Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 12/7/2018

Restored in 4K for cinema and Blu-ray release, Wim Wenders's debut feature is an adaptation of Peter Handke's cult novella, Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter. Coming two years after his graduation film, Summer in the City (1970), this boldly downbeat non-thriller feels like something that neo-realist doyen Cesare Zavattini might have written for Alfred Hitchcock. Despite its limited release outside West Germany, this `completely schizoid film, right in the middle of everything' established Wenders among the bright young things of Das Neue Kino and forged a link with the Austrian author, who would go on to contribute to the screenplays of The Wrong Move (1975) and Wings of Desire (1987).

Joseph Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is playing in goal in a lower league fixture. He scarcely seems interested in the play and ticks off a couple of lads messing around on a bench behind his net. Yet, when the opposition scores a goal he does nothing to prevent, Bloch protests so vociferously to the referee that he's sent off. He takes a streetcar into Vienna and buys a cinema ticket before checking into a modest hotel. Intrigued by cashier Gloria (Erika Pluhar), Bloch returns to the cinema, which is showing Howard Hawks's stock-car saga, Red Line 7000 (1965). However, she drives off with a friend, leaving Bloch to return to his hotel. 

Mooching around the next day, Bloch buys a paper with the football results and gets chatting to Maria (Marie Bardischewski), while pondering a jukebox choice in a bar. He tells her a story about a player who disappeared while trying his luck in America and she is suitably charmed to take him back to her apartment. Riding in the lift, he unbuttons her top and she licks the corner of her mouth in anticipation. But we quickly return to the pavement, as Hertha goes to meet a friend and Bloch takes a taxi to the Prater. He is attacked by a couple of blokes outside the market and repairs to a washroom to tidy up before returning to the cinema to discuss the plot of a movie about counterfeiters with Gloria. 

After the screening, Bloch sits on a palette and waits for Gloria to appear beneath the marquee advertising The Tremor of Forgery. He follows her on to the bus and she invites him back to her flat. She lives near the airport and he is woken by the sound of the planes the next morning. In turn, Bloch wakes Gloria with the shower and she tells him about her dream, in which she was wearing a dress made out of banknotes that caught fire and had to be extinguished. They exchange names over breakfast and she tells him about the time she went to a football match (on the day Sharon Tate was murdered) with a customer who had chatted her up after she had given him a seat behind a pillar. Bloch responds with the story of the time he had sat in a puddle after one of his defenders had scored an own goal. 

They seem to be getting along nicely, as Gloria plays American music on her record player and relates the story of the postcard he examines beside the mirror. He looks out of the window at the planes landing, as Gloria asks him if he has to go to work. Toying idly with a length of rope, she lies coquettishly on the bed and loops the rope around Bloch's neck to pull him towards her. However, he suddenly wraps his hands around her throat and the screen goes black. When he wakes from a nap leaning against the bed, Bloch pays no heed to the lifeless corpse, as he uses a blue handkerchief to wipe his fingerprints from the objects he has touched around the room. In his haste to leave, however, he fails to spot a coin half covered by a newspaper on the table. 

Having picked up his bag from the hotel and been quizzed by a policeman for knocking a cinema usher's torch out of his hand for waking him up, Bloch catches a bus. The woman sitting next to him (Rosl Dorena) notices the coins that have fallen on the seat through a hole in his checked jacket pocket. He explains that they are so dirty because they were used for the toss during his team's recent tour of America. At the end of the line, Bloch checks into a hotel and asks Anna the waitress (Libgart Schwarz) if she knows the whereabouts of the inn run by his old lover, Hertha Gabler (Kai Fischer). She informs him that the inn is close to the border, as she gives him a room above a bowling alley. 

Next morning, Bloch notices that Gloria's murder has made the front page of the newspaper. So, he turns to the story of a missing mute boy that is dominating the local news. He buys some shirts and underwear from a shop in the village and walks to the Border Inn, where he is served by a surly waitress who is babysitting Hertha's four year-old daughter while she sleeps. She is surprised, but pleased to see Bloch and they make small talk while she smokes at his table. However, he returns to the village to spend the night and has a misunderstanding with Anna when she comes to clean his room. Bloch tries to explain that he didn't mind her coming in, but she is too busy for idle chatter. 

Back at the Border Inn, Hertha is also frustrated by Bloch's silent fidgeting, as she tries to peel apples in the kitchen. Her daughter wakes from a nightmare about flies under her pillow and Herthan tells Bloch that some of the neighbouring children have been telling her scare stories while staying with them because there has been a death in the family. Bloch tries to lure Hertha into the bedroom, but she's not in the mood. 

Waking next morning in his hotel room, Bloch tries to interest another guest in a stone he has picked up. However, the man says it's worthless and Bloch kills some time by visiting the salon, where hairdressers Monika Pöschl and Sybille Danzer give him a mixed reception. He wanders through the countryside and holds his nerve as a policeman passes on a moped. Bored with playing patience at the inn, Bloch watches the odd job man (Rüdiger Vogler) hauling beer crates before looking around the big house on the edge of the village. 

Having vomited in the sink, Bloch comes down for breakfast to read that the police consider an American coin left at the crime scene to be a major clue. Distracted, Bloch scarcely hears Anna telling him that the missing child has been found floating in the river. But he manages to retain his composure while calling his coach to find out details of a training camp. He wanders down to the bridge over the river and sees two cops taking a bearded Gypsy into custody. Headind for the railway station bar, Bloch chats to Pöschl and Danzer. He tells them about a dream involving fire extinguishers before hitching a ride to the next town to watch Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda in Don Siegel's Madigan (1968). 

Returning to the inn, Bloch gets into a fight with one of the customers and is set upon by three of his mates in the pouring rain. They dump him outside the police station and ring the bell, but the duty officer is unconcerned. Having dried out, Bloch rejoins Gloria, who is doing her accounts in the kitchen. It's 2:30am and he tears the date off the wall calendar, only to learn that Gloria has already done it. She brings him some bread and cold cuts and he chomps on a sandwich, while she tends to her daughter, who has woken up and wants a candle in her room. When she finds Bloch rifling through drawers, she snaps at him for being a nuisance and she's relieved when he decides to wander back to the hotel with the cop, who has popped in to borrow an umbrella. 

As they walk, the cop describes how he watches the body language of suspects to judge which leg they are going to launch from when they run away. Yet, for all his boasting about being highly observant, he has no suspicions about Bloch, who makes a half-hearted pass at Anna, as he heads to bed. She is on duty again the next morning and informs Bloch that the cops have released the Gypsy because the boy slipped into the river by accident. He is more interested in the police sketch of their prime suspect in the cashier strangling and Anna suggests that any sensible culprit would have grown a beard to change his appearance. 

Strolling briskly through the village, Bloch goes in search of a call box. But the phone is out of order and he slumps down on the bus stop bench to read the paper. He betrays little emotion, as he reads the newspaper report about the net closing in. But he refuses to panic and wanders into the local football ground and takes a seat in the stand. He asks the man next to him about the teams, but he is a travelling salesman and has no idea about their form. As they watch, the referee awards a penalty and Bloch explains the psychology of saving a spot kick and the salesman nods when the keeper blocks the shot. The camera pulls away from the seating, as Bloch continues to watch the match and play a waiting game with his pursuers. 

Long withheld from international audiences because of rights issues pertaining to some of the classic oldies on the mono soundtrack, this gripping drama has never been given its due as one of Wim Wenders's finest achievements. Set in the kind of border country he would revisit in Kings of the Road (1976), it bears a passing visual resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), although the grislier moments are staged off camera. But Jürgen Knieper's score unmistakably pays homage to the works of Bernard Herrmann, as it grumbles its accompaniment to Robby Müller's stealthy camera moves. Moreover, Wenders is more interested in the American influence on Western Europe, as he dots the action with images of jukeboxes, motorcycle gangs, bowling pins and cinemas showing Hollywood movies, including an unmade adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith study of apprehension and guilt that chimes perfectly with the picture's unsettling timbre. 

Symbolising a culture ill at ease with itself, Arthur Brauss excels as the ironically named Joseph Bloch, who sounds as though he has drifted out of a Kafka or Camus novel into a backwater that deceptively offers sanctuary and freedom, while actually entrapping him. The supporting cast similarly inhabits the milieu with a deadpan naturalism that allows the undercurrent of bleak humour to seep through and highlight the audacious lack of suspense. Production designers Burghard Schlicht and Rudolf Schneider-Manns Au and editor Peter Przygodda similarly reinforce the sense of deliberation, which the latter would bring to numerous Wenders features up to Don't Come Knocking (2005). He died in 2011 and Müller's death last week casts a pall over a reissue that should be cheered to the echo, as it fully deserves the epithet, `lost masterpiece'.

It's a fair bet that at least a couple of the players who have been royally entertaining us at the World Cup are gay. But the odds on any of them coming out would tax the numerous bookmakers whose adverts clutter the bulk of UK sports coverage. The price footballers have to pay for suppressing their sexual preferences has already been explored in Ben A. Williams's 2016 adaptation of John Donnelly's play, The Pass. But Swiss film-maker Marcel Gisler reveals what's at stake for the clubs involved in a potential scandal in Mario, a polished, but predictable drama that concludes a gay trilogy that started with Fögi Is a Bastard (1998) and Rosie (2013).

Swiss striker Mario Lüthi (Max Hubacher) has worked hard to get into the Under-21 team at Young Boys of Bern. He is put out, therefore, when coach Roger Maillard (Joris Gratwohl) and his assistant, Hélio Bomcampo (Manuel Pereira) introduce the squad to fellow forward, Leon Saldo (Aaron Altaras), who has joined the club from Hanover with a view to moving him into the first team at the end of the season. As they know that promotions are rare, teammates like Luc Columbier (Fabrizio Borsani) and Claudio Lafranconi (Scherwin Amini) are resentful and even Mario has his doubts when Leon hogs the ball in training. However, they get chatting on the tram into town and agree to work together to secure their starting positions. 

Mario lives in Thun with parents Daniel (Jürg Plüss) and Evelyn (Doro Müggler) in a mountain chalet and they are consulting with agent Peter Gehrling (Andreas Matti) about their son's future. He also has to deal with the expectations of old friend Jenny Odermatt (Jessy Moravec), who would like them to become more intimate. She is up for a job as a costume maker at the local theatre and, when the club move the pair into a twin apartment, Jenny teases Mario than Leon is handsome. They get along well enough, but Mario is concerned that Leon isn't taking his talent seriously enough and dines on pizza and beer while he is eating steak and salad. He also thinks he should practice more with his left foot, as does Daniel, who used to play in the lower leagues and sometimes annoys Mario because he thinks he knows it all because he did some coaching. 

Unable to sleep one night because of the hear, the flatmates play a video game and Leon tries to put Mario off by tickling him. He also kisses him and Mario stalks off to his room in shock. The next day, however, they pretend nothing happened over breakfast and combine for the goal that beats the reigning champions. They are commended in the post-match huddle by the coach, but Mario slips away to Thun and Leon feels hurt. He is further stung when they check into a training camp and Mario asks for a single room. Leon follows him to the lake and apologises for making a move and Mario reminds him that they will never make it as professional footballers if anyone knows they're gay. 

That night, however, Mario comes to Leon's room to make up and they spoon on the bed. Leon is invited to the chalet and Evelyn is impressed when he performs a rap at the dinner table. She urges Mario to contact Jenny because she failed to get her dream job and he promises her that he is keeping tabs on her. Back in their apartment, Mario and Leon discuss their past experiences and Mario is surprised that Leon dumped his boyfriend because he was too demonstrative in public, as Leon had kissed him while they were wandering around the shops in Thun. He is also taken aback that Leon has arranged dates through Grindr, as he is putting himself at risk of exposure. 

But, despite their efforts to be discreet in public, someone sticks a pornographic image on Mario's locker door and he is summoned to a meeting by the club sporting director (Beat Marti), who reveals that he has heard a rumour about their affair and is concerned how it will impact upon sponsors, fans and team morale. Mario denies everything and Maillard promises to support him. But Gehrling is furious with Mario for hiding the truth from him and reminds him that homosexuality is one of the game's biggest taboos. Leon's agent, Christian Zischler (Matthias Neukirch), is more confident that the situation can be managed, as Young Boys have invested too much in the pair to throw them to the wolves. Moreover, the board wants to avoid a scandal to avoid having to spout politically correct platitudes. 

The agents agree, however, that Leon and Mario should be seen out with girls and the need becomes more urgent after they detect hostility in the changing room and Lafranconi hisses a homophobic slur after Leon misses a penalty during a training game. Thus, Mario takes Jenny to a club function and Leon tries to make small talk to her friend, Miri (Annina Polivka). But, when Mario is introduced to the new first team coach (Tom Burri) and he makes a show of hugging and kissing her during the conversation, Jenny objects and walks out. However, when he comes clean, she hugs him and is genuinely pleased that he has found somebody. 

Their togetherness doesn't fool Lafranconi, however, who so riles Mario with a snide remark during their next game that he loses his head and is sent off for a reckless tackle. At full-time, Mario confronts Lafranconi who says that he will ease up on the lovers if they start giving him some more scoring chances, as squad assessment is imminent and he needs to improve his numbers. Leon wants to thump him, but Mario persuades him to stay calm and do nothing to make matters worse. 

An anonymous note to his parents rocks the boat, however, as Daniel is disgusted and doesn't take kindly to Mario suggesting that he treats Evelyn like a possession. But the season progresses and Maillard informs Mario that he will be drafted into the first team squad next season. Consequently, when Leon loses his temper at a dressing-room prank, Mario disowns him in order to safeguard his career and Leon storms out in anguished rage. He's suspended by the club and barely speaks to Mario when he comes to collect his things. 

Struggling to cope with his loss, Mario turns to Gehrling, who has received an offer from St Pauli in Hamburg. He asks Jenny if she will continue the charade to help Mario find his feet in a new town and promises to find her a better job than waitressing in a bar. She goes along with the deal and, while they lead separate lives, she turns up on match days to sit with the other WAGs. Daniel and Evelyn come to see Mario make his full debut and cheer when he lays on a goal. But, while Daniel tells his son how proud he is, Evelyn refuses to appear in a magazine shoot at the apartment, as she is uneasy about the fact that Mario and Jenny are living a lie. 

This reality also dawns on Jenny after an awkward dinner party and she tells Mario she has met someone else and wants to move out. He accepts her decision, but keeps popping sleeping pills and decides that he has to see Leon to clear his mind. Now training to be a sound engineer and playing park football, Leon has no regrets about Mario putting success before love, but he is in no mood to go back to skulking in the shadows. Mario is nettled when Leon's boyfriend wanders in and gives him a proprietorial kiss, but he recognises that he has moved on and leaves with a heavy heart. Indeed, he still seems to be in a daze when he scores in his next match and can barely register a smile.

Produced with the full co-operation of one of Switzerland's biggest clubs, this is a well-meaning insight into the mind of a young footballer. Having to balance their own ambitions with the good of the team, the members of the U21 squad have had a glimpse of the big-time and have sampled the rewards of turning pro. Thus, while Gisler and co-scenarists Thomas Hess and Frederic Moriette are right to condemn Lafranconi's bigotry, they wisely avoid demonising him, as he lacks the social and emotional intelligence to react otherwise to a dressing-room romance. They also knowingly question the board's morality by allowing them to blame their decision to keep the story under wraps on the fans and sponsors when they are far more concerned about public image and sell-on values. But Gisler struggles with the footballing action, which exposes Hubacher and Altaras's sporting shortcomings and undermines the authenticity of the plot as much as the pair's notable deficiency in sexual chemistry. 

The subplots involving Mario's father and longtime gal pal also feel forced, as Daniel tries to live vicariously through his son's achievements while ignoring his own failings as a husband and Jenny drifts like a paper cut-out in Mario's slipstream. Indeed, the sketchy secondary characterisation also impacts upon Gisler's analysis of machismo and team spirit, as he makes little effort to establish any bantering bonds between players who, presumably, would have come through the ranks together and, therefore, would know each other inside out. His pacing is also somewhat sluggish, while there's little to get excited about in either Sophie Maintigneux's photography or Kathrin Brunner's production design. Yet, this is a sincere attempt to goad football into confronting a problem it keeps hoping to ignore.

Flemish director Michaël R. Roskam made an immediate impression with his Oscar-nominated feature debut, Bullhead (2011), which also made a star of compatriot Matthias Schoenaerts. But, while Schoenaerts went to France to earn a César for Most Promising Actor alongside Marion Cotillard in Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone (2012) and earned further kudos for his performances as Gabriel Oak in Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd and Hans Axgil in Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl (both 2015), Roskam's stock dipped after the modest performance of his first English-language outing, The Drop (2014), even though Schoenaerts lined up alongside Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini, in what would turn out to be his final role. 

Now, the Belgian duo join forces again on Racer and the Jailbird. But, while it boasts a screenplay by Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré - who have contributed to such potent Audiard pictures as A Prophet (2009), Rust and Bone and Dheepan (2015) - this high-speed crime saga lacks the grit and intensity to convince or compel. 

Terrified of dogs since he was a child, Gino `Gigi' Vanoirbeek (Matthias Schoenaerts) wangles an invitation from Bernard `Nardo' Delhany (Thomas Coumans) to watch his sister, Bénédicte (aka `Bibi'; Adèle Exarchopoulos), race for the sports car team owned by her father, Freddy (Eric De Staercke). Claiming to be in the export/import business, Gigi uses his bluff charm to establish that Bibi doesn't have a boyfriend and is willing to go on a date, providing he doesn't bring her any flowers. From the outset, their romance is passionate and Bibi enjoys watching Gigi partying with friends like Serge Flamand (Jean-Benoît Ugeux) and Younes Bouhkris (Nabil Missoumi), who tell her tales about his wild youth. 

Alone in front of a real fire, Gigi confides that he often gets into trouble by acting on impulse and Bibi laughs when she asks him to tell her a secret and he replies that he's a gangster who robs banks. As a respectable businessman, however, Freddy is suspicious of Gigi and warns Bibi to be careful. But the rebel in her causes her to ignore his advice and she suspects nothing when Gigi returns from a trip to Poland with the facial injury he received robbing a bank managed by a friend of Nardo's (Stefaan Degand). She doesn't even smell a rat when Sandra (Nathalie Van Tongelen), who hangs out with the gang, tells her about the raid at a garden centre and drops a hint that she should check that Gigi really was out of Belgium at the time. 

Deciding to scare a confession out of him, Bibi quizzes Gigi about his movements while speeding through narrow country lanes. But he retains his composure and she receives a ticket for dangerous driving. Ironically, putting the pedal to the metal pays off at her next race, as Bibi finishes third. But Freddy tells Gigi that he will only let them marry if he stops telling lies. Desperate not to lose Bibi, but also loyal to his pals, Gigi finds himself being lured into another job and even Bibi begins to have doubts when he leaves her in the car to collect some hardware from a seedy garage. She notices the way he flinches at the sight of the guard dog and, when he cancels a promised weekend away, she demands that he tells her the truth. Gigi tries to explain that Serge and Younes are like family and compares the adrenaline rush he gets when they're working to the thrill Bibi that derives from racing cars. But she is too smitten to press him further and they make love. 

The daring robbery involves dropping a lorry container off a motorway bridge in front of an armoured car and Gigi is so stressed that he throws up as soon as they arrive at the hideaway. However, the containers have been booby-trapped and Younes is badly injured in the explosion. Meanwhile, Sandra has shown up at Bibi's apartment claiming to be too frightened to go home. But Bibi is curious to see inside Gigi's flat after he mails her the address and slips out. She gets a jolt when the land line rings, but doesn't answer (even though it's Gigi calling her from a payphone while trying to get through to a trusted doctor). However, she is freaked out when Sandra knocks and announces she is a police officer. She informs her that the gang has killed a cop and urges her to keep Gigi talking when he calls back, With tears streaming from her eyes, Bibi does what she is told and Gigi realises the game is up. 

Having crashed in a night race, Bibi loses interest in her car and goes to work at Freddy's construction yard. She remains loyal to Gigi, however, and sees him sentenced to 15 years, with five suspended to co-operating with the authorities. But Bezne (Kerem Can), the suave son of Albanian builder Assa (Serge Riaboukine), implies that Gigi will need protection in prison and suggests that Bibi asks Freddy for a 10% discount on materials to ensure that he stays safe. Nardo is furious and accuses Bibi of behaving as badly as their mother. But Freddy insists they will remain a family and he agrees to the deal when he discovers that Bibi is pregnant. 

Gigi is allowed to come to the hospital where Bibi is having her scan and wanders off to buy some baby clothes as a present. While waiting to cross the road, however, he kicks a dog that nips his ankle and runs away when the police come to investigate. Bibi despairs of him and threatens to have nothing more to do with him unless he surrenders. Shortly afterwards, however, she calls to tell him that she has not only lost the baby, but that she has also been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the ovaries. In a last bid to help him, she looks up the man she had seen at the garage and asks if he can put her in touch with the Albanian mobsters who can help break Gigi out of prison and smuggle him to Argentina, where they had once dreamt of starting a new life. When they refuse her request, Bezne agrees to help her in return for her Porsche and a 15% cut of the fee. 

Shortly after the prison warden (Sam Louwyck) allows Gigi out under armed escort to say his farewells to the comatose Bibi, he receives a tip off (using the code phrase `no flowers') from a fellow inmate that a plan is afoot to spring him. This involves beating him up and abducting him from the truck transferring him to another facility. But, even though the Albanians threaten further violence because they won't get paid until he arrives in Buenos Aires, Gigi doesn't want to go without Bibi and finds himself in a cage alongside a badly wounded dog. Steeling himself, he bends back the wire to steal the animal's choke chain, which he wraps round his jailer's neck before blasting his way to freedom with his gun. Finding Bibi's car under a tarpaulin, Gigi speeds through the city (in an extended point-of-view shot) to the cemetery, as we hear a flashback to the secrets conversation, in which Bibi had confided that she is immortal.

Closing with a possible allusion to Harry Kümels's Malpertuis (1971) - in which the gods of Greek mythology are imprisoned in a Belgian mansion - this is a film that strains credibility to breaking point. But Roskam stages it with such conviction that it's hard not to get swept along, especially as the frisson between Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts is so palpable. Writers Bidegain and Debré certainly ensure there's plenty going on, as the love story runs parallel with the heists. But this `amour noir' begins to veer off the track after the gang is apprehended and fate begins to find ever more callous and unlikely ways to toy with a couple whose fatal attraction is never entirely convincing. 

Exarchopoulos is well cast as the daddy's girl with her mother's capricious streak, but her lack of curiosity about Schoenaerts and his lifestyle lazily allows Roskam to drag her down to his level. But, as his primary focus is on the scarred kid who was doomed the moment he was born on the wrong side of the tracks, the story sags once the imposing Schoenaerts disappears behind bars and few of the subsequent developments ring true, as the action descends ever more deeply into melodrama. Despite overdoing the POV shots through the windscreen of speeding vehicles, cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis produces some evocative visuals that are edited with undeniable dynamism by Alain Dessauvage. Geert Paredis's interiors are also atmospheric, with Schoenaerts's gloomy lodgings being a particularly effective setting for the whole truth to emerge. But, for all its ruminations on the roots and nature of criminality, this feels more generic than unique. 

Taking inspiration from life and harking back to her 2012 short, Beetle Feeders, Australian Priscilla Cameron goes out of her way to dazzle with her debut feature, The Butterfly Tree. But, while she is busy filling the screen with digitised butterflies to complement stylised sets that seem to have come from a homes and gardens magazine edited by Baz Luhrmann, Cameron neglects the basics of storytelling to the extent that her sincere treatise on coming to terms with loss often creaks with contrivance.

While creative writing teacher Ewen Leslie copes with widowhood by sleeping with student Sophie Lowe, 13 year-old son Ed Oxenbould goes into the woods to celebrate painter mother Lauren Dillon's birthday with the butterflies he associates with her. Placing a captured butterfly on a jar on a tree trunk altar, Oxenbould digs up the boxes of keepsakes from the earth and places a photograph decorated with blue wings next to some burning candles. Then, he removes his top to lie still on a carpet of leaves and feel the butterflies alighting on his skin. He even imagines them descending to bear him away before cycling back to reality. 

On passing a green house on the edge of his estate, Oxenbould spots a glass display case among the items being offered for free by the new occupant. Looking up, he sees Melissa George taking pictures of herself butterfly dancing (seemingly her old burlesque profession) and is suitably enchanted. As is Leslie, when he also notices the case when driving by in his teal convertible and asks George to reach into the pocket of his jeans to retrieve the key to the boot. She invites him for cake the following day, but Oxenbould steals a march when he enters her florist shop and is presented with a camera to photograph George and the flowers in the spacious greenhouse that abuts her home. 

Purloining the roll of film that George removes from the camera, Oxenbould drops it off at the chemist for friend Ella Jaz Macrokanis to develop. He also accepts a job in George's shop, which Leslie visits while searching for his lost wallet. George orders him to don her gardening gloves and allows him to dig for dirt by asking her a series of truth or dare questions that establish that she is divorced and has a passion for flowers. She senses Leslie's pain when he admits to being widowed and hands over the wallet that he dropped while loading the display case. He hurries home to bake some fairy cakes for their assignation the next morning, but they remind Oxenbould of past family times and he imagines his parents dancing in a soft-focus blur with his toddler self. Even Leslie is forced to confront his bruised feelings and he spurns Lowe's attentions when she calls round after embarrassing him in class with a poem about their affair. 

The next morning, Oxenbould visits Dillon's woodland shrine and thinks back to her showing him a painting, as he buries two more boxes of her clothing. He also picks up the photos from Macrokanis, who gives him a scarab beetle in a box for his collection. She clearly has a crush on him, but Oxenbould is too eager to get home and look at the images of George's naked breasts. He puts them in his back pocket, where they are promptly spotted by Leslie, as they unload the display case from the car. However, Oxenbould snatches them back and files them away in an album before gift-wrapping his latest mounted butterfly. 

Having survived boss Paula Nazarski inquiring about his relationship with Lowe (and her effort to blackmail him into continuing the affair), Leslie grabs his basket of cakes and heads off to see George. She is watering her flowers while wearing a pair of gold roller skates and Oxenbould photographs her as she executes a series of trick moves. When he dares her to leap over a small box, she makes him lie beside it with his eyes closed and he goes into a steamy reverie in which he snaps George wearing her butterfly costume. He presents her the beetle that Macrokanis had given him and she reveals that she had a girlhood fixation with the insects. As she talks, Oxenbould imagines her placing pair of beetles on his hairy nipples and only snaps out of his daydream when George asks about his mother. He admits that she has passed away and he is about to open up to George when ex-husband, Steve Nation, begins banging on her door. 

George calls the police to report him, just as Leslie shows up for their date. Oxenbould is appalled to see his father and is relieved when Lowe drives up and demands that he takes her feelings seriously. Beating a hasty retreat, Leslie tries to lock himself inside the house. But Lowe finds an open window and creeps into the bedroom in her underwear for some kinky sex. However, when Leslie bursts into tears because he can no longer stand the strain, Lowe feels sorry for him and slips away quietly. 

Meanwhile, Oxenbould finds the flowers and cakes that Leslie had left on George's doorstep. He hands them over with an envelope from the local hospital that George opens with trepidation. She is fighting back the tears when Oxenbould gives her the boxed butterfly and she thanks him with a sincerity that he doesn't fully appreciate. Returning home, he bumps into Lowe, who gives him a package that she hopes will cheer up Leslie. But Oxenbould has no intention of staying and packs a few things into his rucksack before clambering out of his bedroom window. He heads back to the flower shop and sees George climbing out of the bath to let him in. She is wearing a gold bra and a feather-covered robe when she opens the door and asks Oxenbould for a hug after she gets some bad news over the phone. Overwhelmed by the intimacy, he cups her breasts and she gently asks him to leave because she's not feeling well. 

While Oxenbould hides away in the backseat of George's car, she packs her show clothes into bin bags. But she can't resist spreading her illuminated wings and Oxenbould gazes up at her through the car window, as if she was the most beautiful butterfly he had ever seen. She bursts out of the house the next morning and zooms along on her skates. Concerned because his son has been out all night, Leslie is searching for him and sees George come a cropper at the side of the road. She asks if he is sleeping with Lowe and he admits he has some mistakes to atone for before helping her into the passenger seat. 

Back at the shop, Oxenbould finds an open window and is mooching around Lowe's bedroom when he finds her wings. He puts them on and snuggles under her blanket, only to jump up when he hears her returning with his father. Crouched on the stairs, he watches as Leslie removes the skate from George's injured ankle and finds some frozen peas to reduce the swelling. She takes some pills from a box full of bottles and jokes that only a hypochondriac needs so much medication. To Oxenbould's horror, Leslie closes in for a kiss and he makes a bolt for the door. However, Leslie has recognised the butterfly necklace from the topless photos he had found in his son's pocket and demands to know what has been going on. Oxenbould is affronted that his father suspects him of being a peeping Tom and swears at him before cycling off in high dudgeon. 

He heads for the community college and daubs graffiti about Leslie and Lowe on the cubicle walls in the washroom before leaving a roll of incriminating film in Nazarski's mailbox. She has no option but to fire Leslie and he asks Lowe to keep away from him in future. Knowing that Oxenbould is hiding out at the flower shop, Leslie hammers on the door in frustration. But Oxenbould manages to slip around the side and covers his father's treasured car in pink paint. In revenge, Leslie cuts down the butterfly tree at the bottom of the garden and the sky is filled with fluttering wings. 

Having found paperwork relating to George's medical treatment, Oxenbould cycles to the hospital. Ignoring a sign declining visitors, he barges into George's room and is stunned to see her sitting on the bed with a bald head. He wants to ask questions, but blurts out that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and kisses her on the lips. At that moment, George feels herself lying on the forest floor with electric blue butterflies caressing her skin and lifting her into the air. 

Charging home to pack up some more belongings, Oxenbould sees the felled tree and the butterflies trapped inside the tent that had surrounded the trunk. He confronts Leslie with a dumbbell and accuses him of bringing misfortune to both George and Dillon, whose body he had found hanging from a beam while Leslie was out. When his father tries to grab at the weight, Oxenbould pushes him backwards and Leslie is knocked out, as he falls into the wall after smashing the display case. As the ambulance takes him away, Oxenbould sees his younger self watching his mother's corpse being loaded into the back of the same vehicle and he runs through the woods during a downpour to discover that his shrine has been washed away by the storm. 

Meanwhile, George has examined the effects of a mastectomy in the mirror and is resting in her room when Oxenbould pays her a visit. He prods a pair of implants in a box on the bedside table before presenting George with his photograph album, complete with pictures of her naked breasts. She is touched and urges him to make up with his dad. So, Oxenbould wanders on to the men's ward and sits on the edge of Leslie's bed. They make awkward conversation about hospital food before Leslie takes Dillon's suicide note out of his wallet and Oxenbould realises that she could no longer battle against depression and that Leslie had not driven her to desperate measures. He waits outside, as Leslie visits George, before heading into the woods to bury the last of Dillon's possessions. As he kneels in the undergrowth, a hybrid red and blue butterfly descends upon a log and Oxenbould smiles at his mother's signal that everything is going to be all right. 

Unquestionably one of the year's most visually striking films and, perhaps, its most audacious debut to date, Priscilla Cameron's fond tribute to a lost friend manages to be moving, in spite of its relentless reliance on convoluted and increasingly mawkish melodrama. What she does brilliantly is to contrast the emotional confusion of adolescence with the turmoil that accompanies bereavement and sickness. Thus, even though the unconventional triangle that forms between the father, son and wife-mother surrogate characters fails to convince for a second, it capably conveys the anguish that each is feeling as they seek to reconcile themselves to unthinkable situations.

Yet, while the focus falls on Melissa George, Ewen Leslie and Ed Oxenbould (a Benedict Cumberbatch lookalike with an air of Alex Lawther about him), don't overlook the performance of Sophie Lowe, as the amorous student whose reasons for seducing her teacher are kept as much in the background as George's troubled relationship with Steve Nation and her seedily glamorous burlesque past. This reluctance to engage with backstory makes the revelations about Lauren Dillon's death and George's illness seem all the more soap operatic. But, even though Cameron's script leaves a lot to be desired and she allows Caitlin Yeo's score to overstate when subtlety is most required, she gets the best out of her cast and has a fine eye for an image. 

Revealing the influence of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001) and Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006), she owes much in this regard to production designer Charlie Shelley, costumier Chrissy Flannery and cinematographer Jason Hargreaves, who work wonders on a modest budget to create a magic realist milieu that is mercifully free of mobile phones. But the conceit is all Cameron's own and, even when its flights of CGI fancy and teenage besottedness are at their most kitschily excessive and Oedipally disconcerting, this never fails to leave an impression.

Another child loses its mother in Carla Simón's Summer 1993. The winner of the prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival, this autobiographical drama features a memorable performance by young Laia Artigas that ranks alongside Ana Torrent's career-defining work in Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos (1976). But Simón's delicate evocation of time and place and touching respect for the resilience of her younger self are equally impressive and suggest that this London Film School alumna is a talent to watch. 

Watching the fireworks in the Barcelona street below the apartment where she has been living with her mother, Neus, six year-old Frida (Laia Artigas) doesn't seem to understand the bustle, as neighbour Lola (Montse Sanz) and Aunt Angela (Berta Pipó) help her Uncle Esteve (David Verdaguer) and Aunt Marga (Bruna Cusí) pack her belongings. Her grandparents (Isabel Rocatti and Fermí Reixach) fuss over her, as they struggle to contain their emotions following their daughter's death from AIDS-related pneumonia. But, as she clutches her doll in the backseat of the car, Frida still seems unaware that she is moving to the country for good to live with her four year-old cousin, Anna (Paula Robles). 

Waking the next morning to find a large grey cat named Feldespata on Anna's bed, Frida wanders into the bright sunlight to see her cousin picking plums with her mother. Marga chides Esteve when he tells Frida that she doesn't have to drink all of her milk and she smiles when he downs half the glass for her. Having helped Gabriel (Quimet Pla) box up some eggs from the chickens that make her nervous, Frida finds a statue of the Virgin Mary in a little woodland alcove. She also enjoys a free slice of ham in the butcher's, as the locals talk in code about her mother's demise. 

Back home, Frida unpacks her dolls and warns Anna not to touch them. The power fails during a storm and Frida is worried that the lantern will cause a fire. As she's troubled by eczema, Marga takes her to the doctor and Frida is frustrated at being made to undergo another series of tests after the medics in Barcelona had promised they would stop. So, she puts on lots of make-up and reclines on the sun lounger to play `mother and daughter' with Anna. She claims that she is too exhausted to play and uses lots of grown-up phrases that she obviously picked up from Neus, as she orders Anna to bring her make-believe portions of chips and olives. Later that night, she also sneaks a packet of cigarettes out of Marga's bag and asks the statue to pass them on to her mother, as grandmother Maria has told her that Neus is looking down on her from Heaven. 

Amused that Frida comes back with a cabbage when she sends her to the vegetable patch for a lettuce, Marga takes the girls to see a gigantes y cabezudos display in the village. She snaps at her friend Cesca (Paula Blanco) when Frida cuts her knee while playing tick and Cesca rushes over to prevent her daughter Irene (Etna Campillo) from touching her. Nevertheless, Marga wears a rubber glove to clean the wound, although she has no qualms about Anna and Frida sharing a bath and the latter watches with a degree of envy as Esteve dries Anna's hair. 

One weekend, his parents show up unannounced and Frida is delighted to see them. She is even more excited when Lola and Angela arrive and they sing a song while passing knotted napkins around the table. Marga is unimpressed and hisses that her mother-in-law had promised to let Frida settle before paying a visit. Sensing something is wrong, Frida asks why they are discussing a legal letter. But Lola takes her away to tell her a story about Atlantis and Frida boasts that she can hold her breath under water. After everyone has gone, Esteve puts on some music and Anna and Frida dance around on his feet. But Marga is in no mood for frivolity and, when Anna insists she has forgotten how to tie her shoelaces, she accuses Frida of being a bad example. 

Having taken a blouse to the statue and wiped away what she takes to be tears from its cheek, Frida gazes into the clouds, as though trying to work out where her mother might be watching from. She feels like being alone and, when Anna pesters her about playing, Frida takes her into the woods and leaves her sitting on a tree stump. When Marga becomes concerned about her daughter's whereabouts, Frida pretends not to know where she is - until she gets nervous and stands beside a stream in the woods hoping  Anna hasn't fallen in. In fact, she has broken her arm and is rather pleased with her plaster cast and sling. But Frida overhears Marga complaining to Esteve that the child has her mother's morals and she gets into further trouble when she picks some flowers from Gabriel's garden. Frida tries to show Marga some sympathy when she has period pains, but she is worried that her new mother is going to die on her and persuades Anna to pretend that she's scared in the night so that they can both climb into bed with her parents. 

However, the mood lightens when Frida's test results reveal that she is healthy apart from a cat allergy. Esteve tells Anna that Feldespata has gone on an adventure and she readily accepts the news. But, a few days later, he bawls at Frida after Anna slips while paddling in a deep pool and she feels left out when the rest of the family dance together during a fiesta. Thus, when her grandparents pay their next visit, Frida has a tantrum over the colour of a new nightdress and tells Lola that her aunt and uncle treat her like a maid. Moreover, she plants herself on the backseat of the car and has to be dragged out because she is about to start school and there isn't time for her to spend a few days in Barcelona. 

That night, Frida stuffs her dolls into a knapsack and heads into the kitchen for some fruit for the journey. Always awake at the slightest noise, Anna asks why she's leaving and insists she loves her when Frida declares that everyone hates her. Giving Anna a doll in gratitude, Frida strides out for the main road. However, she is frightened by a passing car and returns to inform the searching Esteve and Marga that she will go when it's light. Relieved that her niece is all right, Marga sleeps beside her and when they attend another gigantes y cabezudos procession, Frida beams with delight as she waves a Catalan flag while leading the figures into the square. 

While preparing her books for school, Frida asks Marga how her other mummy died and she explains that she succumbed to a virus that was too new for the doctors to know how to help her. Maintaining a serious face as she listens, Frida nods and starts decorating the cover of her exercise book. As they get ready for bed that night, Frida begins to bounce on the mattress and Anna needs little invitation to join in. Esteve feigns outrage and knocks them on their backs. Marga urges them to be careful, as Frida and Anna clamber over Esteve and he blows raspberries on them. Suddenly, Frida goes quiet and turns to the wall. She bursts into tears and Esteve, Marga and Anna console her as she sobs away the pain of her loss and the relief that she is safe and part of the family. 

With almost every shot centring on Frida or showing events from her perspective, a good deal is asked of Laia Artigas and she responds with an intelligence and restraint that makes Carla Simón's rite of passage all the more effective and affecting. She is deftly supported by Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer, as the adoptive parents striving to make a home for a niece they will only have met sporadically since moving to the country. But it's Artigas's rapport with the adorably trusting Paula Robles that dominates the action, as she seeks to impose her seniority in a bid to wrest back some sort of control. 

Keeping Santiago Racaj's camera at a discreet distance, Simón allows the girls to chatter and play with a naturalism that makes the moments when Artigas places Robles in jeopardy all the more distressing. Her attempts to play on the emotions of her deeply religious grandmother also prove revealing, as does her calculating effort to convince Montse Sanz that she is being treated like Cinderella by her wicked aunt and uncle. But, as so much of the story is based on her own experiences (even the setting is the same), Simón appreciates the emotional rationale behind the child's behaviour and commends the strength she displays in coming to terms with such seismic shifts at such a young age. 

Working with production designer Mónica Bernuy, Simón cleverly uses the contrast between the bijou Barcelona apartment and the sprawling country villa to emphasise the daunting task to acclimatise facing Artigas. This is not made any easier by her unnerving encounter with the chickens, the gossiping of villagers whose views on AIDS are far from enlightened or the failure of the Marian statue to pass the blouse to her mother. But, taking her cues from Víctor Erice and Maurice Pialat, Simón tempers this loss of innocence with a celebration of the simple pleasures that help Artigas settle into her new surroundings and accept that she's finally in the right place with people who genuinely care.

Now in his late 80s, Frederick Wiseman remains the finest exponent of Direct Cinema, the purely observational style of documentary making that resists the cinéma vérité temptation to tinker with reality. In particular, he excels at the institutional profile and, in a career stretching over five decades, he has considered bodies involved in healthcare (Titicut Follies, 1967 & Hospital, 1970), education (High School, 1968 & At Berkeley, 2013), the law (Law and Order, 1969 & Juvenile Court, 1973), the military (Basic Training, 1971 & Missile, 1988), leisure (Zoo, 1983 & Boxing Gym, 2010), the arts (La Danse, 2009 & National Gallery, 2014), public policy (Public Housing, 1997 & State Legislature, 2006) and social issues (Domestic Violence, 2001 & In Jackson Heights, 2015). But Wiseman's 41st feature, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, is not only one of his most fascinating, but it also reminds audiences of the vital role that libraries still have to play in communities that have been fragmented by socio-economic decline and government cutbacks. 

In typical Wiseman fashion, he plunges straight into an ongoing situation, as geneticist Richard Dawkins plugs his Foundation for Reason and Science and calls for America's non-religious lobby to be more vocal in shaping the country's direction. He is feted by the interviewer for the lyricism of his writing and draws applause for mocking Creationism and marvelling at the complexity of the universe, single cells and the human brain. Amusingly, Wiseman follows this by cutting to the telephone help desk, where one operator is having to explain to a caller that a unicorn is an entirely mythical creature. Elsewhere, a librarian helps a woman researching her family history, while readers browse and tourists take snapshots. 

In an anteroom, library president Anthony W. Marx addresses a meeting about public-private funding and the digitisation of the collection, as access to information is key to the future of the institution and the city. Computers are certainly central to the ensuing montage, as Wiseman notes the different uses to which New Yorkers put the library's machines. But he's keen to move away from the main building behind the Carrère and Hastings façade on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street to see as many of the 88 satellites located across the Five Boroughs. Thus, he pops into the Jerome Park branch, where a number of mostly black female teachers are using books and computers to encourage youngsters from various ethnic backgrounds to improve their literacy and numeracy. Once again, Wiseman makes a telling cross-cut, when he returns to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in Central Manhattan to sit in on an unnamed African-American historian examining the links between monarchy, Islam and slavery. 

As night falls, we move to the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the Lincoln Center for a piano recital by Carolyn Enger. But we are quickly whisked off to the Bronx Library Center for a careers fair, with officers from the New York Fire Department, the US Border Patrol and the US Army giving recruitment talks. Then, it's back to Tony Marx and Chief Library Officer Mary Lee Kennedy leading a meeting about the funding and sustainability of educational programmes. Montages of people using microfiches and computers are separated by a lengthy introduction to the picture archive and its history, as a group of drama students search for images to help them bring authenticity to a scene. This is followed by a lively talk by historian Ted Merwin about the role that Jewish delicatessens played in the combating of anti-Semitism in New York in the mid-20th century (`Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army'), while Elvis Costello thoughtfully recalls his musician father, Ross McManus, singing `If I Had a Hammer' and his changing attitude to the anti-Thatcher song `Tramp the Dirt Down'. 

Back in the meeting room, Marx and Kennedy discuss how the library can help the underprivileged with no computer access and how they can keep up with rapidly changing technologies. However, we return to the public spaces to see African-American poet Yusef Komunyakaa exploring politics and language before heading into Chinatown for a senior citizen computer class. We also see a Braille reading session and a talk on housing for those with a disability en route to a meeting about a building project at the Mid-Manhattan Library and plans it has for serving its constituents in the future. Following a performance by the woodwind quartet, Double Entendre, in the Bronx (in front of a small audience that conveys the broad mix of people such places have to cater for), we move to the Schomburg Center for an exhibition of black art and the New York Library for the Performing Artists, where street poet Miles Hodges has to compete with a crying baby while delivering a piece about being a modern man. 

Wiseman eavesdrops on another committee meeting with Kennedy exploring future social projects before we join a book club debating the merits of Gabriel García Marquez's Love in a Time of Cholera. He also happens upon a gripping demonstration by Candace Broecker Penn of signing for deaf theatregoers at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center prior to appointments at the archive photographic studio and the book stacks, where conveyor belts shuttle books and DVDs around a large warehouse for sorting and dispatch. Then, it's on to the Parkchester branch with Kennedy for a team meeting about how to enthuse teenagers attending after-school clubs and support parents trying to help their children with their homework. 

The scene shifts to Harlem and the George Bruce Branch, where Hot Spot modems are being loaned to ticket holders without online access. We also see a senior exercise class before heading to Westchester for a coding workshop for budding adolescent inventors and hear Khalil Gibran Muhammad give a speech at a candlelit celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Wittily, Wiseman cuts from this chic dinner to a mother-and-toddlers group singing `Old MacDonald Had a Farm'. But the tone becomes more serious, as he joins Marx and Kennedy at a meeting pondering the problem of homeless patrons using library premises for shelter and sleep. 

He returns to hallowed halls to show academics researching in the primary sources archive and lingers during an introduction to the print collection before sitting in on a meeting on funding and community engagement. Following a peak at a recording session for the talking book service, Wiseman makes for Jefferson Market, where he people watches in the reading room. Thence, he joins a history seminar contemplating the views of George Fitzhugh, Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx before viewing a Halloween procession as it passes the Schwarzman Building. He also watches Patti Smith promoting her autobiography  

Following a brief visit to a meeting tackling maintenance issues, Marx and Kennedy join Chief Operating Officer Iris Weinshall for a discussion on e-book backlogs, dealing with publishers and the future of hard copy collections. We then see tables being laid for a function and listen to Kwame Anthony Appiah appraising the achievement of slave poet Phillis Wheatley and Ta-Nihisi Coates challenging preconceptions surrounding `black-on-black' crime. Christmas coincides with the `I Am in the Public Eye' photo exhibition, as Weinshall looks back on the year and focuses minds on what things need to be done in the months ahead. 

Wiseman then accompanies Khalil Muhammad to Macomb's Bridge branch in Harlem to explore ways the library can welcome African-Americans unsure of its facilities and suspicious of its motives. But he ends Downtown, as British artist and author Edmund de Waal lauds his hero, Primo Levi, in analysing the importance of paintings, objects and buildings in firing the active imagination and prompting people to wonder how things came into being.  

Photographed by John Davey with a precise eye for civic architectural contrast and a sense of discretion that still enables Wiseman to get to the heart of any situation, this is an endlessly revealing and unashamedly affectionate snapshot of the NYPL during the autumn of 2015. Serving as his own sound recordist and editor, Wiseman is evidently grateful for the existence of a body that is so committed to touching the lives of every single New Yorker, whether they want to borrow a book, play with robots, listen and learn, or doze in the warm. Consequently, he spends a good deal of time with the management team and the librarians, curators and lecturers who recognise the value of their service in an age of press mistrust and social media mendacity and are forever looking for ways to improve it and tailor it to the 18 patrons who cross their thresholds each year. 

In some ways, the stellar speaker meetings prove something of a distraction from the grassroots work, as staff driven by Andrew Carnegie's vow to bring knowledge to the masses strive to keep up to date with the digital equipment that many of their regulars find more enticing and useful than books. But it's the welcoming inclusivity of the programmes (some 55,000 each year and most are free) that proves most striking, as young and old across the class and racial divides find something that intrigues them. Unfortunately, it's clearly harder to raise funds for these neighbourhood initiatives than it is to sustain the likes of the Berg Collection of Manuscripts, the Rose Reading Room and the Bill Blass Catalog Room. Thus, Wiseman allows Marx, Kennedy and Weinshall to make frequent references to budgets and cutbacks, as one only has to look around our own county to see what happens to libraries when public purse strings are tightened. 

In the 2005 `PTV' episode of Family Guy, Osama bin Laden is shown fluffing his lines while making a video message to the West. He fools around with a rubber chicken and dons a pair of outsize sunglasses while bantering with his cohorts behind the camera. At one point, he jokes that an unseen jihadist making him corpse had skipped a suicide bombing mission because he had a note from his doctor. The fun stops when Stewie Griffin appears to confound the terrorist cell and no one will ever be able to watch this amusing sequence in the same light again after seeing James Hacker's documentary, Path of Blood. 

Already respected for items like Britain's First Suicide Bombers (2006), Hacker expands on ideas explored in Path of Blood: The Story of Al Qaeda's War on the House of Saud (which he co-wrote with Thomas Small) by drawing on over 500 hours of footage captured from Al-Qaeda training units in Saudi Arabia, as well as recordings made by the Saudi police and special forces and the odd Al Aribiya news clip. The Balliol history graduate is well aware that his methodology will not meet with universal approval. But, with Mark Boal - the journalist who scripted Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (2009) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - among the executive producers, this survey of terrorist activity in and around Riyadh between 2003-09 manages to humanise the fundamentalists and make them more understandable without ever glamorising them. 

The first extract highlights how ordinary and often uneducated the average recruit is. Surrounded by masked men brandishing Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers, twentysomething Ali is asked to justify his suicide mission by a voice off camera. As his superior is using long words and he hasn't been briefed about whether killing co-religionists is sinful, Ali stares blankly into the lens before shrugging. He proves equally tongue-tied when the question is rephrased and accuses others in the room of putting him off. Demanding another coffee in a clean cup, Ali is reprimanded for losing focus and, when the commander eventually loses patience after numerous aborted takes, he orders him to shut up and pose with his gun. 

In voiceover, Samuel West explains how the Saudi security forces filmed their raids on safe houses belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and we are given a guided tour of the base filled with weapons and bomb-making equipment where Yemeni Fahd Al-Saadi had accidentally blown himself up. We cut away to the interior of a minibus, as mujahideen fighters lark around while travelling to a boot camp in the desert. It's pouring down and dark when they arrive and one recruit jokes about the realities of martyrdom, as they settle down inside a cramped tent to their meagre rations. 

The next day, they boost morale by having wheelbarrow races and one youth asks the cameraman to lose the footage of his trousers falling down, as his comrades dispute the result of a relay. An instructor shows them how to tuck and roll from the front seat of a car so that they can still get a shot away before they practice firing from a moving vehicle. The recruits wisecrack as they maintain their weapons, with one being compared to the Masked Avenger because he insists on keeping his face covered. As they gather in a circle for tea, Rakan is asked how it feels to be preparing for war and his misgivings are betrayed by his fretful expression and hesitant pride at defending his faith. 

Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Osama bin Laden orders Turki Al-Dandani, the leader of AQAP's Riyadh branch, to carry out a series of truck bomb attacks in order to shake faith in the Saudi royal family and spark an insurrection. This time the speech to camera is confident and abrasive, although one of his companions gives a wink and a grin that once again reveals the intellectual gap between the youthful volunteers and their older commanders. We see footage of the unit reccying a target before their lair is discovered by the security forces under Prince Muhammad bin Nayef. In May 2003, he orders a man hunt for the most dangerous men in the country and footage of the police operations is cross-cut with video speeches made by the men (of very different temperaments) they seek. However, as the reportage that follows makes chillingly clear, the terrorists succeeded in bombing three residential compounds and several locals and foreign nationals were killed, including some children.

Crown Prince Abdullah visits the injured and delivers a speech condemning the perpetrators for their anti-Islamic actions. But intelligence reports confirm the scale of the problem his government faces and footage of fire fights around the capital is interspersed with a sermon preached by radical cleric Abdullah Al-Rashoud in which he reminds jihadists that it is better to die than live in disgrace. The security forces make a point of recording the faces of the AQAP recruits they capture and kill, so that their families can add shame to their pain. But Al-Dandani remains at large until he is pinned down in a mosque in July 2003, where he huddles his bodyguards around a grenade and detonates it. Even the soldiers on duty at the scene find the carnage hard to take, but AQAP bury their dead and regroup under Abdel Aziz Al-Muqrin, who implements a more aggressive strategy.

Tom Hollander reads items from Al-Qaeda's Voice of Jihad website, as we see the Dandani Martyr Brigade having a kickabout while their vehicle is being camouflaged. They are proud that the Prophet's phrase, `I bring you slaughter' is daubed on the side and they give thumbs up to the support car filming their journey to the compound they are about to attack. The focus shifts away from the jihadists to their victims, as disfigured corpses are pulled from the rubble and the rescuers despair of ever being able to identify them. At the hospital where the survivors are taken, a doctor reveals that 20% of the victims are children, while an injured woman laments that the majority of those killed are Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian and she wonders why anyone would want to murder their brothers. 

In an effort to discredit AQAP, Prince Abdullah forces clerics, intellectuals and tribal leaders to denounce the organisation on television and reminds them that anyone who refuses will be presumed to be a fellow traveller. Furious, Al-Muqrin orders an attack on the Department of Public Security and we see Ali and his pals readying to set off in a vehicle with a number plate reading `72 Virgins of Paradise'. As West reveals, the Public Security building was too well defended. So, the bombers drove into the neighbouring offices of the traffic police and we are shown footage the devastation and the funerals of the five victims. 

Responding to criticism for attacking Arabs and Muslims, Muqrin switches his ire to Westerners. He makes a masked appearance in a training video, showing would-be assassins how to do a forward roll into the firing position. Several of the recruits struggle with the technique and one is left wondering about its efficacy. But a combination of video footage and a report on Voice of Jihad reveals how easily an AQAP unit was able to infiltrate business premises in Khobar and lay low in a nearby hotel before butchering a number of guests (including a party of Hindus) before evading the security forces by slipping out of a back door. 

Despite a government crackdown and a policy of parading re-educated jihadists on television, AQAP continues its reign of terror. Among those kidnapped is Apache helicopter engineer Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr., whose interrogation and torture is filmed in excruciating close-up. Mercifully, Harker opts not to show the moment the American was decapitated, but he plays the audio, which ends soberingly with a small girl boasting that the knife used to behead Johnson belongs to her father. Moreover, he presents footage of young children in hoods and camouflage gear performing forward rolls while brandishing pistols and the laughter of their proud parents can be heard over a male voice encouraging them to show what they can do. 

A few days after Johnson was killed in June 2004, Muqrin is ambushed at a petrol station and the authorities capitalise on his death by broadcasting a programme in which AQAP prisoners discuss their experiences and how recruits tend to be impressionable, poorly educated young men with little grasp of Islamic Law. But volunteers continue to sign up and the camaraderie within the cells still operating is apparent from an extract from a training video. Thus, in December 2004, Al-Qaeda feels sufficiently strong to storm the US consulate in Jeddah. However, they fail to penetrate the inner sanctum and an attempt on the Ministry of the Interior is also thwarted. Buoyed by their success, the Saudi forces besiege a villa in the town of Al-Rass in April 2005. This turns out to be AQAP's headquarters and, after three attritional days, the authorities are able to announce that they have killed 14 militants and arrested five more. 

Sensing that AQAP's position has been weakened, Prince Muhammad urges citizens to report suspicious activity and a shootout involving a youth in Dammam leads to a mass attack on a cell sheltering in the town. He visits the army unit involved and the wounded make positive noises for the cameras. But, even though terrorist activity decreases dramatically, self-proclaimed leader Fahd Al-Juwayr refuses to buckle and plans a mission to the Aramco refinery at Abqaiq that will make the world sit up and take notice. We see the unit spend its last night in the open and there is much bombast and bravura on display, as the bombers show off the device that will sabotage oil supplies to the West. But, as they approach Abqaig, one of the bombers realises he doesn't have enough fuel to reach the target and has to fill up at the risk of his murderous cargo being spotted. 

As the command vehicle carrying Al-Juwayr veers off after a struggle to open a security barrier, the two bomb trucks approach the perimeter fence. We see CCTV footage of the lead car ramming the gate before a cutback to shows Al-Juwayr and his fellow passengers celebrating a plume of black smoke rising into the sky. However, security force images reveal that the bomb crater is some way from the refinery, while close-ups of the dead jihadists suggest that they have died in vain. The AQAP website begs to differ, of course, as it hails the courage of its martyrs. But a raid on the cell's safe house a few days later confirms that the Saudis have finally got the upper hand. 

West explains that hundreds of AQAP members handed themselves in after the failure of the insurrection and, over the next three years, many of the least radicalised were re-integrated into society. We see footage of the work being undertaken at a centre for religious re-education and there is a great sense of satisfaction that the authorities have prevailed. But remnants of the AQAP network have managed to flee to Yemen and, by August 2009, they are ready to lure Prince Muhammad into a trap. As he insists on greeting surrendering jihadists in person, a plan was hatched to smuggle a bomb into the meeting inside the rectum of Abdullah Al-Asiri. 

Even though he was searched on three occasions and bodyguards noticed how akwardly he moved and the care he took while praying and sitting, nobody suspected that he was a walking time bomb, as nobody had successfully implanted a remote-controlled grenade before. Although the device was detonated during a phone call between Prince Muhammad and Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, he survived with relatively minor injuries. As the footage of the recovery of Al-Asiri's body parts shows, he was not so fortunate. 

Although Hacker opts to show some of the blood-spattered aftermath of this near miss, he strives to keep grim footage to a minimum, as he recognises how too much carnage could distract from the underlying message of this deeply disconcerting documentary. In this regard, it has much in common with The Deminer, Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal's found footage profile of Iraqi bomb disposal officer, Fakhir Berwari. But it also shares some of its flaws, as Samuel West's voiceover provides scant chronological context for those not already au fait with AQAP's terror campaign. It also struggles to pull off the conceit that the absence of expert analysis frees the film of editorialisation, as Hacker imparts a degree of comment through both image juxtaposition and the sometimes over-emphatic strains of Chad Hobson's score. 

Nevertheless, this remains essential viewing, if only for the offbeat moments amidst the cruel machismo that bring to mind Chris Morris's Four Lions (2010). Hacker spent over a year sifting through the material with editor Peter Haddon and their eye for a telling detail not only highlights the mundanity of the jihadists, but also the banality of their evil.

Having recalled the quiet dignity of Palestinian villager Ayed Morrar's resistance in Budrus (2009), Julia Bacha returns with the even more potent story of Naila Ayesh in Naila and the Uprising. Making imaginative use of animation, archive footage and interviews, Bacha explores the role that women played in the First Intifada in 1987 and questions whether things might have been very different for the beleaguered peoples of Gaza and the West Bank if Ayesh, fellow activist Sama Aweidah, peace delegation spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi, Fatah's Raheba Diab and Zahira Kamal from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine had been allowed a greater say in the shaping of events.

Shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, eight year-old Naila Ayesh had her home in Ramallah demolished by the occupying Israeli forces and the remainder of her childhood was blighted by shortages, restrictions, curfews and censorship. She managed to escape, however, having earned a scholarship to Bulgaria, where she met and married Jamal Zakout, with whom she formed the Democratic Front to fight for self-determination. As a result of her campaigning, she was arrested and detained in Maskubiye Prison in Jerusalem, where her sadistic treatment caused her to suffer a miscarriage and she was only released after Zakout enlisted the support of the international media. 

He had also been imprisoned and was forced into exile when the Israelis cracked down on opposition inside the Occupied Territories. But, rather than accompany her husband, Ayesh remained in Gaza and encouraged other women to take to the streets during the Intifada and to form farming co-operatives to keep shops stocked in the face of blockades. Despite being detained again, she was released following a second media furore. Never before had women been so prominent within the Palestinian community and they even sat at the top table during the US-brokered peace talks held in Madrid in 1991. However, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation had already started to negotiate what turned out to be a much less beneficial deal in Oslo and women were pushed back to the margins after Yasser Arafat returned from exile in Tunisia in 1994. 

Denied the opportunity to rule, Ayesh became a director of the Women's Affairs Centre in Gaza and continues to promote equality and emancipation. Her struggle is recalled with trenchancy and sensitivity in this stirring memoir, which employs animation to recreate episodes from Ayesh's past. The emotively stylised visuals prove something of a distraction during her recollection of the torture she endured in prison. But this is one of the few missteps, as Bacha pays fulsome tribute to the women who answered the call of their homeland and were rewarded with shoddy chauvinist platitudes that reduced them to being second-class citizens within their own communities.