole before turning their mockery on Papadimitriou, who has no idea what they are talking about and sings along to `John Brown's Body' like the good-natured boob he is. He pays for them all to go clubbing and bops along to the music with his eyes closed. But there is no sign of the others when he opens them and he pushes through the crowd to see Tringou emerge from the ladies. She asks if he can still get erections and, when he answers in the affirmative, she congratulates him with a carelessly patronising smile and disappears into the throng.

Anyone else would take the hint, but not Papadimitriou. Consequently, he turns an old lady away from his surgery at 3pm and heads back to the beach. As Hart is inviting him to a pool party, he is recognised by Syllas Tzoumerkas, a plastic surgeon friend from way back, who gives him a naked bear hug and describes how his life has changed since he became a father. He reveals that the party host, Konstantinos Melitas, is his neighbour and hopes to see him later. By the time they hook up, however, Papadimitriou has kissed Tringou during a party game. But she also insists he smooches Hart and he skulks off to the side of the pool to clear his head. Tzoumerkas sits beside him and jokes that they are getting a bit old for this kind of bash and asks Papadimitriou why they drifted apart. He shrugs and mentions a mishap in his personal life, without going into detail.

The next day, Papadimitriou gets a ticking off from mini mart owner Kostas Gouzelis for turning away the old woman with back pain and reminds him of his duties. But the doctor makes straight for the beach with cold beers for everyone and tries to laugh it off when Tringou pulls down his swimming shorts. At the club that night, he revels in being the centre of attention, as he struts his stuff and crowd surfs to a heavy metal variation on `Bolero'. Lying back, he looks into the flashing lights and feels accepted.

The sense grows the following day when Tringou gets sand in her eye and Van Groessen urges Papadimitriou to remove it with his tongue. Despite knowing better, he is unable to resist the sensual thrill of coming to his beloved's assistance and he licks her eyeball in Buñuelesque close-up. She rewards him by bringing him lunch in a hammock and covering him with a blanket when he has a nap. But, when she turns up at the surgery the next day to tempt him into playing hooky, he insists on seeing his patients before accompanying her. He nips home to change into his trunks and Tringou follows him into his bedroom. She winds up a musical snow globe playing the Wedding March and seems to invite him in for a kiss, only to push him away with a giggle as he inclines his head.

Papadimitriou clings to her as she drives the quad bike to a remote inlet, where she strips off and frolics in the water. Watching from the dunes, he lights a cigarette and wonders what will happen now they are finally alone. Tringou lies on top of him and they kiss before she removes his shorts and straddles him. However, he doesn't last long and they return to the town when she complains of boredom. Dropping him off by the surgery, she reassures him that he will have plenty of time to atone for his performance. But, when he tours the clubs that night, there is no sign of Tringou or her friends and he drowns his sorrows the next day with a mid-afternoon binge before crawling into her tent at the camp site in the hope of finding her.

Crashing on his bed, Papadimitriou imagines Tringou and her pals dancing the night away and his mood is scarcely improved the following day when a volleyball knocks over his beer on the beach. He winds up downing shots with Tsortekis, who introduces him to a boorish friend who insists that every foreign female on the island is up for seduction. As Papadimitriou watches the dance floor, Tsortekis makes a play for Maria Kallimani and she suggests that they go on to another club. However, when Tsortekis makes a clumsy lunge at her, she screams blue murder and Tsortekis accuses Papadimitriou of being a traitor when he holds him back.

Yet, while Papadimitriou is not proud of accepting oral gratification for his chivalry and spends the next afternoon floating aimlessly on his back in the sea, he is back on the hunt for Tringou when darkness falls. Staggering between bars, he throws up at the side of the road before making his way to the beach, where lithe naked bodies are celebrating a birthday with fireworks. Utterly out of place, he stands in the middle of the gyrating group and tries to work out if he's with Tringou's clique.

Dawn finds Papadimitriou on all fours on the beach and he calls Tringou's name in bitter confusion. He is late for his surgery and the patients are not impressed that he is putting tourists before them. But he is soon back out on the prowl and finds Collen smoking dope by the beach. Strutting into the camp site, he snaps at Tringou when she jumps into his arms and demands to know where she has been. She wonders why she needed his permission to go to Mykonos on the spur of the moment and is disgusted when he asks if she slept with anyone else while she was away. He complains that he has endured five days of hell without her, but she orders him to leave and the group pretend to be asleep when Papadimitriou shows up at the beach clutching carrier bags full of cold beer.

After watching some bevvied boors playing drinking games in a bar, Papadimitriou returns to the camp site and follows Tringou into the shower block. He peers under the doors to see which stall she is using and waits for her. Unsurprisingly, she is furious and orders him to leave her alone. He pleads for a second chance so that she can leave with memories she will cherish forever and she throws up her hands in despair, as he tries to continue the conversation from the wrong side of a fence. As a top shot fixes on his bald spot, Papadimitriou stands in dejected despair and weighs up what he still thinks are his options.

After another bar session, he returns to the camp site and sits outside Tringou's tent as she has sex. The next morning, he confronts her on the road and asks for a minute of her time. She tries to let him down gently by saying there has been a misunderstanding. But, ignoring Collen's threats, Papadimitriou tells Tringou that he has been in emotional turmoil for some years and truly believes that they could be an item. However, when he admits his love for her, she sniggers at him and, as he friends applaud his pathetic performance, she walks away without dignifying his profession with an answer.

Despite the humiliation, Papadimitriou goes to the beach to watch Tringou from a distance. He ignores an emergency call and dozes off, only to wake to find countless messages from the mayor. Hitching a ride back to town, Papadimitriou arrives at the surgery to get an earful from the anxious mother of an injured girl. But, even though he apologises for letting things slide out of control, Orkopoulos fires him and the local bartender implores him to leave without making things worse.

But Papadimitriou is no longer capable of thinking straight. He goes to the nightclub and tries to dance along to `Bolero' as though nothing has happened. Collen and Hart tell him to sling his hook and Tringou pleads with him to leave her alone. A scuffle breaks out and Papadimitriou is ejected by the bouncers. But, rather than cut his losses, he charges back to the surgery to fill a syringe with sedative before breaking a rear window and abducting Tringou from the dance floor. Bolting the bathroom door, he bundles her into a cubicle and injects her, as she struggles. As soon as she is unconscious, he posts her through the open and window and bolts after her, while Tringou's friends kick down the door.

Slinging Tringou over his shoulder, Papadimitriou manages to hide in the undergrowth, Hart and Collen chase after him, before dragging Tringou across the scrubland to his surgery. He lays her on the couch and pulls down her shorts. But, as he goes to unzip himself, he is overcome with fear and loathing and starts to sob. Struggling to compose himself, he sits down and starts cleaning up the scratches on Tringou's legs. But, as the scene cuts to black, one suspects this may well be his last act as a physician.

Right up until the last 10 minutes, this is a compellingly credible study of an schlubby schmuck making a fool of himself with a woman half his age. But Papadimitropoulos and co-scenarist Syllas Tzoumerkas (who has directed two notable pictures of his own in Homeland, 2012 and A Blast, 2014 ) push their luck too far with the risibly implausible and eminently resistible denouement that blurs any moral message they might be seeking to expound. Combined with the shallow characterisation, this cumbersome tonal shift reduces the principals to pieces that are moved around to goad more the politically correct members of the audience. Some will question the depiction of Tringou, Kotsali and Van Groessen, although others will argue that there is also plenty of full-frontal male nudity and that Christos Karamanis's camera is only presenting Tringou as Papadimitriou sees her. But this still feels more like a capriciously misanthropic act of provocation than the logical conclusion to deluded fantasy.

The decision to withhold the reasons for the outstanding Papadimitriou's susceptibility is more laudable, however, as it makes his need for acceptance seem simultaneously sad and creepy. Pitched somewhere between Professor Rath in Heinrich Mann's The Blue Angel and Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the doctor is more socially inept than perverted, as he genuinely believes that winning the heart of the princess will bring about his redemption. But the unthinking hedonism and brattish cruelty of Tringou and her fecklessly privileged set is no excuse for his behaviour, as his infatuated immaturity is far from harmless (as was the case with Michael Caine's lecherous holidaymaker in Stanley Donen's Blame It on Rio, 1984). Doubtlessly, some will read this as a parable on Greece's treatment by its wealthier partners in the EU, but the more telling social aspect of the story is the contrast between the peaceful penury of the off-season and the profitable pandemonium of the peak period. Such touches confirm Papadimitropoulos as a talent to watch after Bank Bang (2008) and Wasted Youth (2011). But, while his stylistic nous and ear for a cracking soundtrack are not in doubt, he needs to rein in the temptation to indulge in glib narrative excess.

A growing number of films are being set inside moving vehicles. Few have bettered Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1943) in pitching characters from differing backgrounds into a shared peril. But Samuel Moaz cannily conveyed the sense of microcosmic claustrophobia inside an Israeli tank in Lebanon (2010) and Mohamed Diab ably follows in his wake with Clash, which bundles prisoners from a cross-section of Egyptian society into a police wagon and watches the sparks fly. Having daringly denounced the harassment of women in Cairo 678 (2010), Diab here explores the reasons for the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government by the head of the armed forces, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in July 2013. But, while some of the characterisation is a little blunt and some of the confrontations err towards melodrama, the use of the tumult beyond the van windows chillingly captures the brutality employed by the police and military to control the crowds seeking to protect the revolution they thought they had brought about when they thronged in Tahrir Square in January 2011 to end the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.

As the paddy wagon drives into the centre of Cairo, the sounds of protest can be heard and Egyptian-American Associated Press journalist Hany Adel and his photographer Mohamed El Sebaey are pushed inside. Adel has a panic attack and El Sebaey films him with the camera on his watch. But all pleas for them to be released as members of the press go unheard until a band of anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators hurl stones at them in the mistaken belief they are foreign spies. They are set upon by riot police and Tarek Abdel Aziz and his adolescent son Ahmed Dash are shoved inside Nelly Karim hurls a stone at the barred window so that she is not separated from her husband and child.

Best friends Ahmed Malek and Husni Sheta are also detained and they accuse Adel and El Sebaey of being MB supporters because they have beards. Malek has managed to keep hold of the phone hidden in his sock and he agrees to let one of the other prisoners use it to call his uncle, who is an army general who should be able to get them all released. As the van swerves, the caller drops the phone and it appears broken. But an older man, Mohamed Abdel Azim, works in a mobile phone shop and fixes it. Nodding with gratitude, Malek puts the phone back in his sock and sits tight, as his companions spout accusations about the Brotherhood and theories about American involvement in the running of the country.

The Black Maria crawls through the streets behind a phalanx of riot police. Water cannon and tear gas are used on a pocket of MB supporters in a warren of side streets and the prisoners scramble to the windows to watch events unfold. After a surge is repelled, several protesters are propelled into the van and the more hot-headed captives launch themselves at them and the ensuing scuffle is only ended by a water jet being fired inside by the irate police commander. He orders the rear doors to be kept open and tells the two cops guarding them to shoot if they have any trouble.

Struggling back to their feet, the occupants try to dry themselves. Sheta tells Malek to shut up when he asks if his hair looks okay, while a man with a head wound refuses to let Karim touch him, even though she is a qualified nurse. Equally snappish is Mai El Ghaity, a 14 year-old in a hijab, who has been protesting with her elderly imam father, Mohamed Abu Elsoa'ud. She wants nothing to do with the others, but there is barely enough room for segregation, let alone privacy. Ali Eltayeb and Mohamed Gamal Kalbaz (who is wearing a culinder on his head as a helmet) recognise someone in a passing van and ask about friends caught up in the commotion. A doctor from the other vehicle tells them to identify official MB members and organise themselves, while excluding those who are not card-carrying supporters. Mohammad Alaa takes charge and tells Eltayeb, Kalbaz, Ashraf Hamdi and Amr Elqady to stand apart from the others. He also asks all MB supporters to turn their yellow armbands inside out so that the red side shows.

Finding himself standing next to El Ghaity, Dash asks if she plays MB vs the army at school. But, while they soon start bickering, they are interrupted by Azim, who is a diabetic and needs to pee. A soldier offers an empty water bottle to his friend Gamil Barsoum, while the commander promises to release the women and children if everyone behaves. One of the MB cabal notices Adel using his watch to film them and another argument breaks out. However, a sniper opens fire on the cops and, when one of the prisoners points him out, bullets riddle the armour-plating and everyone starts to panic when the driver is hit. A police lieutenant is killed and his colleagues rush up a fire escape to arrest one of the gunmen. They kick and beat him to death and the occupants of the van look on in horror as blood seeps from his skull on to the road, as they slowly depart from the scene.

Time passes and the prisoners (with the exception of Adel, who has been cuffed to a window bar) start walking round the van so that everyone gets a turn passing the broken window and the open door. They ask one of the soldiers to buy water, but his superior throws the money back at them. Taking his chance, Malek announces he is a DJ and hands out business cards in case anyone has a party coming up. When Sheta sneers at him, Eltayeb mocks his football shirt and a brief discussion of Cairo sporting rivalries breaks out before the cop who had been trying to fix the broken engine manages to get it started again. But Karim loses her patience when they remain parked and she pushes her way on to the road to demand water because the heat is becoming unbearable and people are starting to feel unwell.

One of the soldiers thrusts a water bottle into her hand and she makes sure Dash and El Ghaity drink first before she passes the bottle around. However, one of the MB brigade spurts his water into Adel's face in an anti-imperialist gesture that shocks the others. But the rising temperature forces everyone to calm down again and Dash plays noughts and crosses with a piece of chalk on the van wall. But, when someone calls out from the wagon parked alongside that a man has died, panic returns and one of the MB cabal tries to break out to check on his elderly father in the other vehicle. Cop Ahmed Abdel Hameed pleads with his commander to open the door to let some air in, but he has to be led away by a buddy at gunpoint, as the officer views his protest as insubordination.

Barsoum also discovers he has relatives in the other truck and calls to them to stay cool and collected. Night falls and they learn they are being kept in such cramped conditions because the prisons are already full. Aziz asks Barsoum about his son and regrets that he hasn't been a better father (and dreads discovering that he has switched sides), while Karim and the youth who phoned his uncle cheer up a street cleaner who got caught up in the ruckus after his beloved dog was killed and the boy gives him a photograph of his own pet to ease the pain. Karim also intervenes when El Ghaity needs the toilet and, when the soldiers refuse to let her out, she asks the menfolk to turn their backs. She is too embarrassed, however, and Abu Elsoa'ud pushes her out of the van when protesters began pelting the unit with rocks from an overpass.

Flares and smoke bombs explode around the van and El Ghaity screams when her father is injured. When Hameed rescues her and heads back towards the van, one of his comrades pushes him inside for disobeying orders and locks the door. As bullets start flying outside, the jittery camerawork makes it almost impossible to see what is going on. But the sense of chaos is well conveyed, as Karim tends to the wounded and advises Hameed to hide the Coptic Christian cross he wears around his neck. Tear gas is thrown and Dash uses his laser pen to see through the smog. Aziz is hit and Karim uses a needle and thread to close the wound. She borrows a hairpin from El Ghaity and Dash smiles as he sees how pretty she is when her scarf slips back.

A young man asks his father if he will go bald like he has, while some of the others ask Adel about the skyscrapers and girls in America. He is worried about El Sebaey, who has also been wounded. But he recalls how his exiled father had cursed President Nasser for being so corrupt and yet had insisted on being buried in his homeland and he muses that, for all its faults, Egypt exerts a powerful grip. As Malek and Sheta chat, the latter notices that his friend has been dating his sister behind his back and flies into a furious rage that prompts some of the others to hold him back. But peace is restored and Kalbaz sings a comic protest song and claims to be an acting star in waiting. When the others laugh, he protests that the gas has affected his voice and they joke that the Arab Spring could never have succeeded without `the tear gas singer' inspiring them.

Adel uses his watch to film people with such diametrically opposed views making the best of a bad situation. But, suddenly, the engine starts and the van begins to edge forward through the fires burning in the road. Alaa resumes his role as MB leader and promises his acolytes that Morsi will regain power and keep his promises to the faithful. Soldier Mohamed El Souisy bangs on the partition and pleads with the driver to go carefully, as they don't want an accident. But tensions between Malek and Sheta flare up again, when the former tries to explain that he was going to propose to his sister. But Sheta pushes him across the van and tells him he deserves the same fate as the MBs.

As the van bounces across some wasteland, Karim reassures El Ghaity that her father will be fine. She blames herself for forcing him to go on the march, but Aziz commends her for sticking up for her beliefs. Karim asks for her phone number so they can return the hair clips. But El Souisy realises they are going the wrong way for the police precinct and someone recognises the driver as one of their friends, Ahmed El Turky. They urge him to open the back door, only to find it has been locked with a pair of handcuffs. Alaa suggests driving to an MB stronghold, but the others fear for their safety and Adel urges El Turky to reverse into a wall in the hope the crash smashes the cuffs. In fact, he only succeeds in getting the vehicle stuck and, with siren-wailing police cars approaching in the darkness, they are convinced they are going to be charged with flight, as well as affray.

In the nick of time, El Turky gets the truck free and they speed off. The MBs seem confident that he is heading into one of their districts, but Karim and the others plead with him to stop while they can all still be safe. As they pass a column of military vehicles, they drive into the middle of a demonstration with green laser pens shining in through the bullet holes in the side of the van. The mob surrounds the vehicle and begins denouncing the occupants as traitors before they tip the truck on its side. Someone breaks through the cab partition and protesters begin clambering inside and pulling the prisoners out into the night.

The handheld footage is too juddery to discern precisely what's going on in this frantic final moments, with the laser beams and the flash cuts increasing the disorientating sense of lawless chaos - which is, of course, the point that Diab is trying to make, as he shows how those who has united against Mubarak splintered along socio-religious lines to throw their weight behind Morsi or El-Sisi. By throwing a bunch of strangers together and making little effort to identify them, let alone provide any backstory, Diab literally turns the interior of the van into a pressure-cooker. Moreover, as the tensions start to simmer and occasionally boil over, he forces viewers to challenge their initial assumptions and draw conclusions solely from what they see and hear during the course of the picture.

Although he alludes to the Brotherhood's sinister disciplinarianism and its links to the civil war in Syria, Diab wisely refuses to take sides and shows supporters of both causes resorting to violence. He also opts not wholly to demonise those seeking to retain a semblance of law and order in the face of what is often extreme provocation. But, while such finesse makes the quieter moments more poignant, as the human bonds trump the ideological differences, a couple of flashpoints seem trite by comparison, most notably Sheta and Malek's tiff. Diab might also have reined cinematographer Ahmed Gabr and editor Ahmed Hafez in a little more during the denouement, as the audience needs to make sense of the melee, as well as experience its terrifying ferocity. But the manner in which Diab and Gabr stage and record the action in the streets beyond the grilles is brilliantly inventive as both a stylistic device and as a way of showing how easily people become detached or entrenched without having a clear understanding of their leaders' motives and intentions.

The trick to being a good documentarist is to be in the right place at the right time and German music journalist Christine Franz appears to have the knack if her debut outing, Bunch of Kunst, is anything to go by. When she first approached manager Steve Underwood about exploring the cult success of Sleaford Mods, she clearly hoped to get a few choice quotes from lyricist Jason Williamson and beat-master Andrew Fearn and capture some Spinal Tap-like moments on the road. But, as the project progresses, the Nottingham duo - who describe themselves as a `spit-and-sawdust aggro act' - begin to acquire a bigger following, as trendy rock critics latch on to them and they start to play venues across Europe that might swamp any other baseball-capped chap with a laptop and his fizzingly fuming frontman.

In many ways, Sleaford Mods are a raucous variation on Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys. Their punkish brand of rage rock seems deceptively raw and simplistic. But it combines a driving power with a savage wit that taps into the frustration felt by those who believe they have been disenfranchised by a system designed to perpetuate the fat-catocracy. Embracing swearing as a literate and legitimate mode of expression, Williamson goes beyond the likes of John Cooper Clarke, Ian Dury and Half Man Half Biscuit by peppering his lyrics with expletives and, in the process, hits funny bones and raw nerves with equal acuity. Fans of New Direction and Paloma Faith may not approve. But anyone with a sense of justice and/or humour can only be impressed.

When Franz first encounters the fortysomething trio in January 2015, Williamson and Fearn seem content to let Underwood do most of the talking. A bus driver who gave up the day job to ferry the combo to pubs in the East Midlands (and a little bit beyond), Underwood is justifiably proud of the distance Sleaford Mods have come since Williamson first teamed with Nottingham studio engineer Simon Parfrement in 2007. He took a backseat after Williamson persuaded Fearn to quit DJing in 2012 and balance his laptop on a couple of beer crates and shuffle stiffly in the background, while he launches a hip-hoppy stream of furious consciousness at the paying public. Few record collections will contain albums like Austerity Dogs (2013), Divide and Exit (2014) and Key Markets (2015). But Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Steve Ignorant of Crass and Neil Barnes of Leftfield count themselves as fans alongside Iggy Pop, who used a slot on BBC 6 Music to declare Sleaford Mods `the world's greatest rock`n'roll band'. But, even though Underwood denies that they are particularly zeitgeisty, Williamson's insights into modern Britain do strike a chord with the young(ish), white, working-class males who identify with tracks like `Tied Up in Notz' more than any of the manufactured pop being produced by the mainstream music industry.

After enduring jobs in chicken packing factories and benefits offices, Williamson (or Elvis, as Underwood calls him) decided to commit to music, although dad Brian, wife Claire and mates Neil and John Paul all admit to being surprised that he stuck to his guns and turned from holding up the mirror to himself to confronting society at large. He sees no point in writing love songs and the punters seem to appreciate his honesty, as they chant along cathartically to `Jobseeker' and `Fizzy' on a UK tour that sees Williamson, Fearn and Underwood doing the hard miles in a small family car. Yet, while he tackles topics like zero hours contracts, managerial arrogance, recessional cuts and slipping through the cracks, Williamson is uncomfortable with the `Voice of the People' tag and is even uneasy at appearing on a local BBC TV arts programme.

It almost comes as a relief, therefore, when they go to the continent in April 2015 and Williamson enjoys the novelty of performing `Tied Up in Notz' to a German cimbalom. On stage, he riffs on Johnny Rotten, Ian Dury and Ian Curtis as he grips the mike and scowls his lyrics. But there are also times when the duo come across like Jeremy and Super Hans in Peep Show, as they seem a bit bemused by their burgeoning reputation. However, they are confident they are old enough to take whatever gets thrown at them, whether it's a video shoot in Skegness, a BBC request to tone down their lyrics or the arrival of a big red tour bus with 14 bunks on the upper deck. They even hold their own at Glastonbury and on Later..With Jools Holland before selling out Nottingham's fabled Rock City and supporting The Libertines at the O2 in London.

Nevertheless, while Fearn chills on his houseboat, Williamson starts getting nervous before gigs and the heavily pregnant Claire (who knows all about his moods and keeps his feet firmly on the ground) has to calm him down before they raise the roof with `Tweet, Tweet, Tweet'. Moreover, the pressure also increases on Underwood, who is still willing to sticker 12-inch covers, but can see the sense of letting someone like Geoff Travis at Rough Trade organise this kind of thing for him. Williamson agrees that this smacks of common sense rather than sell-out, as it will allow more people to hear the new album, English Tapas, than ever before. Closing on Iggy Pop reading the lyrics of `You're Brave' before attending a gig in Helsinki, this is a lively and grounded profile that makes one wonder how it differs from Paul Sng and Nathan Hannawin's Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain (2015), which followed the pair around some of the country's more deprived areas in the run-up to the 2015 General Election. Photographed with a grungy handheld feel by Daniel Waldhecker and capably assembled by Oliver Werner, the footage chimes in with the band's DIY ethos. But Franz doesn't always avoid rockumentary cliché and, while she coaxes Williamson, Fearn and Underwood into opening up about how they fit into the contemporary scene, the only clues she gets to their views on the misplaced ire and complacent mediocrity of Brexit Britain come from the incendiary lyrics.

Having graduated from the National Film and Television School, British-Nigerian Shola Amoo makes a bold directorial debut with A Moving Image, a partially crowd-funded blend of scripted drama, documentary, video postcard and performance art that seeks to expose the social, political, economic and cultural drawbacks of urban gentrification. Inspired by producer Rienkje Attoh's discovery that the Brixton of her youth is rapidly disappearing, this shares an agenda with Generation Revolution by fellow first-timers Usayd Younis and Cassie Quarless. But, while that film allowed itself to get bogged down by confrontational rhetoric, this hybrid atones for its lack of polish with an abundance of ambition and good intentions.

Returning to South London after a spell living in Shoreditch, light-skinned black actress Tanya Fear emerges from the Underground and barely recognises her old stomping ground. Moving into a trendy studio loft, Fear auditions for a project with Alex Austin, who is just back from making his name in Hollywood. He is keen for director Joe Layton to cast Fear, but she has problems with the non-consensual nature of a sex scene and decides to devote her energy to a film about the gradual exclusion of the African-Caribbean community and the unchecked gentrification of Brixton. She enlists the help of editor friend Hussina Raja, who had recently set her up on a blind date with Aki Omoshaybi, a performance artist whose ego she had nettled by finding is work bafflingly pretentious.

Armed with a camera, Fear attends a Reclaim Brixton march and, in addition to capturing ambient footage, she also interviews some of those demonstrating, including a white man who lives in dread of Peckham being bohemianised and overrun with franchise coffee shops. Suitably moved by what she has seen and heard, Fear unstraightens her hair and goes back on to the streets to film smart-suited street preacher Lamin Tamba and Yinka Oyewole, a busker-activist with a kagoul and a megaphone. She also meets up with Omoshaybi again and is stung when he accuses her of being part of the problem for renting such niche space. Raja concurs that white developers and interlopers are predominantly to blame for shattering the sense of community. But she also blames Fear for defecting to `Ground Zero for the hipster apocalypse' and suggests that she reflects her own guilty conscience in the film.

Keen to meet people whose lives are being jeopardised by the neighbourhood makeover, Fear asks Omoshaybi to be a go-between. However, she gets shirty with him when he says he will have to think about it because he doesn't know her well enough yet to vouch for her. She also gets testy when Raja interviews her about the fact she snacks on seasoned kale and is unwilling to discuss the bouts of depression she has been suffering since she was 10. And she is further put on the spot when Omoshaybi introduces her to Yrsa Daley-Ward, who is hugely protective of the vulnerable people she represents and is eager to ensure that Fear is not going to exploit them for her own creative ends. She tries to protest that she is a local girl who wants to highlight social iniquity, but Daley-Ward takes her to task for not recognising that gentrification is a racial issue and exposes the superficial nature of her approach before suggesting that she does some historical research before she starts making sweeping statements.

Fortunately, Austin is more receptive and agrees to participate in the film in return for a favour. She also coaxes Oyewole to sing `Sometimes These South London Streets Remind Me of Brooklyn'. As Raja surveys the footage, she reveals that Oyewole took a blow to the head during the 1981 riots. Moreover, she commends Fear on the shape the project is taking and hints that she might be able to include it in a pop-up exhibition she is organising.

Having recorded Omoshaybi performing a mime piece in a large white papier maché mask, Fear invites Daley-Ward to see her interview with Betty Mahari, a refugee from Eritrea who is fighting to keep the Art Nouveau café open in the face of what she considers to be a concerted effort to change the racial profile of the area. Fear raises the issue of social cleansing with the Bermondsey-born Austin during his talking-head slot and he takes exception to the fact that she seems to be implying that he is racially insensitive to the decimation of established communities. Nevertheless, they drink red wine and have a dance off in her flat.

Daley-Ward introduces Fear to activists Emelia Kenlock, Hayley Mills, Chima Nsoedo and James Hamilton, who dismisses Reclaim as a white bourgeois movement that marginalises the black and working-class people the protest is supposed to be about. He also tells her that she is wasting her time with a kitschy art project because such liberal platitudes mean nothing to real men and women facing struggle on a daily basis. She is demoralised by Hamilton's condemnation and gets so down that she forgets to attend Omoshaybi's gig. As a storm breaks outside, he reassures her that he has been through depression, too, and promises to be there whenever she needs to talk. But Raja is disappointed with her for quitting and almost storms out when Fear accuses her of bailing out on her before when she felt suicidal.

Having witnessed Oyewole getting into a fight with black security guard Okorie Chukwu and drunk fresh mango juice through a yellow straw, Fear returns to the project with renewed energy. She sets up a website where folks from around the world can post vlogs about their experience of gentrification and Raja provides the tech support. Soon, she is uploading messages about the situation in Harlem, the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn and Berlin's Neukölln neighbourhood from Ja'tovia Gary, Jessica Green and Amanda Mukasonga. Moreover, she wins over Hamilton, who allows her to use her media contacts to raise funds and spread the word about some of his group's activities.

Fear hosts Raja's exhibition and everyone seems to be getting along famously as they dance and play bar football. But Austin and Omoshaybi compete for her attention and, just as Austin is about to ask Fear is he can kiss her, Omoshaybi appears out of thin air to play gooseberry. He also discovers that Austin bought his property in the street from which he has recently been evicted and Fear realises that this gentrification problem is more complicated than she had imagined, as it keeps hitting close to home. But she promises Omoshaybi that nothing is going on with Austin before she goes out filming Oyewole using his megaphone to proclaim his right to live where he wants. That night, she has a dream that she finds him sitting in her flat with an animated sun burning in his hand.

Worried that something has happened to Oyewole, Fear wanders the streets at night in a slo-mo collage of neon light spots and superimposed landmarks. But Raja breaks the news that he has died and she is concerned that it might be inappropriate to premiere her video so close to his passing. However, a respectable and respectful audience gathers in the flat to view the film and, following a moment's silence for her departed friend, Fear takes questions.

In truth, Amoo's shoestring docudrama provides very few answers and it doesn't always hang together. Indeed, it often skates over concepts and policies that need exploring in some depth. But it suggests new ways in which a contentious topic can be discussed. Sadly, the all-consuming significance of Brexit means that pressing issues like social cleansing will be overlooked during the forthcoming election campaign. So, it's important for film-makers to prick the conscience of those in a position to arrest the profit-driven transformation of our inner cities and Amoo deserves great credit for chosing such a subject for the debut that could shape his artistic future.

Some may find his heroine a touch dilettante and twee, with her little outfits and her knack of making even the angriest man in the room fall in love with her. But she has much in common with Tracy Camilla Johns character in Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It (1986) and Amoo taps into that picture's knowing energy (as opposed to Do the Right Thing's fury) and innovation in tying his disparate strands together. Like Lee, however, he doesn't solve the problem of some sub-par support playing. But Felix Schimilinsky's véritésque cinematography and Mdhamiri a Nkemi's sensitive editing ensure that this worthwhile outing makes its points with potency and panache.

Finally, this week, the Prince Charles Cinema is hosting a special screening on 27 April of James Redford's Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope. Co-produced with writer-editor Karen Pritzker, this is a companion piece to Paper Tigers (2015), in which Redford and Pritzker profiled Jim Sporleder, the principal of the Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, Washington, who changed the institution's approach to rectifying negative behaviours after learning about the theory of Adverse Childhood Experiences that had been advanced by doctors Robert Anda and Vincent Felitti. Here, Redford (whose father is the screen legend, Robert Redford) seeks to explain ACEs and show how the traumas they cause can impact upon the victim's health in later life.

Few took Anda and Felitti seriously when they first posited that a range of fatal illnesses and self-destructive behaviours were related to childhood incidents of neglect and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. But Anda, an epidemiologist who worked at the Centres for Disease Control between 1984-2014, and Felitti, the former head of Preventive Medicine at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego persisted and, having published a landmark paper in 1998, they started to win converts to their theory, especially when Felitti demonstrated that 55% of the patients he was treating for obesity had suffered some form of sexual molestation as minors. Together, Anda and Felitti also traced connections to the witnessing of substance abuse and domestic violence, as well as the stress generated by parents going to prison, being diagnosed with a mental illness or getting divorced.

Anda admits himself that he was astonished to discover the links between the 10 ACES and smoking, teenage pregnancy, rape, alcoholism, drug use, obesity, diabetes, depression, heart disease, financial problems and suicide. Against a backdrop of graphs, a caption reveals that those with an ACE score of 6 out of 10 are likely to have their life expectancy reduced by 20 years. Yet, resistance to such revolutionary findings was strong within a healthcare system that only spends 5% of its $3 trillion annual budget on preventative medicine.

A decade after Anda and Felitti went public with their study, Redford goes to Bayview-Hunters Point neighbourhood in San Francisco to meet paediatrician Nadine Burke Harris. When she opened her clinic, there was only one paediatrician for the 10,000 children in the area and she quickly became convinced that the ACE indicators determined the fact that life expectancy on her patch was 11 years shorter than in more affluent suburbs. Implementing an inoculation programme and working with psychologists and nutritionists, she tried to improve the health of her patients. She teamed with Stanford psychiatrist Victor Carrion, who specialises in anxiety and behavioural disorders in children, to get parents in her practice to fill in ACE questionnaires and they were soon able to link things like learning difficulties to a child's physical and emotional environment.

A rather gaudy animated sequence illustrates Carrion's contention that a degree of stress is helpful in achieving goals. But, if a child is constantly experiencing a sensation equivalent to dodging an oncoming truck, then they are going to experience damaging after effects. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard, calls this `toxic stress' and castigates those who tell kids experiencing difficulties to `suck it up' because no one would say that to a cancer patient and they should be more sensitive in dealing with juvenile issues, too.

Following another melodramatic animated interlude to show an innocent child in various states of peril, a caption declares that the presence of a stable, caring parent is crucial in teaching a child the resilience it will need to survive tougher times. For now, this means instructing parents how to develop such life skills in the hope that they will become the norm for future generations. But it's going to take time and that is why places like the Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven, Connecticut are so important, as executive director Alice Forrester offers help to parents, as well as children in tackling aberrant behaviours. Family advocate Laura Lawrence agrees that it is vital to ask ACE questions, even if people feel they are having their privacy invaded, because the solutions are so often to be found in one of the 10 checklist categories. Having been through an abusive teenage relationship herself, she also feels adults need to face up to their own past trauma in order to improve the lot of their kids.

Kindergarten teacher Cynthia Maniforld and classroom assistant Charles Warner at Strong Elementary School are forever on the lookout for signs that a child is unhappy or unruly. Principal Susan DeNicola forged a link with Dr David Johnson at the Post-Traumatic Stress Centre to help kids articulate the issues that were causing them to act out. They compiled what became known as Miss Kendra's list (and Redford uses a more effective silhouette animation to explain the story of its genesis) and we see a young teacher asking the children in her class the rules on the list to ensure they are not at ACE risk. She also supervises an activity that allows them to express any concerns they might have in letters or drawings. In return, they get a response from one of Johnson's staff offering them answers and/or reassurance.

Back in San Francisco, Dr Burke Harris expands her initiative into the Centre for Youth Wellness and she begins home visits to see how parents can be helped to raise their offspring in the best way. She also introduces universal ACE screening and has added meditation to basic therapy as a way of teaching kids to control themselves. She strongly believes state and federal agencies should be adopting similar policies and the film ends with Burke Harris, Anda and Shonkoff speaking at conferences to persuade healthcare, law enforcement and educational bodies to check the research and see the transformatory results that were achieved in Washington state after Laura Porter persuaded the powers that be to think again and take a chance.

Less a documentary than an advocatory infomercial, this is very much a specialist item. Redford wisely leaves the floor to Anda and Felitti in the early stages, as he establishes the medico-intellectual context. But much of the picture is devoted to the work of Nadine Burke Harris and the Strong Elementary School. This is fine as it goes, but the case studies are festooned with statistical captions that vanish from the screen before the viewer has time to digest their significance. Similarly, Redford makes plentiful use of the animations produced by STK Films, which borrow the wide-eyed innocent look from anime in an attempt to tug on heartstrings while also pricking consciences.

The subject is fascinating and the evidence presented here seem overwhelmingly to suggest that the ACE study represents a major breakthrough. But, for a film lasting only 68 minutes to ignore any contrary arguments feels deleterious, as the relentless positivity eventually comes to seem propagandist, especially as a quick online search suggests that Anda and Felitti's findings are not as overlooked as Redford and his interviewees imply.