Given the state of the world, this should be a golden age for the documentary. But, while the odd feature has striven to speak to power or hold up a mirror to the various societies currently unravelling across the globe, surprisingly few actualities have addressed the core issues that have brought aboutthe devaluation of democracy, the rise of populism and the dangerous drift to the right. In bidding a fond adieu to Barack Obama, Greg Barker dwelt on personalities rather than policies in The Final Year, while Michael Moore missed an open goal in his seeking to expose Donald Trump and his constituency in Fahrenheit 11/9. Meanwhile, in Blighty, only David Nicholas Wilkinson's Postcards From the 48% seemed up for the fight over Brexit, while Vitaly Mansky's Putin's Witnesses was alone in assessing the threat posed by a resurgent Russia.

The latter was one of many thought-provoking films to show under the Dochouse banner over the last 12 months. It would be nice if the Curzon in the Westgate could use its connections to bring a few of their titles to Oxford and open them up to Q&A debate. To give the city's newest venue its due, it did host Bill Morrison's wonderful Dawson City. But think of the debates that could have been sparked by the likes of Jean Libon and Yves Hinant's So Help Me God, Norah Shapiro's Time for Ilhan, Shai Gal's The Jewish Underground, Sahra Mani's A Thousand Girls Like Me, Gulistan and Elizabeth Mirzaei's  Laila At the Bridge, Hao Wu's People's Republic of Desire, Orban Wallace's Another News Story, Neal and Kate McLarnon's Even When I Fall, Erika Cohn's The Judge, Leonard Retel Helmrich's The Long Season, Sarita Khurana and Smriti Mundhra's A Suitable Girl and Maryam Goormaghtigh's Before Summer Ends. 

Dochouse doesn't just show films about pressing socio-political issues, as the 2018 slate has also included Stefanie Brockhaus and Andreas Wolff's The Poetess, Clémentine Deroudille's  Robert Doisneau: Through the Lens, 
Guy Maddin's The Green Fog and The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man. The latter two will be on view over Christmas week for anyone needing an alternative to visiting relatives or schlepping round the West End sales.  

Although we have a Top 12 to reflect upon in detail, it would be remiss not to mention some of the other documentaries that have captured the attention, if not always the imagination. The arts always inspire a clutch of engaging profiles and two of the best, Julien Temple's Suggs; My Life Story and Jeff Bayne's One Man's Madness, provided contrasting insider views of life with the Nutty Boys. A rapper with a studio in a double-decker bus went to Hull and back in Sean McAllister's A Northern Soul, while an icon of Japanese chic reflected on his career in Stephen Nomura Schible's Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda. 

Compatriot Yayoi Kusama came under Heather Lenz's scrutiny in Kusama: Infinity, while Thomas Ridelsheimer renewed acquaintance with a master of outdoor art in Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy and Jack Bond discovered what makes British painter Chris Moon tick in An Artist's Eyes. Head and shoulders above a fine selection of cine-studies was Alexandra Dean's Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which revealed the role that the Austrian actress played in the development of so much modern technology. The prolific Mark Cousin brought a fresh perspective to the career a self-mythologising maestro in The Eyes of Orson Welles, while Tony Zierra's Filmworker explored the debt that Stanley Kubrick owed to actor-turned-factotum Leon Vitali. Two more films to encourage a touch of the memoirs saw Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins gather around a table to reminisce about their remarkable acting careers in Roger Michell's Nothing Like a Dame, while Burnley's favourite son marked entering his 80th year by looking back on his life and times in Joe Stephenson's McKellen: Playing the Part. 

While James Erskine is probably already planning his documentary about the 2018 World Cup in Russia, he can look back with pride on his memoir of John Curry, The Ice King. Equally impressive was Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones's Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager, while Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Free Solo presents a thrilling record of climber Alex Honnold's assault on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Rodeo journeyman Brady Jandreau dwells on the downside of pursuing a sporting dream in Chloé Zhao's The Rider, while the 2015 Maccabiah Games provide Catherine Lurie with an opportunity to consider the connection between sport and the Holocaust in Back to Berlin. 

In Makala, Emmanuel Gras visited the Democratic Republic of Congo to follow Kabwita Kasongo on his perilous journey to sell charcoal in the nearest town, while Daniel McCabe reflects upon this war-torn country's recent history in This Is Congo. Coming closer to home, Felipe Bustos Sierra recalls how a Scottish factory thwarted the plans of General Augusto Pinochet following the 1973 Chilean coup in ¡Nae Pasaran!. Swede Göran Hugo Olsson returns in That Summer to the footage of Edith Bouvier Beale and her mother Edith Ewing Bouvier filmed at Grey Gardens in 1972 by Lee Radziwill and Peter Beard. Paul Wright also delves into the archives for Arcadia. However, the most lauded archival achievement of the year was Peter Jackson's restoration and colorisation of Imperial War Museum footage of the Great War for They Shall Not Grow Old, which provided a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives before the guns finally fell silent on 11 November 1918. 

12)  DONKEYOTE. 

In honour of Don Quixote, steepling giants in the form of wind turbines dot the Andalucian landscape in Chico Pereira's exquisite odyssey, Donkeyote. A knowing docu-fiction rather than an authentic actuality, the film follows the director's 73 year-old uncle and godfather, as he undertakes a trial run across Spain for an ambitious attempt to honour the Native Americans who were driven off their lands during the Trail of Tears by following their route into the Wild West. Purists may take exception to Pereira's stage-management techniques, but this represents a welcome break from all the talking heads, archive clips and illustrative animations that have become as essential to the modern-day documentary as those duplicitous dramatic recreations. 

In order to test his own powers of endurance before crossing the Atlantic, Manuel Molera sets out to walk from his village to Algeciras on the Mediterranean coast. Accompanying him are his sprightly dog, Zafrana, and his ploddingly dependable donkey, Gorrión. They camp out at night and think nothing of pulling down the odd inconvenient fence to make the journey a touch shorter. But Manuel is in no hurry and dawdles behind a flock of sheep blocking a country road. The camera lingers on a dead lamb being carried by the shepherd before taking a step back to watch Manuel help the shepherd recover a sheep that had slipped off the straight and narrow. 

Such exertions take their toll, however, and Manuel's daughter, Paquita, questions the wisdom of his expedition, as she massages and bandages a knee showing signs of tendinitis. She reminds him of the heart attacks he has survived in the past and her fears that he won't be safe in the countryside by himself are exacerbated by the fact that he can't remember the phone number for the emergency services. 

In what seems to be a flashback, Manuel comes to see Paquita, who is the teacher at the village school. The children listen to Manuel's stories and enjoy feeding Gorrión. But Paquita is taken aback when her father announces over supper that he plans to walk the Trail of Tears with his donkey and has started taking English lessons. We see him doing a listen and repeat exercise with tutor Mamen Gómez Heredia and he is reluctant to sing along with a ditty that has been composed to teach children. Manuel is also put out when he calls a travel agency to book a passage for himself and Gorrión and the man at the other end of the phone suspects he is making a prank call. Having called a cargo transit company, however, Manuel is disappointed to learn that it will cost a small fortune to ship Gorrión, who will have to spend 60 days in quarantine before they can embark on their journey. 

Keen to check whether her father is fit enough to take on such an endeavour, Paquita takes Manuel to see a doctor, who put him on a treadmill to measure his heart rate and lung capacity. The medic advises him to take a GPS so that his family can keep tabs on him, but declares him healthy enough to make the Spanish leg of his trek. He also puts his 10 year-old donkey through a physical and films an appeal to a Coca Cola website promoting exercise for the elderly for a sponsorship deal. Mamen records several takes, as Manuel strays off message or looks at his feet shuffling on the ground. But, when he finally delivers the message with conviction, he has to do it all over again because his voice was drowned out by barking dogs. 

Before he leaves, Manuel shares a campfire with Paquita, who recalls a childhood trip that they had taken together shortly after her parents had separated. Despite the fondness of her memories, she is aware that this was a tough time for a young girl and she is now worried that the current enterprise will prove too much for Manuel. But she sees him off with a cheery wave and Manuel, Zafrana and Gorrión are soon passing through the outskirts of Sevilla on their way south. They find a campsite for the night and Manuel rigs up a cot near some caravans. However, loud music booms out until the small hours and Manuel gets so frustrated that he leaves the site and sleeps rough instead. 

The next morning, Manuel does his daily exercises, but has to admonish Zafrana for chewing through the bag in which he stores his camp bed. But he confides in his animals that they are easier to deal with than humans when he arrivess at Coke's headquarters and is informed that the person he needs to see has just left on a train trip and has switched off her phone. Trudging on, Manuel finds a layby to spend the night and tells his story to a couple of truckers who are curious to know how he plans to get Gorrión to America, as they dislike being on a different deck to their lorries when they sail to Britain.

Manuel makes some more friends the next day, when they spend the night near a railway station and he drifts into the nearby bar. He tells one of his stories and one the locals sings along to a flamenco guitarist. Pressing on, the travellers pass some galloping horses in a field and we get a close up of Gorrión chomping on some lush green grass after passing through a parched region. 

They reach a river, but the donkey flatly refuses to cross the footbridge on to the deck. Manuel tries coaxing and tugging him, but the creature proves mulishly stubborn and has to spend the night on the bank, while Manuel and Zafrana share some food. The next morning, however, Gorrión decides that he doesn't like being left behind and clip clops tentatively across the wooden planking and makes it aboard. When Manuel phones Paquita to report that he crossed the bridge like a fearless lion, Gorrión gives him a push in the back with his nose. 

All three enjoy the cruise and Gorrión also gets to watch as four donkeys haul wood from a forest to a waiting truck. He even gets to roam free by the riverside that night, as they rest up before the next leg. However, when Manuel tries to get up in the morning, he feels such a sharp shooting pain in his knee that Pereira calls out to his uncle from behind the camera to check he's okay. As if sensing something's amiss, Gorrión nuzzles his owner and almost knocks his hat off. Manuel reciprocates by giving his friend a brushing. But, as they continue their walk, Manuel confides that he doesn't like the idea of confining Gorrión in a packing crate during their voyage Stateside and he isn't looking forward to schlepping through the soulless industrial estates that line the route. 

As the heavens open, the trio traipse into the driving rain along a straight, deserted road. But the skies are clearer in the morning and silhouetted against them are the wind turbines that this particular quixotic quester had decided not to tilt against. On the other side of the hill, however, Gorrión reaches another bridge he doesn't fancy crossing, even though it leads to the beach and journey's end. Eventually, he decides to venture on to the sand and even goes for a paddle, as Manuel watches a cargo vessel slink past on the horizon. After an eventful night, in which Manuel was seemingly mistaken for a drug smuggler by an over-zealous policeman, the wayfarers turn for home and the film ends with Manuel making up foul-mouthed lyrics to a song about his encounter with the idiot cop who had accused him of being a trafficker. 

Ever since Roberty Flaherty gave directions to the eponymous Eskimo in Nanook of the North (1922), screen reality has been a mixture of the spontaneous and the suggested. Indeed, in coining the term `documentary', John Grierson defined it as `the creative treatment of actuality'. So, Chico Pereira is following in a noble tradition in occasionally putting his uncle through his paces in order to give his adventure a little extra frisson. 

Manuel clearly responded to the prompting like a seasoned professional and he does remarkably well to avoid being wholly upstaged by the scene-stealing Gorrión and Zafrana. Indeed, this may well be the best one man and his donkey double act since Robin Bailey and Sid (voiced by the inimitable Johnny Morris) considered the advisability of making thistles taste creamier in a 1980s Heinz soup commercial. Pereira and editor Nick Gibbon pace proceedings to perfection, while Julian Schwanitz's magnificent Spaghetti-hommaging photography ensures that we don't just see things from Manuel's perspective. Moreover, sound editor Mark Deas affords Zafrana and Gorrión plenty of opportunity to voice their opinion on their incredible journey.  

11)  THE BALLYMURPHY PRECEDENT.

In September, an inquest started into the deaths of 11 residents of the Ballymurphy district of West Belfast in the three days following the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. In The Ballymurphy Precedent, documentarist Callum Macrae recalls the events that rocked the Catholic community in Northern Ireland and, yet, which went largely unreported across the rest of the United Kingdom. He argues that the decision to accept the British Army account of the incident set a precedent that dictated the coverage and reception of the Bloody Sunday killings in January 1972. However, Macrae also reflects on the human cost of the Ballymurphy shootings, as he meets with friends, family and eyewitnesses to uncover the truth about what happened to Francis Quinn (19), Fr Hugh Mullan (38), Joan Connolly (50), Daniel Teggart (44), Noel Phillips (20), Joseph Murphy (41), Edward Doherty (28), John Laverty (20), Joseph Corr (43) John McKerr (49) and Paddy McCarthy (44).

As Protestant historian Geoff Bell reveals, Northern Ireland was formed by the British government in 1921 following the partition that created the independent and largely Catholic Irish Free State. However, the social and civic structure of the province heavily favoured the Loyalist majority, with the result that even predominantly Catholic places like Derry were unable to achieve a like-minded majority. As Ballymurphy residents Liam Shannon, Rita Bonner, Liam Stone and Fr Des Wilson recall, the Catholic community was also subjected to economic exclusion, as they were denied jobs with the region's leading industrial employers. 

Even Royal Green Jackets James Kinchin White and Richard Rudkin recognised the deprivation in Catholic parts of Ulster when they arrived as part of a peacekeeping force after civil rights demonstrations had been met with a brutal backlash. Macrae splits the screen to compare footage of the incidents at Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama in 1965 and Burntollet Bridge. when a People's Democracy march from Belfast to Derry was attacked by a Loyalist mob on 4 January 1969. He also shows newsreel of the aftermath of the Apprentice Boys parade along Derry's city wall on 12 August, which resulted in the Catholic Bogside district being declared a No Go Area after a two-day battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Special Constabulary (who were known as `the B-Specials'), who did little to stop the burning of Catholic houses in the Bombay Street area of Belfast. 

On 14 August, British troops were dispatched to Northern Ireland and White insists (over supportive footage) that they were welcomed as protectors by the Catholic community. As a young girl, Briege Voyle helped mother Joan Connolly give soup and sandwiches to the soldiers. Indeed, her older sister married one. But, as Fr Wilson reveals, it soon became clear that the forces had not been sent to defend the minority while Stormont enacted reforms. They had been recruited to restore order and reinforce a sectarian status quo and many Nationalists were disappointed by the toothless response of the Irish Republican Army. 

As a result of the IRA's failings, a provisional wing was instituted and their acquisition of weapons prompted a military search of the Falls Road area of Belfast on 3 July 1970. As the residents resisted with IRA and Provisional IRA support, a 36-hour curfew was imposed, during which four civilians were killed and 60 more were injured alongside 16 soldiers. But, while Bell deplores the fact that a British city was placed under martial law, Macrae explains in voiceover that the searches were discriminatory and violent and that the army later confessed that homes had been looted by men in uniform. Yet, they were powerless to prevent a deputation of women from breaching the barricades to deliver groceries to their neighbours and Bonner and Voyle recall marching beside their mothers, as they smuggled bread, sugar and milk past the bemused troops. 

At the end of his tour of duty in December 1972, Lieutenant Colonel JRGN Evelegh urged his successor to beat the women into submission and we see monochrome footage of a water cannon being used by soldiers exasperated by an exchange of insults on a residential street. Bonner and Voyle remember banging dustbin lids to warn people when an army patrol entered their area and Wilson came to expect a reprisal, as macho paratroopers were not going to tolerate for long being mocked by women and children. However, it was the IRA who went on the offensive first, with a bombing campaign against commercial targets in the middle of 1970, while 20 year-old Gunner Robert Curtis became the first of 503 British soldiers to be killed during the Troubles on 6 February 1971. 

In a bid to clamp down on Nationalist activities, Prime Minister Brian Faulkner sought permission from British PM Edward Heath to introduce internment without trial. A list of over 400 names was supplied by the RUC. But, while there wasn't a single Loyalist among them, a number of peaceful activists were included and, as a supposed hotbed of Catholic resistance, Ballymurphy was targeted from 9 August 1971. 

Shannon, Voyle and Stone describe being woken in the small hours of the morning by raiding parties seeking those on the RUC list. Fr Hugh Mullan had phoned his brother Patsy to tell him to postpone a visit to his house in the horseshoe-shaped Springfield Park, which abutted the Protestant Springmartin estate. Pat and Liam Quinn recall how a Loyalist mob forced residents to evacuate with a sustained attack, while Bobby Clarke remembers seeing two soldiers tracking him with their guns after he had escorted a child across a patch of wasteland known as Findlay's Field. In narration, Macrae confirms that snipers from the Parachute and Queen's Own regiments had been positioned in the Springmartin flats and a drone reconstruction of the shootings of Fr Mullan and Frank Quinn is corroborated by Clarke, who had been lying wounded on the grass when they came out under cover of a white flag to offer him assistance.

Nearby on the Springfield Road, members of the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment had arrived at the Henry Taggart Hall, where many of the internees had been taken. The Quinn brothers and Janet Donnelly recall the tension escalating after Springmartin Loyalists began bombarding the Catholic residents and Voyle remembers getting separated from mother Joan Connolly, who found herself on a stretch of open ground known as the Manse. As she chatted with Daniel Teggart, Noel Phillips and Joseph Murphy, paratroopers appeared and opened fire on them, even though they were unarmed and posing no threat. Siblings Alice Harper and John Teggart and Kevin Phillips describe how their loved ones were gunned down, while Voyle remembers her mother telling her that the army would never shoot an innocent person, even if the Protestants would. Yet she was shot repeatedly (including one bullet to the face), while Teggart was hit 14 times. 

Edward Doherty was shot when he went to Joan Connolly's aid and witnesses recall an army vehicle rolling on to the Manse and the male casualties being loaded in to be taken to Henry Taggart Hall. As Connolly was already dead, she was left behind. Janet Donnelly remembers father Joseph Murphy saying that he and the other men had been beaten once they had been taken to the barracks, while someone had fired into his open wound. As we see news footage of the simple crosses where the Findlay's Field victims had perished, Patsy Mullan and the Quinn brothers reflect on how they heard the news on what was the worst day of their lives. 

On 10 August, hundreds of people were bussed out of Ballymurphy and taken to Waterford in the Irish Republic. It was there, Voyle learned that her mother had been buried and she had to live with the fact that she had come looking for her when she had wandered off along Springfield Road with her friend. In all, around 7000 refugees fled across the border that year. 

Back in Ballymurphy, the residents decided to protect themselves against Loyalist and army incursion by raising barricades. However, these acted as a red rag to commanding officer Brigadier Frank Kitson, who had learned his trade suppressing colonial insurgencies in the 1950s. James White knew him from Cyprus and says the book he wrote about his experiences in Kenya and Malaysia, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, served as the blueprint for army tactics in Northern Ireland. There's more than a glint of self-assurance when he proclaims during an interview: `It is sometimes necessary to do unpleasant things which lose a certain amount of allegiance for a moment in order to achieve your overall result.'

As sister Kathleen McCarry recalls, Edward Doherty had come to check she and their father were okay when he crossed the road near one of the barricades to talk to his friend, Billy Whelan. According to a deputation read out by human rights lawyer Pádraig Ó Muirigh, Doherty was shot by a British soldier, who changed his story in accounts to the military police. It was claimed Doherty was a petrol bomber, but no evidence was found during his autopsy. 

Determined to impose his authority on Ballymurphy, Kitson dispatched his shock troops, the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, to make a statement. Richard Rudkin remembers the unit being Kitson's boys and being disliked by other outfits because of the ruthless methods they employed to get a job done. On 11 August, 1 Para came down the hill overlooking the estate and began opening fire on anyone they found in the street. Bonner describes how brother John Laverty was hit, while Eileen McKeown relives how father Joseph Corr was shot and crawled across the road to reach the home of 16 year-old Robert Doyle. Corr urged Doyle and his brother to ignore him, but the door of their house was kicked in and they were arrested, as a medical orderly was dragging Corr's body back into the street. He would die 16 days later. 

During the course of the day, 600 paratroopers descended on the estate and witnesses testify to their thuggery and indiscriminate use of live and rubber bullets. News footage shows the anger of those caught up in the carnage, but youth worker Paddy McCarthy was determined to do his bit to help and loaded up a cart with provisions. However, he was confronted by paratroopers and died of a heart attack when one fired a bullet over his head in what some witnesses claimed was a mock execution. 

A short distance away, joiner John McKerr was working when at Corpus Christi church when he was shot through the head. His son Michael reveals that he had lost a hand fighting with the British army during the Second World War, but died nine days he was attacked by men in the same uniform. Accounts differ as to whether McKerr was hit by troops on patrol or snipers positioned in a nearby timber yard. As many as 40 people had been shot during the three-day massacre and Doyle is visibly shaken on camera, as he recalls the beatings he endured at the barracks and the fact that the British had taken the trouble to wash Joseph Corr's blood off the street to cover their tracks.

But the army wasn't finished there, as it embarked upon a propaganda campaign to justify their action. In the Belfast Telegraph that evening, a report claimed that troops had been involved in a two-hour gun battle with up to 20 men armed with pistols, rifles and Thompson sub-machine-guns. As a result of this fake report claiming that the victims were IRA members, the families received hate mail. But there were no police investigations into the killings, as the RUC accepted the army version of events, even though both White and Rudkin state that the rubric given on the so-called `Yellow Card' was so vague that it could be used to justify a multitude of sins. 

Two years after Alice Harper and John Teggart lost their father, their 15 year-old brother, Bernard (who had learning difficulties) was abducted by the IRA and executed for being a traitor. In 2009, the Teggarts received an apology for the crime and exonerated the youth of any wrongdoing. But they had spent the intervening period grieving and the same was true of the other families. Kathleen McCarry relates how her mother and sister-in-law had died within a decade of Eddie Docherty and left his children as orphans, while Janet Donnelly remembers some British soldiers pulling up outside the house on the day of Joseph Murphy's funeral and singing the line `Where's your father gone?' from the hit Middle of the Road song, `Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep'. As a result of this taunting, her mother had prevented the children from going to the graveside in case there was any trouble. 

Years later, at a Forgotten Victims event, Voyle and Donnelly met with other Ballymurphy survivors after a chance discussion. They have since collected witness statements from over 130 people, including one from a man who was 11 years old when he saw Noel Phillips finished off with a sidearm at close range by a soldier who had drawn up in a vehicle and found him wounded. The groups also consulted autopsy reports, with one revealing that Joan Connolly would have survived if she had been given first aid. However, her body was left on the Manse until after 3am, by which time, she had bled to death. 

In revisiting the testimony of the soldiers on the estate on 9 August, the families deduce that British units appear to have been shooting at each other in the mistaken belief that they were returning enemy fire. Rudkin explains that echoing noises in confined spaces are highly disorientating and that it's eminently possible for even experienced soldiers to become confused. But it's hard to accept that nobody questioned the differing accounts of the three soldiers who shot Joan Connolly, one of which claimed she was brandishing a pistol, another stated she was crawling through the grass with a rifle and a third averred that she was sat in the middle of the field firing a machine-gun. Janet Donnelly dismisses the claim there were nests of IRA gunmen in the vicinity, as they had all fled for fear of being interned. 

Macrae dismisses a Ulster Volunteer Force claim to have had a man on the ground shooting at IRA activists on 9 August. Instead, Rudkin suggests that the operation had been designed to teach the locals a lesson and White even produces documents showing that the training block used by British troops bound for Northern Ireland was called Killymurphy. Yet, rather than intimidating the residents, the atrocity reinforced community ties and drove more people into the ranks of the IRA. 

Some 70 miles away, the troops in Derry had been more conciliatory and had allowed the No Go barriers to remain in place. However, the brass in Belfast felt such tactics were craven and sent 1st Para to police a civil rights march on 30 January 1972. The local law enforcement teams knew of the unit's reputation and were reluctant to accept them, but the order was enacted and 14 people perished in around 20 minutes at the end of the event on what became known as Bloody Sunday. As in Ballymurphy, the press statements referred to armed resistance and Macrae discovers that the person behind these releases was the future Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson.

A few months later, as 1972 became the single most violent year of the Troubles, five more unarmed people were shot dead in Springhill, including 13 year-old Margaret Gargan and Fr Noel Fitzpatrick, who had been a friend of Fr Mullan. Fr Wilson draws comparisons with the murder of priests in Latin America, as we see the Ballymurphy families marching in Belfast City Centre to call for an inquiry into the killings. However, as Macrae reminds us, while the Saville Inquiry found the victims of Bloody Sunday to have been innocent, it refused to accept that 1st Para had been sent to Derry with the express purpose of suppressing opposition. Ó Muirigh begs to differ and Rudkin agrees that Bloody Sunday could have been avoided if lessons had been learned from Ballymurphy. Now, the families hope that the truth will out during their day in court. 

Sensibly placing the events of the early 1970s in their wider socio-economic, political and religious contexts, Macrae presents a laudably balanced account of the Ballymurphy Massacre and its ramifications. He is particularly wise to add Geoff Bell and the two Green Jackets to the talking heads to counter accusations of Catholic bias. But he and editor Charlie Hawryliw also make potent use of archive material and sworn statements to back up the claims made by family members whose quest for justice Macrae clearly supports. 

There are moments when Wayne Roberts's score is overly emphatic, while some of the dramatic reconstructions are a touch stylised and/or on the nose. That said, the use of drone images for the shootings is inspired, as it gives them an ethereal detachment that precludes sentimentality or sensationalism. Moreover, it places them in a celestial No Man's Land presided over by a God is neither overtly Catholic or Protestant. There are questions left to be answered and one suspects that the Ministry of Defence will do its level best to keep as tight a control over the truth as it can. But Macrae has ensured that the Ballymurphy shootings can never again be described as a forgotten crime.

10)  THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR.

Documentarist Nancy Buirski has delved into the archives to help illustrate The Rape of Recy Taylor, which was inspired by Danielle L. McGuire's book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance. Having already tackled a landmark case in the campaign for Civil Rights in the United States in The Loving Story (2012) - which charts the ordeal of Richard and Mildred Loving after they were charged with violating Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws in 1958 - Buirski is ideally placed to explore the ramifications of a sickening attack on a 24 year-old wife and mother in Abbeville, Alabama on 3 September 1944. However, she lacks the journalistic rigour to follow up some of the important points made by her interview subjects, while her use of songs and film extracts often dictates audience response and, sometimes, undermines the significance of what's being said. 

An opening caption reveals that a `staggering' number of black women were raped by white men in the United States. However, they were often too afraid to report the assaults and only the African-American press and the makers of race films like Spencer Williams's The Blood of Jesus (1941) tackled the issue. As we see footage of a religious service filmed in the 1940s by Zora Neale Hurston, Recy Taylor's siblings, Alma Daniels and Robert Corbitt, recall how she used to love going to church and was returning from praying with her friend Fannie Daniel when she was abducted. Alma dismisses the idea that her sister was a prostitute (as was claimed in the aftermath of the attack), as she was a devoted wife to Willie Guy Taylor and a doting mother to their daughter, Joyce.

In the first, but not the last incidence of emotional manipulation, Buirski backs Dinah Washington's rendition of `This Bitter Earth' with Max Richter's `On the Nature of Daylight', as Robert describes how seven white men had piled into a car and followed Recy, Fannie and the latter's son, Wes, after they had left the church. As the streets were poorly lit and there had been some rabid foxes around, Wes was carrying a stick. But, after Sam Jurdin had chased the teenagers away from pestering his daughters, they pounced on Recy. Private Herbert Lovett pulled a gun on her and ordered her to stop running and get into the back of the car. In voiceover, Recy takes up the story, as she was blindfolded and forced to listen to the boys debating what to do with her. Someone mentioned killing her, but they decided instead to drive to a remote spot and rape her on the ground. 

Having lost his mother when he was 18 months old, Robert had virtually been brought up by Recy and Alma reveals that their home life wasn't always easy with their father, Benny. But he was a decent man and, when Fannie came to tell him what had happened, he took down his rifle and went looking for his daughter and embraced her when she came home, after being dropped off on the outskirts of town. Although she had promised her assailants that she would keep her mouth shut if they spared her life, Recy told sheriff Lewey Corbitt that she had been bundled into a green Chevrolet belonging to Hugo Wilson. Yet, even though he lived a few hundred yards from the Corbitt house, Wilson denied having ever seen Recy before. 

Alma and Robert explain that the boys probably felt they could get away with their crime, as they had been brought up to believe that a black woman's body didn't belong to her. Over a dramatic scene depicting a white man forcing himself on a black woman, Recy's nephew, James Johnson II, suggests that attitudes had changed little since the plantation era and that the notion of white supremacy meant that youths were brought up to believe that black people were little better than animals. He claims that sex was used to demonstrate the control whites had over the black population in the southern states. But white Alabama historian Larry Smith reckons that some slave owners felt they had a right to sleep with black women because they belonged to them. Astonishingly, he labels this a `consensual type of affair' before smiling at recalling the old saying that every white man had a woman at the next crossroads. 

According to Robert, Recy had been subjected to a four- to five-hour ordeal and he claims that had told her to behave as if she was in bed with her husband. Although four of the attackers were strangers, she knew Hugo Wilson, Billy Howerton and Luther Lee and everyone knew the group used to hang out on the bank steps in town. But Wilson was the only one questioned by the police that night and the Taylors were offered no protection when they returned to their home a few days later. Consequently, they were defenceless when the property was fire-bombed. Fortunately, Willie Guy was able to douse the flames, but Robert says this was so typical of the intimidation that the family faced that Benny used to sleep with his rifle in a chinaberry tree behind the house to keep his offspring safe.

Over home movies of Benny with his brood, Robert confides that his father had wanted to go out and shoot the culprits. But he knew such vengeance would be counter-productive and he kept his powder dry. There was no love lost with Sheriff Corbitt, however, whose family had owned Benny's ancestors. So, with the police doing little to pursue the case, the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent Rosa Parks to take Recy's statement. As the NAACP's official rape investigator, Parks was well known to the sheriff and, as Yale professor Crystal Feimster reveals, he arrived on the scene within 15 minutes of her knocking on Recy's door. He ordered her to leave and used physical force to eject her when she returned a fortnight later. Feimster notes that such resistance anticipates Parks's refusal to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery bus. She had family in Abbeville and, as an extract from a letter written in 1981 reveals, she had endured sexual harassment herself, as an 18 year-old in 1931. 

In October 1944, a grand jury hearing was held at Henry County Courthouse. But no blacks were allowed to attend and Recy was kept in a separate room from the accused. Unsurprisingly, the all-white male jury acquitted the indicted and the case was closed. Robert explains that such injustice was designed to bring about subservience, although Alma recalls being taken to the town jail after she slapped the off-duty cop who had struck her for not backing away from a shop door he wished to pass through. She smiles as she remembers her father coming to collect her and barring her from going out until she learned how to behave. 

Activist Esther Cooper Jackson remembers visiting Recy and noticing how traumatised she was. So, Parks arranged for her to move into a safe house on Johnson Street in Montgomery. Feimster points out that Parks might not have been a member of the NAACP by this time, but she had been taught to fight for her rights by her grandfather and we hear an interview clip in which Parks describes how she was appointed secretary of her local branch on the day she joined because they needed someone to take the minutes of a meeting. She proved instrumental in the formation of the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs Recy Taylor, which used letters, petitions and stories in the black press to shame the white establishment and coax other black women into coming forward with their own experiences. 

Author Danielle L. McGuire shows how Recy's cause was taken up as far away at Harlem, where there was a rally calling for a fair hearing at the famous Hotel Theresa. She explains how vital the black press was in reporting crimes that were ignored by white publications, as their records prevented lawyers from dismissing accusations as hearsay. We see a clip from Oscar Micheaux's Birthright (1938 - not 1939, as Buirski claims), as Feimster reveals that race films like Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1919) and The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920) also depicted the bigotry and brutality that mainstream cinema ignored. This insistence on presenting reality gave audience the courage to speak out and, eventually, Alabama governor Chauncey Sparks agreed to send private investigators to go to Abbeville and uncover the truth. 

In extracts from the report submitted to Sparks by Assistant District Attorney John O. Harris, we learn that Sherif Corbitt had retracted lies about Recy being a prostitute. However, Dillard York, Robert Gamble and Luther Lee (who were all 17 at the time of the rape) insist that Recy had readily gone with them and accepted money for her services after she had safe sex with them, as well as Lovett, Wilson and Willie Joe Culpepper. According to 14 year-old Billy Howerton, he declined to have intercourse, as he knew Recy and wanted nothing to do with her. But 16 year-old Wilson also swore to have abstained, even though 15 year-old Culpepper had made no bones of the fact that they had forced themselves on Recy and had thrust some banknotes into her hand while she was with Lovett. However, the 18 year-old soldier denied having set eyes on Recy before and she admits that she would find it difficult to identify her assailants in a line-up.

As a result of the inquiry, a second grand jury hearing was held on 14 February 1945 and Chris Money, a criminal defence attorney based in Abbeville, declares that the failure to secure a conviction had more to do with race than the validity of the facts. Siblings Leamon Lee and James York insist that the accused were good boys, but concede that they often got into scrapes. Lee remembers his father giving Luther a whooping over this incident and reveals that Sheriff Corbitt was married to their mother's sister. He joined the navy soon after and saw action in the Second World War, as well as in Korea and Vietnam. York also went to sea and received a Purple Heart after being wounded before acting as the chief recorder at the Korean peace talks. He married a Japanese woman and his brother smiles knowingly, as he declares that `that went over great'.

Culpepper returned home a hero after being captured in the Korean War, but Robert Corbitt reveals that the sheriff had informed Benny that one of the boys had perished in a car crash, while another had been killed after being caught with another man's wife. However, this information was false and they all lived lengthy lives without being punished in the slightest for their crime. By contrast, Recy slipped down the NAACP agenda and struggled to make ends meet after her marriage ended. She worked as a sharecropper for a spell before moving to Flordia to pick oranges after her daughter lost her life in a traffic accident. 

While researching her book, McGuire got to interview Recy, who lived until she was 97 and only died in December last year. But Larry Smith tells Buirski he feels uncomfortable discussing the situation in too much depth, as some of those involved are still alive. He contents himself with stating that McGuire's book ruffled feathers and that the state legislature sought to calm things down by making an official apology to Recy Taylor in 2011. Feimster is more outspoken, however, as she regrets that the focus on Martin Luther King has distracted historians from the role that women played in the Civil Rights movement. She describes the indignities that black women faced when travelling on trains and buses and McGuire insists that it was the transport boycott imposed by these women that taught the leadership the potency of peaceful resistance. 

As we see Fannie Lou Hamer singing `Go Tell It on the Mountain', McGuire and Feimster sum up that the Civil Rights movement emerged from the determination of impotent black men to protect their womenfolk from white males who felt entitled to do whatever they wanted with their bodies. Alma (who died in 2016) is pleased that some of the Abbeville Seven died in tragic circumstances and is even more delighted that Recy got to outlive them and expose their pitiless lack of humanity. The closing images show Recy being helped out of a wheelchair by Robert in what looks like a hospice room. She admits that she could easily have been killed if the Lord hadn't been beside her during her ordeal and this knowledge has given her the strength to tell the truth about what happened to her. 

This an important film and it's deeply frustrating that it's not a better one. It's a huge shame that Buirski wasn't in a position to embark upon the project earlier, as it would have been nice to hear more from Recy Taylor herself. However, her siblings speak with eloquence and passion on her behalf, as do Crystal Feimster and Danielle McGuire. However, by opting to remain a silent presence during the interviews, Buirski misses the opportunity to press the mealy-mouthed Larry Smith about the case and the way in which the white community continues to close ranks around its own. She may well have been prevented from interjecting by the agreed terms of the interview, but this failure to confront Smith, Leamon Lee or James York feels like an abnegation of the documentarist's duty. 

The assembly of the audiovisual material also has its problematic moments, as so much of Rex Miller's cinematography is so stylised. The juxtaposition of top shots down on to illuminated trees in dark woodland with low-level views of the underground feels self-conscious, as does editor Anthony Rispoli's superimposition over these images of clips from pictures like Roy Calnek's Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926), Frank Peregini's The Scar of Shame (1927) and Micheaux's Veiled Aristocrats and The Girl From Chicago (1932). The use of music over the extracts also has a melodramatising effect, which detracts from the gravity of the themes Buirski is seeking to highlight. So, while one can only be grateful to her for bringing this harrowing case to a wider audience at a time when racial and gender rights are very much hot topics, one can only wish she had shown more editorial trenchancy and stylistic restraint in presenting it.

9)  UNDER THE WIRE.

The last five years has witnessed a boom in photojournalist profiles, as Sebastian Junger's Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013) was followed by Brian Oakes's Jim: The James Foley Story (2016). Greg Campbell's Hondros and Orban Wallace's Another News Story (both 2017). Joining the list is Christopher Martin's Under the Wire, which draws on photographer Paul Conroy's book about his partnership with Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin. Later this year, audiences will get to see Rosamund Pike play the intrepid, eye-patched New Yorker in Matthew Heineman's biopic, A Private War. But it will have its work cut out to surpass this potent and important tribute.

As former Sunday Times foreign news editor Sean Ryan and Channel Four's Lindsey Hilsum testify, Marie Colvin's mission was to bear witness. Having lost the sight in her left eye while reporting in Sri Lanka, she wore her eye patch as a badge of honour. She could be difficult to work with and several photographers had fallen by the wayside before she was teamed with Scouser and ex-Army officer, Paul Conroy. They bonded during a mission to Misrata in Libya and quickly realised that they needed to go to the besieged Syrian city of Homs in order to cover President Bashar al-Assad's brutal assault on the leaders of the uprising against his dictatorial regime. 

The pair met up in Beirut on 9 February 2012 and discovered that they would need to cross the border illegally. Conroy describes the journey over evocative night-vision footage, as they placed their trust in complete strangers, despite the risk of kidnapping or arrest by the Syrian forces. Crossing the frontier in the dead of night, Colvin and Conroy made slow progress across country in order to avoid patrols and checkpoints. After five days, they reached the town of Al-Bueda, where they met translator, Wa'el al-Omar, who agreed to work with them, but refused payment, as he was wary of journalists coming to Syria to present their side of the story and make their name and fortune. 

Al-Omar liked Colvin and Conroy from the outset and arranged for them to go to Baba Amr in Homs through a storm drain that is the main supply line for food, arms and people. Again, over grainy night-vision footage, Conroy and Al-Omar describe the sensation of being hunched up in thick air, as they made their way towards the light, and recall the relief at being greeted in the most dangerous war zone on the planet. 

Billeted at the media centre from which activists had alerted the world to Assad's tactics, Conroy admits to being shocked by the intensity of the daily bombardment of Homs and the fact that four old ladies had died in the house opposite during a recent onslaught. Colvin always sought to report on those caught up in a conflict rather than those on the frontline and Al-Omar took her to `the widow's basement', in which dozens of women and small children were huddled together. Each had a story to tell about the traumas they had experienced since the fighting began. As Conroy reveals, the trick was to present the evidence without appearing to take sides, but it was difficult not to be moved by such suffering. 

They also went to the medical centre to witness the work being done by Dr Mohammad Mohammad, who was working miracles with limited resources. Colvin was appalled by the sight of so many injured children and the images shown here are extremely distressing. She was determined to get the story back to London, but her handlers received intelligence that ground forces were due to attack Homs and they forced them to leave. They regrouped at Al-Buwaydah and filed their report with Ryan. He shows the front page story and the centrefold on the widows' basement. But Colvin felt she had betrayed the people she had met by putting her own safety above theirs and insisted on going back. 

Suggesting that she might have hoped that her presence would help protect the widows, Conroy explains that Colvin had form when it came to risking her neck by taking us back to East Timor in 1999, when she had defied UN diplomats to remain inside a refugee compound and had continued to report in the face of bombardment. Ryan reveals that Colvin had been told that her heroism had saved lives and we see footage of her making a speech in which she hoped that journalism could make a tangible difference. 

Having arrived back in Baba Amr on 21 February, Conroy confided to his video diary that he had a bad feeling about their return. But, when Colvin gave him the option of staying behind, he laughed and followed her lead. On emerging from the tunnel, however, he sensed that the shelling had intensified and they were unable to leave the media hub for several days. One activist returned from the medical centre with footage of a baby dying while its volunteer grandmother watched on helplessly, as it was simply too dangerous to take the child 100 metres to the hospital because of shells and snipers. Conroy recorded his feelings of outrage on seeing such disregard for the lives of civilians and knew that Colvin felt the same way and that it was their duty to make the seemingly indifferent world take notice. 

Waiting for news in London, Ryan had not known that they had gone back to Homs and Conroy jokes in interview that it was easier to say sorry than ask for permission. He was keen for them to leave at the first opportunity. But, after Colvin had spoken by phone to CNN and the BBC, she had persuaded Conroy to make one last trip to the medical centre before evacuating. Hilsum recalls being worried that her friend didn't have an exit strategy. But she decided to dig in after Le Figaro reporter Edith Bouvier and photojournalists Rémi Ochlik and William Daniels arrived at the media base because this was her story and she refused to be gazumped by what she told Conroy were the `Euro Trash' brigade. 

On 22 February, Colvin and Conroy got up early to sneak out without waking their rivals. As they reached the doorway, however, shells landed nearby and Conroy had no doubt that the Syrians had identified the foreign media's location and were deliberately targeting it. The third explosion hit very close by and Colvin and Ochlik were killed outright. Conroy and Bouvier listen to Skype audio of the aftermath, as they recall being smuggled to the health centre, where Al-Omar was being treated for a wound around his shoulder. Conroy had a gaping gash in his thigh, while Bouvier was informed that she would die unless they could get her to a hospital for surgery. 

What is so chilling about this footage is how calm everyone is, as they come to terms with losing close companions and dealing with their injuries (which makes it frustrating that it isn't always possible to tell the difference between authentic footage and slick reconstruction). As Hilsum and Ryan share recollections of hearing the news that Colvin had been killed, Conroy and Bouvier remember being moved to a safe house and spending a night without sleep. Conroy was surprised by how little emotion he felt considering he had just lost his journalistic soulmate. However, he is moved by images he had never seen before of the citizens of Homs holding a nighttime vigil for Colvin and Ochlik and fights back tears as he declares that their courage only renews his determination to keep doing what he does. 

The shelling began again on the morning of 23 February. Dr Mohammad came to ask Conroy, Daniels and Bouvier to make video messages to let people know what was happening and these clips made news bulletins around the world. But their appeals to national governments to intervene had no impact and they realised that the cavalry was not going to ride in and save them, as the shells kept hitting their refuge. Conroy vowed not to die stuck to a mattress in a hellhole, but the food and water supplies were beginning to run out. Moreover, he could hear gunfights on the street below. Throughout the ordeal, however, they kept filming and making video diary entries, which are shown here (perhaps amidst more reconstructions?).

Much to their surprise, the bombardment stopped one afternoon and they were informed that a ceasefire had been arranged so that a Red Cross ambulance could collect them. In the event, however, the vehicle was from the Syrian Red Crescent. Having heard rumours of people disappearing after being taken away in them, Conroy demanded to see the head of the delegation. The doctor whispered to him not to get into the ambulances before making a big fuss about them coming to regret their decision not to accompany him. As the shelling resumed and they heard tanks rumbling through the neighbouring streets, Conroy, Bouvier and Daniels wondered if they had made the biggest mistake of their lives. 

Throughout their ordeal, Al-Omar remained with the journalists, as he felt it was his duty to get them to safety. He concedes, however, that the room was the dictionary definition of misery and that they all feared the worst. Then, there was a sudden bout of frantic activity and they were bundled into vehicles and sent in convoy across the town through fierce sniper fire until they reached the tunnel. Conroy was placed on the back of a cut-down motorbike and driven through the drain until it reached a place where there had been a cave-in and he was forced to scramble through a tiny hole in the mud. He felt metal pierce his leg, but the voices of Colvin and those who had endured so much gave him the strength to pull through and he was picked up on the other side of the obstruction and taken to the tunnel opening.

Once again, forced to crawl across exposed ground, Conroy was placed in the back of a van and recorded a message to explain what he had just been through. He admits that this was a deeply personal recording and declares his life started again as he spoke. Closing captions reveal that Bouvier and Daniels were evacuated two days later and that Al-Omar eventually got to Europe. Indeed, as the credits roll, we see an inset shot of him being reunited with Conroy. 

It's become the norm for documentarists to supplement their archive material and talking-head pieces with dramatic reconstructions. Here, the credited cast of Julian Lewis Jones (Conroy), Ziad Abaza (Al-Omar), Janine Birkett (Colvin) and Karine Myriam Lapouble (Bouvier) re-enact scenes to enable Martin to provide a visual approximation of the conditions the real quartet had to endure. But, when these interludes are so proficiently produced that it's impossible to see the joins, viewers can be left wondering where primary sources are being used and where skilled artifice has taken over. Some film-makers have bypassed this problem by commissioning animated sequences. But it suggests a certain lack of trust in the actuality audience if it's felt so consistently that they can't be relied upon to take a speaker's word at face value without having to be shown as well as told. 

Notwithstanding this generic quibble, this is a powerful and often humbling record of the lengths to which Colvin, Conroy and their companions were prepared to go to alert the world to the atrocities being committed in Homs. Martin is indebted for the film's immersive viscerality to editor Dudley Sergeant for the adroit interweaving of the different visual strands. But the score by Heaven 17 vocalist Glenn Gregory and Berenice Scott occasionally tilts the action toward thriller territory. 

Genially self-effacing, Conroy makes an astute witness, as he seeks to downplay his own heroism in highlighting the sacrifices made by the likes of Al-Omar and Dr Mohammad. Bouvier and Al-Omar also speak with clarity and admirable abasement. But the absence of William Daniels raises some unanswered questions.

8)  TIME TRIAL.

Finlay Pretsell's documentary, Time Trial, reached UK cinemas just as the Tour de France was about to begin in July. Cyling has inspired some fine films down the years, including Louis Malle's Vive Le Tour (1962), Claude Lelouch's ...pour un maillot jaune (1965) and Jørgen Leth's A Sunday in Hell (1976). But the shadow of Lance Armstrong has stretched across the sub-genre of late and this profile of Scottish cyclist David Millar sheds some much-needed new light on a gruelling and sport that makes extraordinary demands on its participants.

The Maltese-born Millar dreamt of competing in the Tour de France and began preparing for its rigours as a 15 year-old, when he learned how to conquer a tricky stretch of road without braking. A montage shows him securing Tour stage wins for the Cofidis team and becoming the first Brit to wear the leader's jersey at all three Grand Tours before he received a two-year ban in 2004 for using performance-enhancing drugs. On his return, however, Millar became the poster boy for the anti-doping campaign and he was extremely vocal in his criticism of the sport for not doing enough to educate young riders. 

By 2014, the 37 year-old was ready to wind down and hoped the Garmin Sharp team led by former rider Charly Wegelius would give him a last hurrah on the Champs Elysées. We see him racing the Tirreno-Adriatico to prove his fitness and a stunning combination of point-of-view shots and close-ups taken from within the peloton provide a fascinating insight into the camaraderie between the competitors and the tactics they employ to manage a stage so that as many of them as possible remain in contention and, thus, share the workload. At one point, Millar collects drinks for his teammates from the broom wagon following the race and dishes them out before realising that he forgot to pick one up for himself. 

While we see in-the-mix footage that TV companies must dream of capturing, Millar confides that he has never enjoyed climbing mountains, as he prefers the freedom of the coast. He also reveals that he used to like being part of breakaways, as the open spaces stretching out in front of him used to give him energy. But, as he started to realise that he was no longer as fast as he used to be, Millar had to content himself with staying with the pack and putting in steady rather than spectacular performances. 

This meant he risked becoming less useful to the team in the major events, although there is no sense that Millar's place is in jeopardy, as he gives Wegelius radio reports from the front of the peloton and jokes around with Dutch colleague Thomas Dekker at lights out, while sharing a hotel bedroom. But Dekker also provides support after Millar has a tough day in the snow-capped mountains and he reveals in voiceover that it can get lonely and demoralising in the middle of nowhere with no end in sight. 

Reluctant to go over the drug ban again, Millar finds himself under pressure to make the team for the Tour de France and is told he needs an improved showing in the Milan-San Remo, an exhausting 298 km race known as `La Classicissima' that is the longest one-day event in the professional cycling calendar. The weather is appalling and Millar complains to a rival early on that he's not in the mood to go chasing the `muppets' who want to up the pace. As the rain pelts down, Millar has to change his waterproof jacket while racing and is only forced to stop when his hands prove so numb that he can't put on a fresh pair of gloves. 

Cross-cutting between POV, head-on and handlebar shots, as well as footage from inside the broom wagon, the growing frustration that Wegelius and his assistant Robbie Hunter feel with Millar becomes gnawingly obvious, as they urge him to stop sitting with the back markers and make an impression on the peloton. However, the need to change his front wheel slows Millar down and, as the roads become slippier in the deteriorating conditions, it's unsurprising that he crashes out in trying to avoid another casualty. The bike-cam reveals how alarming this collision is. But Millar's failure to finish intensifies the pressure on the team selectors to omit him from the Tour line-up.

Sitting in a darkened room, Millar cries as he recalls Wegelius breaking the news that he was not going to ride a 13th Tour de France. It's as if the enormity of the revelation and its ramifications had only just sunk in and he had realised that his cycling career was over and had ended in rejection. As the film closes, Millar is seen dancing in a disco with an energy that recalls Denis Lavant's frantic gyrations at the end of Claire Denis's Beau Travail (1999). But these aren't the only cinephilic touches that Pretsell slips into this engrossing study, with some of the nightmarish flash cuts suggesting the anguish that guilt-tormented cop Stellan Skarsgård endures in Eric Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia (1997). Moreover, as a semi-professional rider himself, Pretsell must also be aware of such exacting actualities as Wiebe Mullens's Tour de France (1953), Pepe Danquart's Hell on Wheels (2004), Jason Berry's Chasing Legends (2010) and James Erskine's Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist (2014).

Clearly, when Millar signed up for this project, he had hoped it would represent a lap of honour to end a chequered career on a high note. But, while he is in no mood to open up about his emotions regarding the EPO ban and his ignominious deselection, he can't hide the dismay and humiliation caused by missing out on the farewell Tour. Thus, while Millar can protest that he has exhausted these subjects in his 2015 autobiography, The Racer, the enduring rawness of his pain gives Prestsell's portrait an excruciating intimacy that is rare in sporting documentaries.

The dynamic visuals are also extraordinary, as Pretsell and cinematographer Martin Radich managed to smuggle a motorbike-mounted camera (among many others) into the heart of action that is edited with a real feel for the thrill and peril of cycling by Kieran Gosney and Dino Jonsäter. CJ Mirra's sound design is also inspired, as he not only catches snippets of conversation on the road, but also the whirring of the gears and the whoosh of the wheels. Moreover, Dan Deacon's score avoids cliché and intrusion in providing a driving accompaniment to the kinetic footage. Millar might have proved an elusive subject, but he reveals more than he intended and, as a result, this sobering treatise on the terrifying viscerality of perspectival speed, the cruelty of sport and the implacability of time ranks among the best documentaries of the year.

7)  THE DEMINER.

During two spells of service between 2003-14, Fakhir Berwari acquired a reputation for being a fearless bomb disposal expert in and around the towns of Mosul and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shortly after Berwari paid the ultimate price for his reckless courage, his son, Abdulla, found a briefcase containing 40-50 hours of footage of this extraordinary maverick deactivating bombs, booby traps and landmines with nothing more than a penknife and a pair of pliers. Abdulla entrusted his discovery to Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal (who had filmed some of Berwari's later exploits) and they have shaped the often harrowing imagery into a troubling and transfixing tribute entitled The Deminer. 

In the summer of 2017, as the Iraqi army reclaims Mosul from Daesh/ISIS, Abdulla comes across the stash of videos that depict his father, Colonel Fakhir Berwari, clearing mines with wire cutters and spades in the most haphazard manner imaginable. We see him toiling between two rows of mines designed to blow up passing vehicles. He walks awkwardly, having previously lost part of his right leg, but works swiftly and decisively, as he snips through cables before pulling several metal canisters out of the soil. Much of the footage dates from 2003-08, when Fakhir was a major based in Mosul and his widow, Sheyma, speculates that he kept the tapes and discs hidden, as he didn't want his family to see what he had been through. 

The Berwaris live in Dohuk in Kurdistan and Abdulla remembers when his father bought the camcorder to chronicle his children as they grew up. However, he soon started using it on the frontline and we see Berwari leading a small team towards a booby-trapped truck. Ignoring warnings to be careful, he clambers into the cab and breaks the connections to a mobile phone trigger and calls him minions in to remove the petrol cans stored in the cab to create a fireball. He carries out his mission with an eerie calmness that contrasts with the panic that ensues when a bomb explodes in the streets of Mosul while people were out celebrating the arrest of Saddam Hussein. The camera surveys the devastation and picks up the screams of terror and cries for help with a chilling immediacy that drives home the fact that Ba'ath supporters were prepared to target residential areas and kill innocent men, women and children in a bid to cling to power. 

We next see Berwari drop into the US Army base at Mosul to thank the troops for giving up a year of their lives to help Iraq. Much as they admire him, however, the Americans were often bemused by his tactics and we hear radio exchanges over footage of him shambling up to his first roadside device and disarming it with a knife and some pliers. He toys nonchalantly with the wires, as Abdulla explains in voiceover that his father felt the need to act quickly because it always took too long for specialist UXB teams to respond to call-outs.

By 2004, those opposing the Allied forces had splintered into numerous groups and they found lots of impoverished people willing to lay mines or drive car bombs for money rather than out of any ideological conviction. Regardless of who planted them, Berwari has to dig them up and we hear one of his own unit comment over the radio that he is striding towards certain death, as he approaches a roadside device. Astonishingly, he hacks at it with a pickaxe with a wobbly head and has to order his cameraman and some onlookers to keep their distance in case it explodes. Eventually, he manages to unearth the sizeable shell and is show hauling casings out of a hole in the dirt, as cars drive past him and another gaggle of rubberneckers watches him work with grim fascination. 

As we see an explosion light up the night sky with a flaring yellow light, Abdulla reveals that his father removed over 600 mines during his first year in Mosul. In the next clip, he works by torchlight in the darkness and disregards all warnings to proceed with caution, as he scrabbles in the dust. When family members urge him to return home, he claims that his conscience won't allow him to leave the children being imperilled by the bombs. However, each time he successfully defuses a device, he incurs the wrath of those who had planted it and, by 2005, he was receiving death threats from the insurgents. 

On one occasion, Berwari 's unit intercepts a truck being driven by three kids aged between 12-15 and quickly discover that it's full of weapons. He insists on going into the nearby village and summoning all the men to a meeting in the square, where he is busy telling them to make their children hate weapons so that Iraqis stop killing each other when an enormous explosion erupts and the cameraman is knocked over. Amidst the smoke and chaos, we hear Sheyma remembering the sense of dread when someone called to inform her of the attack. She was convinced that her husband had died, but he was found in the nearby hospital making light of his injuries and insisting on reporting for duty the following day. Abdulla reveals that his father was frequently decorated by the Americans, who affectionately dubbed him `Crazy Fakhir' and presented him with a padded flak jacket to keep him safe. 

In 2007, following a kick-about with his men, Berwari goes out on patrol and turns off his radio when ordered not to approach a booby-trapped car. In addition to neutralising the bomb, he also leads a house-to-house search and discovers a cache of weapons that Abdulla claims convinced his father that the leaders of the insurgency had come from Turkey, Syria and Iran. His unit goes on a raid into Mosul and the camera switches to night-vision mode to record the recce. As they drive through the deserted streets, someone starts singing an out-of-tune love song (probably Berwari), but he is silenced by an explosion that kills 14 of the unit and eight civilians. Once again, the frame fills with smoke and only the sound of distressed voices reveals the horror of what is going on beyond the shattered windscreen. 

Undaunted, Berwari returns to the village the next morning to argue with the locals about helping foreign fighters kill their own loved ones. He is angered by their refusal to provide information and tries to convince them that he is not a traitor coercing them into betraying their own. They capture two suspects and bring them in for blindfolded questioning. The older man readily admits where he has planted four bombs and avers that he was paid between $50-100 for his efforts. However, the younger one denies having anything to do with the mines until Berwari discovers that his brother had been killed by the Americans while wielding a weapon and that he had vowed to avenge his death. 

Following this tour of duty, Berwari had returned home and Sheyma had hoped that he would remain in Duhok with his eight children. But, in 2008, he was offered a post training new recruits and decided he had no option but to accept. However, he is soon back in the thick of things and gouging away at the ground in his impetuous manner. When a crowd begins to follow his search for another device, he shakes them all by the hand and apologises for being so discourteous in sending them away. Venturing on to a patch of wasteland, he complains about the smell before being blown up. Abdulla tries to control his emotions, as he watches the footage on the family television set. 

Berwari's men are convinced he has been killed, as they wrap him in a rug and carry him to a Land Cruiser, with the intention of returning his remains to Duhok. But he is made of stern stuff and, even though he spent several days in a coma and lost most of his right leg, as well as much of the hearing in each ear, he survived. He even asked if he could return to the front, but the Americans refused to let him take any further risks. While Berwari recovered, however, President Barack Obama declared that the US mission had ended and Abdulla describes how his father became despondent and reclusive during this period because he no longer felt he had a purpose in life and that Iraq had been left at the mercy of its enemies. 

In June 2014, Daesh captured Mosul and thousands were made homeless, as it sought to seize control of the entire region. Indeed, their forces came within 30km of Duhok and Berwari felt compelled to volunteer for action. The army claimed he was of little use with one leg. So, he acquired a plastic prosthetic and joined the Peshmerga in order to defend his people against the invaders. 

Riding in the front of an armoured car, Berwari is in his element and he states that he will keep doing this job until the day he croaks. Despite his brush with death, however, his methods remain unchanged and he enters a building by flashlight to dismantle a bomb with a screwdriver and a hammer, even though the trigger phone starts ringing while he is working. He is appalled that Daesh could turn people's homes into weapons and vows never to surrender. When dawn breaks, he is seen in a long shot prodding the corpses of two suicide bombers who had been shot for refusing to stand still. Once again, he dismantles the devices and completes the task, even though his leg is so sore that he has to remove the prosthetic while he cools down. He admits to being tired and Abdulla starts searching for an electronic limb that would respond to his father's movements and place less stress on his stump. 

Now working with his brother, Ghazi, Berwari continues to go his own sweet way, as he enters a ramshackle building and ticks off the cameraman for failing to notice a tripwire. He also finds an enormous bomb in a chest freezer and uses his trusty pliers to snip away at the wires before removing several plastic containers of liquid explosive. Plodding on, he tackles a lorry that has been primed and explains that he feels obliged to keep working because of the number of lives he can save if he succeeds. As his unit pulls out of a village after loading up 1150 mines, Berwari expresses his pity for the residents, as the enemy has made their homes uninhabitable. 

Still coming to terms with her loss in September 2014, Sheyma shows off photographs and videos of happier times, as her brood mills around and Abdulla tries to concentrate on his studies. A couple of months later, Berwari and his brother arrive in Zummar in the middle of a street fight. Nevertheless, they go about their duties without trepidation, even though Berwari has to proceed with caution on entering a house with a booby-trapped door. He seems to have a sixth sense about what he will find in each location and acts decisively whether digging holes or cutting wires. 

After clearing the mines from a garden, Berwari wants to call it a day, as his leg is hurting and he is exhausted. However, a couple of villagers persuade him to do one more house, as they won't be able to move back in unless the premises have been cleared. He follows their pick-up truck and goes inside, having told the cameraman to keep his distance. The crew members come after him, however, and film him as he dismantles a number of sophisticated devices. His phone rings while he is carrying some explosives outside and he is forced to speak to a neighbour pestering him about an unpaid debt. 

With the cameraman sounding increasingly nervous, Berwari returns inside and remains there when another phone rings and his oppos flee the scene. He strolls out on to the patio clipping the wires attached to a container and seems oblivious to the danger he is in. A radio message comes through calling him to another heavily mined house. But, as he continues his search, another phone rings and a bomb is detonated. 

Funeral footage follows, as Ghazi reveals that Berwari's trusted lieutenants, Masoud and Lokman, had perished alongside him. Abdulla is distraught and confides that he still misses his father's smile. But, as the film ends, we see Berwari's picture adorning the walls of shops and cafés around Duhok, where he remains a hero and continues to watch over his beloved hometown. 

It's easy to see why the Dohuk-born, but Swedish-based Hirori and co-director Kamal have been accused by some critics of producing a piece of docsploitation that shamelessly builds the suspense during the lengthy sequences of Berwari taking the extreme risks that will eventually prove to be his downfall. Yet, while a little more context about the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan might have been useful, the co-directors largely follow the lead provided by Zaradasht Ahmed's Nowhere to Hide (2016), which also used `found' footage to show how medic and father of four Nori Shariff responded to emergencies in the town of Jalawa in Dyala province. 

The footage certainly exerts a ghoulish fascination and it comes as something of a relief that the camera seems to jam after the fatal explosion and we can see nothing but a pall of thick smoke. But Berwari leaves an indelible impression, as he chats to his camera crews while snipping and stripping wires with the assurance of a gambler on a hot streak. His geniality doesn't disguise the intensity of his commitment to the cause of protecting his people, however, and there is palpable frustration and fury in his speeches to the townsfolk being lured into doing the work of a cowardly enemy that is prepared to claim martyrdom for impoverished everymen simply seeking to provide for their families in a time of crisis. 

However, the pride and pain of Sheyma and Abdulla are also readily evident and it should be remembered that the film could never have been made without their sanction. But it's important not to be distracted by Berwari's insouciant bravura (`If I fail, only I will die, but if I make it, I will save many lives.'), as he recorded his missions in order to alert the wider world to the living hell being endured by compatriots who have been terrorised for as long as they can remember by Ba'athists, Allied invaders, Al-Qaeda insurgents and caliphatist jihadis.

6)  THE IMAGE BOOK.

Jean-Luc Godard had much to atone for after making old friend Agnès Varda cry in Faces Places (see below) and he goes some way to doing so with his latest admonition of his fellow beings in The Image Book. Throughout his career, Godard has struggled to disguise the fact that he thinks he knows better than the rest of us and he has devoted much of his later career to haranguing us about our failings. Following Film Socialisme (2010) and Farewell to Language (2014), his latest dismayed diatribe is made up exclusively of found footage. When Godard started making films, the moving image meant something. But the proliferation of clips from old movies, news bulletins and social media sites has merely created the visual equivalent of hubbub and the 87 year-old auteur uses this brain-frazzling, colour-saturated digi-prop collage to lament the fact that the blizzard of audiovisual information has caused humanity to lose sight of what matters and abnegate its duty to read between the lines. 

Opening with an image of an upwardly pointing finger, the initial remarks warn about the silence of Bécassine, a Breton peasant cartoon character who featured in a series of books from 1913 by artist Joseph Pinchon and the writer Caumery (aka Maurice Languereau). Over footage of a pair of hands manipulating a strip of celluloid, Jean-Luc Godard opines in a gravelly voice that man's true condition is to think with his hands. However, only a portion of his remarks are translated in the subtitles and those without an acute aural understanding of French are placed at a distinct disadvantage.

A flurry of captions and clips follows, as a section entitled `1. Remakes' opens with a mushroom cloud billowing into the air, as Godard warns that the world has lulled itself into believing that nuclear war is a threat of the past. Extracts from Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and FW Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) follow, as Godard uses an exchange between Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden from Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) to suggest that we ask our politicians to lie to us and then believe every word they say. A meandering melody played on a mournful piano recalls the sounds extemporised by The Beatles on the 1968 White Album track, `Revolution No.9', as Godard strings together images from old films including his own Les Carabiniers (1963) to suggest how today's terrorists put a cinematic flourish on the atrocities they post on their social media sites. 

Having sprung the slogan `Rim(a)kes' upon us in the middle of snippets from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (1944) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), Godard leads us into `2. St Petersburg's Evenings'. Over clips from what is presumably Sergei Bondarchuk's Oscar-winning adaptation of War and Peace (1966), Godard cites Joseph De Maistre's contention that Heaven can only be appeased by innocents shedding blood for the guilty. Following a glimpse of Rosa Luxemburg's gravestone, he subjects us to a bombardment of bellicose images that are more terrifying than anything in a horror movie, as Godard reminds us of the violent nature of existence and our folly in believing that victory in war is ever achievable or conclusive. 

Tinkering with aspect ratios and frequently cutting to black or removing all sounds, Godard distorts the visuals by heightening or bleaching any colours, as he seeks to disorientate and manipulate. Entering `3. Those flowers between rails, in the confused wind of travels', he reads the opening lines of Fedor Dostoevsky's The Idiot while coupling extracts from such trainbound films as Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express (1948), George Cukor's Bhowani Junction (1956), Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman's The General (1926), Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932) and Clarence Brown's Anna Karenina (1935). Each clips pits individuals against the throng and implies that we are being transported towards our destiny with no idea of what our final destination will be like. However, fleeting images of box cars and swastikas serve as a reminder of the part trains played in the Holocaust. 

Moving into `4. Spirit of Laws', Godard quotes Artur Rimbaud, while a caption flashes up that terrorism should be considered one of the fine arts. He denounces the governments of Europe and the people who elect them for turning a blind eye to poverty and prejudice, as well as the migration crisis and human trafficking. He shows Henry Fonda being enthralled by a legal textbook in John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln (1939) and wonders when law ceased to matter. Yet the same sequence also includes a snippet of Fonda behind bars in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1957) and we hear a French voice intone, `there is something wrong with the law', while a caption proclaims that `society is based upon a shared murder'. As Ingrid Bergman burns at the stake in Victor Fleming's Joan of Arc (1948) and Michel Bouquet go to the block in Guy Lessertisseur's Le Procès de Charles 1er (1963), Godard berates the continent for lacking the necessary virtues to pull itself out of its tailspin and links clips from Leo McCarey's Duck Soup (1933), Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942) and Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946) to hint at some of the forces at work in a situation that continues to veer between the sublime, the ridiculous and the petrifying.

Taking its title from a 1971 experimental film by Michael Snow, `5. La Région Centrale' allows Godard to muse upon the Arab World and celebrate its achievements while castigating the West for its prejudicial misunderstanding of its culture and beliefs. Having contrasted the fate of those at opposite ends of the wealth ladder in making a passing allusion to the factors contributing to climate change and the depletion of our natural resources, Godard reflects on `Joyful Arabia', `The Lost Paradises' and `Those Flowers Lost in the Wind' in protesting at the West's ignorance of the Arab bloc. He also muses on the calm that exists when recreating an act of violence on screen and considers how a composer uses melody and counterpoint. 

As the images tumble in on each other, Godard assumes the mantle of Scheherazade to relate a tale about Sheikh Ben Kadem and his younger cousin Samantar in the fictional emirate of Dofa, which is of no interest to the world's superpowers because it has no oil. However, the Gulf Liberation Force seeks to win hearts and minds by distributing leaflets full of revolutionary slogans that no longer have any meaning. He notes how reliant Christianity, Judaism and Islam are on books of rules and compares their methods with the direct activism of the rebels and states unequivocably that he will always be on the side of the bombs. 

Declaring the men currently in power across the world `bloody morons' for wanting to be kings rather than Faust, Godard continues the story after the toppling of Ben Kadem, as Samantar meets Tarek, who feigns being mad because it gives him complete freedom of movement. He also uses children to carry out his terrorist attacks on such capitalist bastions as banks and import-export exchanges because no one would ever suspect them. Godard asserts that chatting with a lunatic is a rare privilege and Bécassine pops up again, as a female voice opines that we are never quite sad or desperate enough to demand change. Worse still, no one is listening any more. 

As the credits roll, Godard name drops Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in discussing authenticity and the need for a revolution. He splutters as he hopes that his generation holds tight to its dreams and that they are taken up by those that follow. But, in ending on the optimistic sight of the swirling dance hall sequence from Max Ophüls's Le Plaisir (1951), he turns down the sound. The rest, as an indecisive Dane once said, is silence. 

One hopes this won't be the last we hear from Jean-Luc Godard, even though his utterances are becoming increasingly gnomic and even the best-read intellectuals are struggling to spot all of the allusions in his work. But, after a second viewing, The Image Book begins to seem more accessible on a thematic and a stylistic level. Despite being made in collaboration with Swiss film-maker Fabrice Aragno, former production manager Jean-Paul Battagia and theorist Nicole Brenez, this has Godard's fingerprints all over it, which is fitting considering the recurring images of hands and one telling shot of a spool of celluloid being unwound and almost caressed by someone who appreciates the tactility of cinema. 

Echoes of Chris Marker and his own monumental Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998) reverberate around the five chapters, as Godard strives to be scholarly, poetic, provocative and mischievous in putting his head above the parapet to survey a world he barely recognises and appears to despise. However, he isn't quite prepared to give up on hopeless humanity just yet and plunders art, literature, cinema, television, social media and reportage to superimpose his own meaning on to the densely packed images and provide us with pointers of how to get ourselves out of this mess before it's too late. Following them is a challenge, but it's one well worth undertaking, even if you only pick up a fraction of what this enduring enfant terrible is trying to impart.

At one point, Godard avers that `Nothing is as handy as a text.' In the hope that a checklist is the next best thing, here is a rundown of the (majority of the) films he cites: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien andalou (1929), Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker (1962), Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), Germany Year Zero (1947), The Flowers of St Francis (1950) and The Messiah (1975), Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu (2014), Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes (1949), Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer's People on Sunday (1929). Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001), Mario Imperol's Blue Jeans (1975), Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), Frank Borzage's The River (1929), King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1952), Boris Barnet's By the Bluest of Seas (1936), Isabelle Clarke's 8 Mai 1945 (2005), Jocelyne Saab's Les Enfants de la Guerre (1976), Joseph Vilsmaier's Stalingrad (1993), André Malraux's L'Espoir (1940), Jean-Pierre Melville's La Silence de la Mer (1949), Youssef Chahine's Central Station, Djamila (both 1958), Silence, We're Rolling (2006) and Le Chaos (2007), Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) and Metropolis (1926), Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1950) and Testament d'Orphée (1959), Arthur Aristakisjan's Paumes de la mendicité (1993), Hassan Benjelloun's Les Oubliés de l'histoire (2010), Mikhail Chiuarelli's The Fall of Berlin (1945), Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927), Jean Renoir's La Nuit de carrefour (1932) and La Règle du Jeu (1939), Julien Duvivier's Here's Berlin (1932) and La Bandera (1935), Alekseï Outchitel's L'Affrontement (2010), Theo Angelopoulos's Landscape in the Mist (1988), Roy William Neill's Terror By Night (1946), Ingmar Bergman's The Silence (1963), Victor Turin's Turksib (1929), Marlen Khutsiev's The Two Fedors (1959), William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933), Jacques Perconte's After the Fire (2010), Peter Watkins's La Commune (2000), Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954), Henri Calef's Les Chouans (1947), Roy Battersby's Mister Love (1988), Sergei Paradjanov's The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), Luis Buñuel's Las Hurdes (1933) and Los Olvidados (1950), Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), Harold Medford's Marilyn (1963), Andrei Konchalovsky's The First Teacher (1965), Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), Sergei Eisenstein's ¡Que viva México! (1932) and Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan's Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (2014), Louis Feuillade's Fantômas (1913) and Judex (1916), Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), Jack Conway's Viva Villa (1934), Stellio Lorenzi's La Terreur et la vertu (1964), Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai (1947), Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Philippe De Broca's Les 1001 Nuits (1990), Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Boris Rytsarev's Aladdin and His Magic Lamp (1967), Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades (1935), Sidney J. Furie's Going Back (2001), Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991), Artavazd Peleshian's Nous (1969), Roger Leenhardt's The Last Vacation (1947), Nacer Khemir's The Dove's Lost Necklace (1991), Moufida Tlatli's The Silences of the Palace (1994) and The Season of Men (2000), Gavin Hood's Rendition (2007), Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), Bernard Borderie's Poison Ivy (1953), Faouzi Bensaïdi's A Thousand Months (2003), Safia Benhaim's La Fièvre (2015), Asgar Farhadi's About Elly (2009), Clive Donner's The Thief of Bagdad (1978), Michael Bay's 13 Hours (2016), Merzak Allouche's The Rooftops (2013), and Francis Alÿs's Reel/Unreel (2011).

The odd identification might be inaccurate, as the credits don't date or attribute the references. However, the Godard titles sampled are unquestionably King Lear (1987), Le Petit Soldat (1960), Vrai faux passeports (2006), Hélas pour moi (1993), The Kids Play Russian (1993),  JLG JLG (1994), Notre Musique (2004), Liberty and Homeland (2002), Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company (1986), 2 x 50 Years of Cinema (1995), For Ever Mozart (1996), Tout va bien (1972), Week-End (1967), Vladimir and Rosa (1971), Détéctive (1985), Film Socialisme (2010) and Ici et Ailleurs (1974).

5)  THE KING.

Elvis Presley has been dead for 41 years. But documentarist Eugene Jarecki believes he continues to have a considerable impact on modern America. In The King, Jarecki takes a trip down memory lane in a 1963 Rolls-Royce Phantom V that was once owned by Presley himself in order to demonstrate how his personal and professional lives were shaped by forces that simultaneously transformed America and set it on the road to Trumpism. As in Why We Fight (2006) and The House I Live In (2012), Jarecki proves willing to take stylistic and thematic risks to make his argument. Some of his theories are fascinating, others feel strained. But few factual films this year have so consistently challenged the viewer to take a fresh look at themselves and the part they have played in the sorry mess in which the world is currently wallowing.

Opening with a montage showing how Jarecki and his crew tricked out the Rolls with camera to turn it into a luxurious moving studio, the documentary kicks off with political analyst James Carville comparing the effect Elvis had on American to being thumped by Mike Tyson. The boxer's blows were so powerful that an opponent's sense of taste was irrevocably altered and Carville suggests that the US tasted differently after Elvis emerged in the mid-1950s. 

We hear Emi Sunshine and The Rain singing in the back of the Rolls as it passes through Knoxville, Tennessee en route to Tupelo, Mississippi, where Terri Davidson from the museum at Elvis's birthplace explains how much the town treasures its association with the King of Rock'n'Roll. Yet, despite having a college education, she barely earns a living wage. An Elvis impersonator whose relatives sharecropped with Presley's family similarly struggles to get by and we hear audio interviews in which Elvis states that happiness is more important than material wealth. Cultural critic Greil Marcus (who wrote the book, Dead Elvis) suggests that Presley made people believe in the constitutional right to the `pursuit of happiness' and historian Steve Fraser recalls how shocking that document felt in 1776, when the world was dominated by monarchs and aristocrats and most people had no concept of anything other than the daily grind. 

Sitting in a roadside diner, Carville claims that the American Dream that Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised around the time Elvis was born on 8 January 1935 no longer exists because it's no longer possible for people to work in the same job for 30 years and send their kids to college. Presley biographer Peter Guralnick reveals that Elvis and his mother Gladys had to move into a shack in a predominantly black neighbourhood after father Vernon was jailed for passing a bad cheque. Jarecki asks the locals if they know where the house is and the African-Americans seem unsure, while the mother and daughter in residence concur that the American Dream has gone sour and that nobody in Tupelo cares about those on the margins. 

Jarecki drives to Parchman, Mississippi, where Vernon Presley served his time and meets bluesman Leo `Bud' Welch. He plays in the back of the car and suggests that the blues is the music of a good man feeling bad. His father was also an inmate at Parchman and he recalls that it was tantamount to being a plantation. Unsurprisingly, Elvis needed to be somewhere more vibrant to pursue his ambitions and he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, which Chuck D from Public Enemy describes as a confluence of social, economic and cultural influences in the 1950s. Mayor AC Wharton claims it was the city of three kings with Elvis being joined by BB King and Martin Luther King and gospel singer Erlis Taylor sings in the back of the Rolls outside the Lorraine Hotel, where he was murdered in April 1968. 

Taylor knew Presley at the church where preacher William Herbert Brewster placed a good deal of emphasis on music as a form of worship. She claims Elvis couldn't sing before he started listening to church music and Justin Merrick, the choir master at the Stax Music Academy in Memphis, explains how gospel and blues were two sides of the same musical coin that produced soul. Some of his students sing `Chain of Fools' in the back of the Rolls, as Merrick opines that Elvis came to South Memphis to acquire experiences that he couldn't get in his own community. 

As we meet  school pals George Klein and Jerry Schilling, Van Jones, the president of Rebuild the Dream, claims that Elvis was born into an American Nightmare. We hear Billie Holliday singing `Strange Fruit', as we see a photograph of a lynching and a clip of Klansman Asa Carter espousing his pernicious views. Schilling agrees with Jones that Memphis in the early 50s was so strictly segregated that it felt like one was living in an apartheid state. But, while Schilling called the blues forbidden music, Jones calls it the cry of pain and finds it disconcerting that those who inflicted the misery were the ones to benefit from the music. Chuck D similarly castigates a society that could extol films like Melville Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933) without admitting that they were white supremacist allegories. 

Without a hint of irony, Guralnick explains how Sun Records owner Sam Phillips hoped that rock`n'roll would help break down the racial barriers in the United States. But, while he recorded the likes of Howlin' Wolf and BB King, he became convinced he needed a white artist to make the crossover into the mainstream. Actor Ethan Hawke travels to Memphis to meet Jerry Phillips, who recalls how his father discovered Elvis, who was working as an electrician before he came into the studio for a session that culminated in the recording of Arthur `Big Boy' Crudup's song, `That's All Right'. Hawke considers how different Presley sounded to other Frank Sinatra wannabes and guitarist Scotty Moore praises his unique talent. 

However, Jones and Chuck D have problems with the notion that Elvis was the King of Rock`n'Roll and aver that he was guilty of cultural appropriation and allowed himself to become the poster boy of White America in the same way that John Wayne had been. As we see Big Mama Thornton singing `Hound Dog', David Simon (the creator of The Wire) says that cultural appropriation is inevitable in a melting pot society like America and notes that the song was written by two Jewish tunesmiths, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and that Elvis was also influenced by country and bluegrass stars like Hank Snow and Bill Monroe, as well as easy listening crooners like Dean Martin. Chuck D has no problem with Elvis singing black music, just as he is cool with African-Americans playing classical piano pieces written by Germans. But Jones (who, like Chuck D, doesn't ride in the Rolls) is riled that Jarecki seems bent on trying to rescue Elvis from a charge of making a fortune from black music and doing nothing to repay his debt. 

As the scene shifts to Memphis, music executive Mark Wright joins the chorus of disapproval against Colonel Tom Parker, the carnival showman who began life in Holland as Andreas van Kuijk and who coaxed Elvis into accepting a Faustian bargain to make him the biggest star in the world. Although he liked to present himself as a small-town momma's boy, Elvis was fiercely ambitious and didn't enter into this deal with his eyes closed. As audio clips capture Elvis distancing himself from charges that rock fuels juvenile delinquency, John Hiatt gets emotional in the back of the Rolls, as he drives to the RCA Studios, where Elvis found himself after Parker had secured him the most lucrative recording contract in musical history. They meet up with singer Radney Foster, who suggests that this period saw Elvis lose the `roll' and start churning out slick `rock'. 

Emmylou Harris and Mary Gauthier have sympathy with him because he was a young man venturing into unknown territory and he trusted people who saw him as a money-making machine. Wright opines that Elvis was the first major crossover artist, but this ignores Bing Crosby and Sinatra, who also did radio, television, discs and movies. However, Elvis was also at the centre of a merchandising maelstrom and Wright suggests he was shoved down the throat of the American public, who swallowed him whole because they had never seen anyone as handsome and daringly charismatic. 

At this juncture, the silver Rolls develops engine failure and it has to be pushed on to a trailer for the journey north, during which Kate and Maggie sing in the backseat on Route 19 in West Virginina. It's also at this point that Jarecki asks road crew chief Wayne Gerster where he thinks the film is heading and he surmises that the director is trying to draw parallels between Elvis's decline and that of the United States. But he feels the country is merely stagnating and laments that the promise that everyone could achieve their dreams through hard work was a lie. Hawke similarly regrets that America has ceased to be a beacon of democracy and is now the totem of capitalism. We hear Elvis discussing his annual earnings and claiming that wealth and fame haven't changed him, but the talking heads insist that America was going through an epochal period of transition at precisely the time that Preseley emerged and that he became synonymous with the kind of celebrity that inspires today's `want more' generation. 

The story rolls into New York, as Jarecki cross-cuts between Kong's theatre appearance and the King conquering the Big Apple. Newcaster Dan Rather climbs to the top of the Empire State Building and wonders what the pioneers who followed the advice to `Go West' would make of the country today. This prompts a clip of Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin in their white gob suits in On the Town (1949) and Jarecki unleashes a black, an Oriental and a white sailor on Times Square in a bid to bridge the temporal and socio-cultural gaps. Stepping into this breach, hip hop artist Immortal Technique claims that America is about to hit the equivalent of Elvis overdosing by electing Donald Trump. In the back of the Rolls, he performs a rap building on his contention that the immigrants who arrived in 19th-century American shied away from the reality that their fresh start was founded on a genocide of the indigenous people and the enslavement of trafficked Africans. 

Schilling and music critic Luc Sante claim that New York had an incalculable effect on Elvis, as he was initially intimidated by it and quickly had it eating out of his hand. Rather tries to imagine how alien the city must have felt to a poor country boy and Mike Myers joins the debate to present the Canadian perspective. He suggests America was the sibling who went off to become a movie star while Canada stayed at home with Mommy Britain and he ponders the US love of individuality and mission statements. This segues into a discussion of the way the Colonel used television to bring Elvis into every front room in the country and we learn that TV host Ed Sullivan ended his blockade of Presley when his tuxedoed rendition of `Hound Dog' to a pooch on The Steve Allen Show trashed his special on John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick (1956). Subsequently, he became a regular guest and broke records with almost every telecast, even though ultra-conservatives were doing their darndest to get Elvis and rock'n'roll banned from the airwaves. 

As Myers and Alec Baldwin concur that Presley had the right image to project this new brand of Americanism, Rather claims that he was at his most vulnerable at the very moment of his greatest potency. But he would never be the same after he was drafted into the US Army and retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson remembers thinking how this act influenced his generation. As we see footage of Elvis in boot camp at Ford Hood, Texas (where he learned of the death of his mother) and his arrival in Germany at the height of the Cold War, Van Jones reminds us of the imperial power that America has wielded over the last century. He also states that Elvis could not have become a global superstar without the United States being a superpower, as he never performed outside his homeland and, yet, had kids on every continent screaming and swooning over him. 

Jarecki reaches Bad Nauheim, where the US influence remains strong, as he interviews locals during a Cadillac parade. However, Marcus and Wilkerson reveal that Elvis became hooked on pills during his stay in Germany, even though he was given freedoms his comrades in arms could only dream of. It was also during this period that he met the 14 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, who was captured by the newsreel cameras waving Elvis off from Frankfurt in March 1960. Any fears that his 18 months away would cast him into the unknown were rapidly dispelled when he guested on Frank Sinatra's TV show and was treated like a conquering hero. Schilling noticed a difference in his old friend and Marcus declares that he came back radiating an all-American confidence that effectively saw him transform from James Dean to John Wayne. 

Wilkerson reveals that he was stripped of his illusions about the American Dream while fighting in Vietnam and he joins with Van Jones in suggesting that Presley misjudged the mood of the people during the Civil Rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and that his silence condemns him at a time when Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda were joining Muhammad Ali in refusing to accept that the US establishment was unswervingly right at all times. Chuck D laments that Elvis failed to march alongside Martin Luther King and Jarecki intercuts a speech by Bernie Sanders to imply that Presley would not have agreed with his radical brand of politics. As we see a crowd gathering around a Donald Trump fortune-telling machine, Alec Baldwin confidently predicts that he will not win the 2016 presidential election. However, he does express the concern that the `Make America Great Again' movement has a point, as the country has become benchmark for a standard of living and has stopped being a shining example to the world.

Trevor Potter, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, reckons America is facing a crisis of democracy, as it's easier than ever to buy power and use it to consolidate status. As Immortal Technique performs `The Message and the Money' in the back of the Rolls, Jarecki leaves his audience in no doubt that he views the rise of Trump as a calamity. But he also makes it clear that it is the culmination of a drift into decline that has been happening for decades and that Elvis's life and career was merely a reflection of what was occurring around him. 

Fittingly, at this point, the Rolls breaks down again and David Simon questions why Jarecki has chosen a British car when Presley was famous for his Cadillacs. However, he smiles with resignation when he supplies his own answer about the car symbolising the smugness of the Las Vegas era and we join The Handsome Family for a backseat tune, as the journey takes us along Route 66 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Marcus notes how vast and unspoilt the landscape seems from this highway and Schilling recalls how Elvis used to philosophise during the long treks West and reveal more of himself than he ever did in public (we earlier heard him refuse to discuss his attitude towards the Vietnam War or the decision of other celebrities to speak out). But, as the Rolls takes a spin around a rodeo ring, the consensus of the off-camera voices is that modern America can be summed up by the chasm between the forgotten in the Rust Belt and those clinging on to the past in the Republican heartlands. As the car passes Mount Rushmore, one speaker (possibly Jones) declares the USA to be an empire in decline. 

With a good deal of irony, Jarecki accompanies the entry into Hollywood with a white jump-suited Elvis singing `Walk a Mile in My Shoes'. On a Californian beach, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers sing the Beach Boys song `Don't Worry Baby' and former girlfriend Linda Thompson remembers how much he loved being a movie star. But Hawke is baffled why somebody with so much to say as a musician would want to spout sanitised dialogue in anodyne pictures that were totally detached from everyday reality. We see a clip of an Eddie Murphy stand-up routine mocking Presley's film phase, but Chuck D and Marcus feel sorry for him because he was swimming against a capitalist tide and was powerless to kick against the system to which he had sold his soul. 

While a fan on the Walk of Fame boasts about the stars he has seen in the flesh, M. Ward takes to the backseat to sing a song about disillusion and we see glossy colour clips from several Elvis movies that contrast starkly with the grainy monochrome images of his raw, hungry years. Hawke wonders how he must have felt when The Beatles came and stole his thunder and Myers tells a story about the Colonel covering Presley's buggy with a blanket to get past the girls at the gates of Paramount Pictures and having to continue doing it after the Fabs came and the girls changed their allegiance. We even hear John Lennon bemoan the fact that Elvis started to sound to the kids like Bing Crosby and this saddened him because he had been his inspiration as a lonely boy in Liverpool.

Actor Ashton Kutcher empathises with the situation Presley must have found himself in, as he admits to having reached a level of fame that far outstrips his talent. In a bid to deal with his frustration, Elvis apparently considered entering a religious retreat. But hairdresser Larry Geller recalls the moment Presley had an epiphany in the Arizona desert when he spotted the face of Joseph Stalin in the clouds and declared that he no longer believes in God because he realises that God is Love. He also decided to quit Hollywood and do something meaningful with his life and this bid was kickstarted by the 1968 Comeback Special (which we covered last week).

Marcus mentions the moment that Elvis picked up the microphone stand and shouted `Moby Dick' and he claims this performance can be seized upon by anybody seeking an allegory for the American Way. To his mind, however, this was a show about breaking free from the Colonel to enjoy `life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. Yet, no sooner had he broken one set of shackles, than he voluntarily donned another to become a cabaret caricature in Vegas. Myers remarks that they did so many nuclear tests in the desert beneath the city that it became a mutated vision of capitalism. But Marc Cooper (the author of The Last Honest Place in America) suggests that Vegas is the purest representation of the American psyche, whether we like it or not. 

As we hear `Fever' over shots of the gaudy neon signs, Freddie Glusman, the owner of Piero's and a veteran of the Rat Pack heyday, reckons that Elvis was courted by Vegas bigwigs to add a veneer of respectability to the major corporations taking over the hotels and casinos from the Mob. Cooper concurs and posits that Presley enjoyed his first couple of years on the circuit, even though he really wanted to tour and had set his heart on playing in Europe and Japan. Theories abound that the Colonel didn't want to apply for a passport and needed Elvis to stay in Vegas and help pay off his own gambling debts. But, as Myers states, this is a place where creativity is curdled by celebrity and the result is mush and Elvis's need to get through what became an ordeal saw him become increasingly dependent upon pills and fast food. 

Thompson insists he was only reliant on prescription medication, but she recognises that this made him an addict. Myers draws attention to the fact that President Nixon had made Presley a narcotics agent and we hear him telling a Vegas audience that rumours he's a heroin junkie are nonsense, when he is a karate devotee with a federal badge. The hypocrisy of this stance gives Jones the chance to highlight America's track record of serial failure through acts like the deregulation of Wall Street, the building of prisons to combat the drug problem and the declaration of war on Iraq to avenge 9/11. He laughs in despair at the craziness of the conduct of affairs and Jarecki compares the 2016 election to a nation pulling the handle of a fruit machine and hoping for the best. 

Elvis gets a little lost in this segment, as Jarecki strains to tie his theses together. But he gets back on track by meeting Monique and Sharon Brave, who recall meeting an overweight Presley to present him with a token from the Sioux nation. They got the impression he was ready to go home. This was June 1977, around the time he recorded the CBS Special that would be broadcast posthumously in October that year. Schilling and Thompson remember seeing it and being shocked, with the former claiming he called the Colonel to ask him why he had allowed his friend to be seen in such a state. Yet personal pianist Tony Brown remembers the rendition of `Unchained Melody', when Elvis sat at the keyboard, as being among the most moving performances of his entire career. 

Nearing journey's end, Jarecki meets Graceland housekeeper Nancy Rooks, who shows him how to make a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. She recalls being summoned to his bathroom to find him on the floor pleading with her to get him help. But Hawke finds it hard to pity the obese 42 year-old on his golden toilet, as he chose to follow the big bucks rather than his heart at every crucial point in his life and Chuck D concurs that artists, musicians and film-makers have a duty to stay true to their vision, as the rich and powerful have yet to find a way to silence them. A catalogue of key events in US history since 16 August 1977 counterpoints `Unchained Melody' and it's hard not to feel crushed by the reminder of how calamitously the world has been mismanaged over the last four decades. One dreads to think what that montage will look like when the centenaries of Elvis's birth and death are marked - if we're even around to do so. 

In many ways the flipside of Raoul Peck's James Baldwin profile, I Am Not Your Negro (2016), this is a brave, if sometimes flawed bid to find links between Elvis Presley and Donald Trump. There are times when Jarecki seems to be suggesting that The King was a victim of cynical and corrupt capitalists who exploited him to line their own pockets. It seems likely that he underwent some form of indoctrination in uniform, which suggests that he was either highly impressionable, knee-jerkedly nationalistic or dismayingly stupid. But Hawke's damning summation derails any Gullible's Travels approach, as Presley's roots in poverty persuaded him to follow the dollar at every opportunity and, ultimately, he succumbed to his own hubris and excess. 

Such a conclusion is a painful one to reach for those raised on rock`n'roll, especially when one takes the misgivings of Chuck D and Van Jones into consideration. But rock has provided the soundtrack to some of the most shameful decades in recent American history and one is left to wonder how different things might have been if Elvis had shared John Lennon's imperfect, but sincere sense of social conscience. 

Despite sledgehammering some of his points and taking a few too many rumours and fabrications at face value, Jarecki just about gets away with making this up as he goes along, thanks to the canniness of his conceit, the cogency of his contributors and the precision of an editorial team comprised of Simon Barker, Alex Bingham, Èlia Gasull Balada and Laura Israel. Even in an era of fake news, this may prove too divisive to land any big awards at the end of the year. But, for all its faults (including some peculiar track choices), it will open eyes and leave many to wonder why Western civilisation was ambushed and rebranded on their watch.

4)  THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS.

If a documentary on a sensationalist subject is going to engross and convince, it requires more than just a good story. It needs to be told from an objective viewpoint and reach a credible conclusion, otherwise its content will merely have curiosity value and it will run the risk of becoming nothing more than a `stranger than fiction' anecdote. British debutant Tim Wardle couldn't have a more compelling topic in Three Identical Strangers. But, in seeking to apportion blame for the travesties and tragedies it unearths, this well-intentioned exposé stumbles into conspiracy territory without possessing the necessary evidence to conclusively prove its contentions.

Sitting down in front of the camera, Bobby Shafran admits that his story seems far-fetched. But he can vouch for every word of it being true, as he takes us back to 1980, when the 19 year-old Bobby drove a battered Volvo nicknamed `The Old Bitch' to in the Catskills in order start his first term at Sullivan County Community College. He was surprised that so many people kept greeting him like a long-lost friend and it was only when someone called him `Eddy' that he had pause for thought. 

Michael Domnitz had been Eddy's best pal and he had burst into his dorm room to ask Bobby if he had a twin. When he replied in the negative, Domnitz had inquired about his birthday and they quickly established that Bobby and Eddy Galland were both born on 12 July 1961. Intrigued, the pair had dashed to a call box to phone Eddy. Following a brief conversation, during which the strangers learn they were both adopted from the Louise Wise Services agency, Eddy and Domnitz drove to Long Island and got a speeding ticket in their haste to solve the mystery. When they eventually arrived, Eddy was amazed to be confronted with his double and they realised  immediately that they were identical twins. 

When Howard Schneider at Newsday got a call about the story, he initially thought it was a hoax. But he soon recognised it was a major scoop and it was picked up by other outlets, including the New York Post. This is where Ellen Cervone and Alan Luchs spotted Bobby and Eddy's resemblance to their friend, David Kellman, and his mother confirmed that he had also been born on the same day at Long Island Jewish Hospital. David had called Eddy's home and spoken to his astonished mother and arranged a reunion at the home of his aunt, Hedy Page, who remembers them romping around like puppies within minutes of being reunited. 

Bobby's parents, Mort and Alice Shafran, and Eddy's father, Elliott Galland, also recall their surprise and joy at seeing the boys together. We see old home movies of them walking with their arms around each other and playing frisbee in the street. They also compared notes on their lives so far and David was pleased that he had a better car than Bobby, when his adoptive father was an eminent Scarsdale physician. 

Amidst the euphoria, Eddy wondered whether their meeting was going to be a good or a bad thing. But they had little time to contemplate the complexities of their situation, as they were whisked off to become overnight media celebrities. They appeared on chat shows and magazine covers across the nation and, in the clips with Phil Donahue and Tim Brokaw, their expressions and mannerisms are eerily similar. Everything seemed wondrous and fun, as they also discovered that they had the same tastes in food, cigarettes and (older) women. Moreover, they realised that they each had an adopted sister who was two years their senior.

Yet, while they forged an instant bond, they were still essentially strangers from very different backgrounds. Bobby had been raised by a doctor and a lawyer, while Eddy's father was a teacher from a middle-class suburban home. By contrast, David had been raised by blue-collar immigrant parents, who owned a small shop and spoke English as a second language. But the triplets preferred sharing their together time with Richard Kellman, who was nicknamed `Bubala' and was delighted to be able to declare Bobby and Eddy his new sons. 

However, Aunt Hedy recalls the anger of the adoptive parents at not being told that their child had brothers. She also reflects on how scary it must have been for six-month infants to suddenly find themselves alone after sharing a crib with two others. Indeed, both Bobby and David used to bang their heads against the bars of their cots in what they have since been informed were manifestations of separation anxiety. 

As the novelty of the reunion subsided, questions started to be asked about the role of Louise Wise Services, which had enjoyed an impeccable reputation since its founding in 1916. Speaking in 1982, company president Justine Wise Polier had insisted that it would have been better to have kept the siblings together. However, when the senior LWS team first met with the furious families, they had revealed that the brothers were parted because it would have been impossible to find anyone who would have taken all three. This feeble excuse infuriated Richard Kellman, who would willingly have adopted the triplets. But it was Mort Shafran who had made the most sinister discovery of the evening, as he had returned to retrieve a forgotten umbrella and seen the agency hierarchy opening a bottle of champagne with a gusto that suggested they thought they had dodged a bullet. 

None of this bothered the boys at the time, however, who were too busy living it large in New York and being papped at Studio 54, Limelight and the Copacabana. They even made a cameo appearance ogling Madonna in Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) before getting an apartment together. As Luchs and Cervone recall, they partied hard and Bobby and David admit to having had a ball. During this period, they also found their future wives and Ilene Shafran, Janet Kellman and Brenda Galland all insist that they got the pick of the litter. 

Everyone agrees that Eddy got the biggest kick out of the reunion and it was he who proposed that they should try to track down their birth mother. After going through the records at the New York Public Library, they found her address and arranged a meeting at her local bar. During the course of the evening, she had explained that she had been very young when she got pregnant. But, while they sympathised with her plight at having become pregnant on her prom night, none of the boys felt a particularly strong connection. 

David remembers being disturbed by how much she booze she had guzzled in such a short space of time and concedes that she only played a minor role in their story. This had taken another turn, however, as the brothers had opened the Triplets restaurant in SoHo. Footage shows the trio orchestrating the fun and David reveals that they cleared $1 million in their first year, as busloads of curiosity seekers came to be waited on by the lookalikes. 

As Cervone reveals, however, it was also around this time that things started to go `a little funky'. Journalist Lawrence Wright was researching an article for the New Yorker on separated twins when he came across an article in a journal entitled The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, which claimed that siblings had been selected from Louise Wise Services and placed in different home. Realising that this had been a conscious policy, Wright had contacted the triplets, who were appalled by the news. 

However, they all recalled being subjected to regular aptitude tests throughout their childhoods by a couple who would film their responses with a 16mm camera. As the families had been told that this was part of a survey of adopted children born within a specific time frame, they had thought nothing of it. But the realisation that scientists had been systematically visiting the brothers over many years, while fully aware that they lived within a 100-mile radius of each other, proved deeply disturbing. 

Wright also discovered that the person leading the inquiry was Dr Peter Neubauer, an Austrian refugee from the Holocaust, who was not only one of the most pre-eminent psychiatrists in New York, but who was also in charge of the Sigmund Freud archive. Among the twins Neubauer studied were Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein, who turned out to be film school graduates and went on to co-author the book, Identical Strangers. But Wright couldn't figure out what Neubauer had been striving to achieve, as he had never published his study and had imposed stringent legal restrictions that prevented anyone who had been under his scrutiny from accessing the paperwork. 

Undaunted, Wardle tracks down Natasha Josefowitz, who had been Neubauer's research assistant at the Child Development Centre. She now lives in La Jolla, California and shows the crew around her comfortable home, pausing to show off photographs of her posing with Errol Flynn, Robert Reford, Al Gore and Barack and Michelle Obama. But Josefowitz is more than willing to discuss Neubauer and his study, although she insists that she was on its periphery rather than an active participant. Nevertheless, she heard it being discussed in the office and still believes that its aim to discern whether humans are the product of `nature or nurture' was worthwhile. 

Josefowitz also asserts that the study took place in very different times to our own, when the cause of scientific discovery was paramount and few had serious scruples about deliberately separating unwanted twins at birth and charting their development in isolation. However, as she had relocated to Switzerland in 1965, she had lost touch with Neubauer and has no idea what happened to his findings. Nevertheless, knowing his intellect, she has little doubt that they would have been momentous. 

Aunt Hedy explains that Holocaust survivors know all about the damage that cruel experimentation can cause and she remembers thinking that the triplets were throwing themselves into their relationship without having had the benefit of coming to understand each other as individuals while growing up in a shared space. Thus, when Richard Kellman died and the siblings started arguing about workloads and responsibilities at Triplets, Bobby decided to back out and Eddy and David felt betrayed. Speaking to camera, both David and Bobby agree that this breach damaged the bond beyond repair and they concede that things between them were never quite the same again. 

As he had been the keenest to make the reunion work, Eddy was hit the hardest when the road got rocky. Brenda recalls how his behaviour had become increasingly erratic, while his moods had started to swing. Eventually, Eddy was diagnosed with manic depression and committed to a psychiatric facility and David particularly emphathised with him because he had been hospitalised during his teens. Indeed, all three siblings had experienced problems in adolescence, with Bobby being caught up in a murder case when he had covered for some friends. 

Yet the adoptive parents had seemingly never been informed about any incidence of mental illness in the birth family. By contrast, Elyse Schein had received a letter from Louise Wise Services explaining that her birth mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had spent many years in therapy and/or institutions. When David is asked if their own mother had had mental health problems, he speculates that she might have had some minor difficulties. But he doesn't know for sure and looks uneasily into the camera. 

Bobby similarly shifts in his seat when asked about Eddy and he suggests that Wardle lets David fill in the details. He recalls Eddy failing to turn up for front of house duties at the restaurant and, as they lived opposite each other, he had called Janet to see if his brother's car was in the drive. She had gone to check on Eddy and had called David back in great distress and had pleaded with him to come home. By the time he arrived, however, the police had sealed off the house and David was informed that he wouldn't want to see what had happened inside. 

With the pain still evident, Bobby explains that Eddy had shot himself and he appears to go into a daze, as he stares into the lens reliving his emotions when David had called him. He had sensed something was wrong before his brother had spoken to him and David similarly drifts off into his own thoughts before the camera prior to wandering off the set in a state of numbness. 

Having discovered that the majority of the separated twins and triplets in Neubauer's study were born to mothers with a history of mental illness, Wright concluded that he had been seeking to determine whether such conditions were heritable. After Eddy's death in 1995, David vowed to find out what was in the study, in case it had any ramifications for himself and his family down the line. However, when Neubauer died in 2008, he donated his archive to Yale and placed it under embargo until 2066. When David calls the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services to see if it would be willing to let him see the material, he is repeatedly fobbed off and Wright reveals that this body has some very powerful backers who would not want to incur any resulting adverse publicity if the documents proved combustible. 

Wright had interviewed Neubauer on tape and his evasive responses to questions about a possible publication date suggest that he had no intention of going public with his findings. But Wardle tracks down his former assistant, Lawrence Perlman, to Ann Arbor, Michigan and he is willing to discuss his part in the study. For 10 months, the 24 year-old Perlman had been one of the field assessors who had visited the homes of Neubauer's twins and triplets and he jokes that he was always aware that he couldn't let slip casual remarks about having recently seen their siblings, as he would have given the entire game away. He also reads from some notes he had taken during his visits to Bobby, Eddy and David and insists that he was solely studying the parental style of the different families and reveals that the older sisters had already been placed with them in order to provide some points of comparison. 

David and Bobby come together on camera to view Perlman's interview on a laptop and they agree to feeling like lab rats. Alice Shafran explains that the families were very different, with Richard Kellman doting on David's every deed, while her husband, Mort, had been a busy man and didn't always have sufficient free time to spend with him. However, she insists that Mort was equally devoted in suggesting that Eddy had the toughest relationship with his father because Elliott Galland was a traditional disciplinarian, whose word was law. 

Aunt Hedy posits that Eddy had a tough time and recalls that he didn't talk about Elliott, who rarely attended family gatherings. Brenda concurs that they were very different, as Eddy was arty and his father had a very soldierly approach to life. Elliott admits that he could be strict and Brenda says Eddy often confided in her that he was an outsider who felt he was in the wrong place. Elliott admits that he didn't preside over a sharing family when it came to problems. But he maintains that they had looked out for one another at all times and neither Bobby nor David blames him for what happened to their brother. Eddy simply didn't fit in and this happens in biological families, too. Nevertheless, Elliott clearly regrets not helping his son prepare for life's vicissitudes and reveals that he and his wife had sobbed when they had been told that Eddy had committed suicide. 

Concluding captions reveal that the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services had responded to new of the making of the film by giving David and Bobby access to 10,000 pages from the Neubauer files. The majority, however, had been heavily redacted and, even if Neubauer had reached any definitive conclusions, they had been withheld. As the film ends, Perlman and Josefowitz confess that four individuals from the study remain unaware that they have a twin. David finds this mind-boggling, although Wright implies that no one should be surprised if they turned a corner and bumped into a twin whose existence had been suppressed in the name of scientific research. 

This final declaration rather sums up the problem Wardle that has in tying up the loose ends relating to the triplets in particular and the Neubauer study in general. He seemingly shares Bobby and David's conviction that Elliott did his best in rearing Eddy and that it's impossible to say whether he would still be alive if he had been placed with an easier going father. 

But, even though we might consider Neubauer's programme to be reprehensible (especially as he had fled a regime that had sanctioned similar, if more hideous, experiments by the likes of Josef Mengele), by judging it according to modern ethical standards, Wardle finds himself on shakier ground. There's no question that Josefowitz and Perlman are seeking to cover their own backs in rationalising Neubauer's hypothesis and methodology. But the lack of indictable evidence from the Neubauer archive leaves the waters looking as much muddy as murky and the film rather self-righteously pushes its luck in intimating that the 2066 seal has any sinister connotations.

By and large, however, Wardle does a decent job in drawing the audience into what remains a remarkable story. He also deserves credit for adding an investigative element to the talking-head reminiscences. At times, he makes irksome (over)use of dramatic reconstructions, with the decision to dub a voice for Eddy as Bobby recalls their first phone call being the tackiest of his missteps. Paul Saunderson's score also has a tendency to overplay its hand, despite it allowing Wardle to make some tricky tonal shifts, as the story turns from tabloid gold to the stuff of dystopic science fiction. But, that said, Michael Harte's cutting of the footage of Brenda and Eddy's wedding to Billy Joel's `Scenes From an Italian Restaurant' reveals the deftest of touches.

3)  EX-LIBRIS: THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

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. 

2)  MAKE US DREAM.

Following on from Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire and Stewart Suggs's Kenny (both 2017), Sam Blair's Make Us Dream completes a trilogy of fine documentaries about Liverpool Football Club legends, as it presents an unexpectedly frank insight into the life and mind of Steven Gerrard. Indeed, such are the revelations about the psychological pressure and physical strain that fans foisted upon their No.8 and captain that many will find it difficult to watch this considered survey without feeling the odd pang of guilt at having placed such a burden on the shoulders of a hometown boy who had the courage, commitment and sense of communal duty to give everything and more for the cause he shared with his fellow Koppites. 

In a measured voiceover, Steven Gerrard explains that football isn't just about playing a game. While living the dream of every Red Scouser, he has enjoyed ecstatic highs and endured cruel lows. But dealing with those twin impostors is as much a part of being an elite footballer as having the skill to get supporters out of their seats and Gerrard has had to learn this lesson on his journey from Huyton to Los Angeles via Anfield. 

Convinced he was born to represent his people, Gerrard knew about the bond between Liverpool and its fan base from being a die-hard supporter growing up on the Bluebell Estate, with his parents, Paul Gerrard and Julie Byrne. Paul recalls him making his mark with Whiston Juniors by scoring 12 in a 27-0 win and catching the eye of Liverpool scouts around the age of eight. As we see home movie footage of mazy dribbles and audacious finishes, Gerrard admits that he didn't have a clue how good he could be. He simply loved playing and picking up trophies with his mates. 

Gerrard was only nine when 96 fans lost their lives at Hillsborough and he was hit particularly hard, as cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley was among them. But the tragedy also impacted upon the club, as manager Kenny Dalglish resigned in February 1991 in order to escape the pressure cooker and deal with his frayed emotions. Working in the changed environment of the Premier League, his successors found it impossible to bridge the gap between a Manchester United revitalised by Alex Ferguson and a Chelsea being bankrolled to unprecedented levels by Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich. Thus, by the time Gerrard made his debut against Blackburn Rovers in November 1998, almost a decade had passed since Liverpool had last been champions. 

Youth coach Hugh McAuley remembers being impressed by Gerrard's competitive instincts and the midfielder concedes that he used to enjoy nailing the biggest opponent early in a match to let him know he was around. But there was also a vision and finesse to Gerrard's game that enabled him to forge an understanding with forward Michael Owen and make the transition to the first team, alongside fellow Scouser, Jamie Carragher, where he quickly had to learn the consequences of his actions after he was sent off in the Merseyside derby in September 1999 for a late tackle on Kevin Campbell. 

Three months later, he scored his first goal in a red shirt with a fine solo run at the Anfield Road End against Sheffield Wednesday. Also around this period, he signed with agent Struan Marshall, who would become an important figure behind the scenes as his fame and value grew. In May, 2001, Gerrard and Owen proved pivotal as Liverpool avenged losing the 1988-89 title to Arsenal by winning the FA Cup in Cardiff. A few days later, the club beat Alavés to lift the UEFA Cup, with Gerrard scoring the second goal. In voiceover, he reflects on having the power to make so many people happy and admits that he sometimes needed to see a game on television to believe it was all really happening to him. 

Gerrard topped off the season by winning the PFA Young Player award and managed Gérard Houllier looked on with doting pride, as fans hoped they had unearthed the star who could guide them to the title. Sociologist John Williams notes, however, that Gerrard's rise coincided with the arrival of Abramovich and new manager José Mourinho, who had no qualms about working for a boss who could solve problems by throwing money at them. Indeed, the Portuguese made no secret of his admiration for Gerrard and only the arrival of Rafael Benitez at Anfield persuaded him to turn down a £20 million offer in the summer of 2004-05. 

Unfortunately, a Gerrard own goal helped Chelsea win the 2005 League Cup Final. But, having rescued their tilt with an inspired result at Anfield against Olympiacos, Liverpool wrought their revenge in the Champions League semi-final and went on to take the trophy on penalties in Istanbul after a fabled second-half comeback having trailed AC Milan 0-3 at the break. Yet, while this would prove to be the high-water mark of Gerrard's Anfield career, his chilly relationship with the manager and a breakdown in contract talks convinced him that he should accept Chelsea's improved offer. 

At this point, even though some Liverpudlians had started burning his shirt as rumours circulated that he had agreed to leave, Paul Gerrard asked his son if he could live with walking out on people who idolised him as one of their own. Consequently, Gerrard agreed a new deal that effectively condemned him to missing out on the domestic honours he so craved with a Liverpool side that couldn't compete on a technical or a financial level with Chelsea, United or Arsenal. Looking back, he reveals that the strain of essentially carrying a mediocre team was taking its toll, especially when he had to put up with the taunts of serial winners when he joined up with the England squad. 

This aspect of Gerrard's career is glossed over and, surprisingly, only a passing mention is made of the 2005-06 FA Cup semi against Chelsea and the Wembley final, when he scored a 35-yard equaliser against West Ham. Moreover, nothing is said about losing the 2006-07 Champions League final against Milan or the 2008-09 near miss, when Liverpool finished runners-up in spite of only losing two games all campaign and winning 1-4 at Old Trafford. 

Yet, just as Michael Owen had left for Real Madrid in 2004, so star striker Fernando Torres decamped to Chelsea and Gerrard began to realise that he would never win the Premiership, especially when new owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks were making such a calamitous mess of running the club. Once again, he had to deal with the disappointment of fans who lashed out in their frustration, unaware that he had often been playing through injury and that only his wife, Alex Curran, knew how much physical and psychological pain he had endured to do his job - and allow the supporters to keep dreaming. 

A prolonged layoff was necessitated by a serious groin injury that threatened to end his playing career and he sought the help of a therapist to help him face the prospect that the end might be nigh. But Gerrard wasn't finished yet and the signing of Luis Suárez sparked a remarkable 2013-14 campaign (under an unmentioned Brendan Rodgers) that seemed to turn in Liverpool's favour after a famous victory at Anfield against the new financial superpower of English football, Manchester City. However, during the crucial home game against Chelsea, Gerrard (who had been given an epidural in his back to allow him to play) slipped shortly before half-time and was unable to prevent Demba Ba putting the visitors 0-1 in front. A late second burst the bubble and a 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace sent the title to the Etihad and left Gerrard blaming himself for robbing the fans of the cherished championship.

After 710 appearances. Gerrard bowed out in a 1-3 home defeat against the same opposition on 16 May 2015. He had already announced that he would be joining LA Galaxy and his final season became something of a farewell tour. After just one season in the MLS, however, Gerrard retired from playing and took up coaching the Liverpool Under-18 team. Given that he left for Glasgow Rangers on 4 May, a closing caption might have noted that Gerrard had finally put himself before the club in seeking to manage in a major league against the man who had left him out at the Bernabeu in his final Champions League campaign. But this is a minor quibble with a documentary that gets inside the head of a sporting titan and allows him to reveal his very human vulnerability.

Considering what a private man he is (as anyone who watched the 2012 Being Liverpool series will know), Gerrard deserves enormous credit for his honesty. He may not appear on camera and is reticent to speak about anyone other than himself. Thus, while we learn little about his opinion of the occupants of the Anfield Boot or Board rooms during his time at the club, he fronts up with regard to personal issues and it's hard to hear him bearing his soul without drawing the conclusion that the greatest misfortunate of his career is the fact he never got to play for Jürgen Klopp, who would have given him the consoling arm around the shoulder that neither Benitez nor Rodgers could ever provide. 

Edited with pace and precision by Sam Blair and Ben Stark, this is very much a partial and an unfinished story. The predictably selective approach means that incidents like the 2008 clash in a Southport bar is omitted, while it might have been instructive to compare Gerrard's views of playing for his club and his country. There is also no journalistic or punditistic input and nothing is heard from the club hierarchy. But Blair is primarily concerned with allowing a quiet man to have his say. 

It would surprise no one if Gerrard eventually occupied the Anfield hot seat. But Liverpool are forever punching above their weight in the era of silly money and much will depend on the depth of the pockets of whoever succeeds John W. Henry and Fenway. Whatever happens and whoever holds the reins, however, Koppites will keep dreaming and remain forever grateful to their inspirational skipper for putting his body on the line in their name.

1)  FACES PLACES.

A good deal of fuss was rightly made over the past year about the peerless French film-maker Agnès Varda. Several of her best features were dusted down for reissue, while her three-channel video installation, 3 moving images. 3 rhythms. 3 sounds, went on view at the Liverpool Biennial. Containing images from Documenteur (1981), Vagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000), the gallery screens ran at differing speeds to reflect on temporality and the rhythm of human life. And the same themes preoccupy Varda and guerilla photographer JR in her first collaborative feature, Faces Places, which has been neatly translated from the niftier French title, Visages Villages.

With her distinctive double-colour hair, Agnès Varda is instantly recognisable. By contrast, the enigmatic JR refuses to divulge his name or emerge from behind his hipster shades and pork pie hat. He is 55 years younger than the 88 year-old cat lover and they explain in an opening montage how they didn't come to meet on a country road, at a Parisian bus stop or in a bakery or a disco. Instead, JR came to Varda's home in Rue Daguerre after being enthralled by the strength of her image-making in films like Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962) and Murs Murs (1980), which celebrated public mural art in Los Angeles. Having been equally impressed with the collage of faces he affixed to the floor of the Pantheon and his portraits of Cuban women, Varda was happy to welcome her guest and pay a reciprocal visit to his studio to meet his co-workers Émile Abinal, Guillaume Cagniard and Étienne Rougery-Herbaut.

Describing himself as a `photograffeur', JR uses a specially converted van with a lens painted on the side to blow up snapshots in order to plaster them on walls and structures in order to comment on the sitter and their milieu. Varda is taken by the fact he reminds her of her old friend Jean-Luc Godard, who also likes to hide behind dark glasses and she vows to coax JR into posing without them, just as she had persuaded Godard (then the enfant terrible of the nouvelle vague) in the early 1960s. 

Agreeing to hit the road and see what happens, Varda and JR drive into the French countryside and make their first stop at the village of L'Escale. Inviting locals to sit in the booth in the back of the van with a baguette in front of their mouths, JR paste the pictures on to a long wall to create the impression that everyone is tucking into the same enormous sandwich. The onlookers are suitably amused by the conceit and Varda is delighted that JR is introducing her to new people to photograph so that their faces don't fall down the holes in her memory. 

Prompted by a collection of postcards that Varda had of some miners, the pair head north and reach the pit village of Bruay-la-Buissière in the Pas-de-Calais. JR photographs Varda against two vast slagheaps before they discover Jeannine Carpentier, who is the last resident of a row of cottages that have long been due for demolition. Having spent her entire life in the family home, however, Jeannine has no intention of leaving and she remembers how excited her siblings used to get when their father came home with the leftovers from his buttered baguette, which they used to call `alouette bread' because it had become gritty from being underground. 

As the team paste snaps of bygone miners on the terrace facade, strangers sidle up to Varda to confide their memories of working down the pit or of scrubbing their father's back when he got home from a bruising day in the bowels of the earth. Jeannine is deeply moved to see her own face looking back from the brickwork of her home and Varda muses on her valiant determination to stay put, as she sits on a bench near an imposing rustic church with her feet dangling because they don't reach the floor. 

Concurring that leaving things to chance is the best way to proceed, Varda and JR hit the road again. He recalls meeting farmer Clemens Van d'Ungern while hitchhiking and returns to Chérence in the Val-d'Oise to post a full-length portrait on the wooden doors of his barn. Clemens loves his machinery and his gadgets and admits that he is more of a passenger on his tractor than an old-fashioned farmhand. But he is also available for hire and works for several of his neighbours, even though most communal forms of farming have disappeared. Fortunately, he enjoys being alone, although he is glad to have a family to go home to and he jokes that JR's image of him shrugging with open palms will make him a celebrity in the district. 

Venturing south, the intrepid twosome fetch up in Bonnieux in the Vaucluse to meet Marie Dolivet and Jean-Paul Beaujon, the grandchildren of Émile and Émilie, who were so in love that he kidnapped her to overcome the disapproval of her family. The photograph of the couple is yellowed and torn, but JR finds a cameo frame for it and the siblings pose for selfies beneath the image pasted to the wall of Marie's home. The local gendarme joshes JR about needing a permit to put is scaffolding on the street and accompanies them to the café to meet Nathalie Schleehauf, a waitress who has agreed to pose with a parasol and a straw hat for a picture to be attached to the gable end of a row opposite her workplace. 

Vincent Gils brings his mother's wedding parasol and Nathalie feels self-conscious as she perches on a low wall with her bare feet dangling for JR to photograph. While the pictures are developing, he follows Vincent to the church for a lesson in bell ringing. Within hours of Nathalie's picture going up, it has become an Internet sensation and her children come to take selfies in front of it and to stand and tickle her giant paper feet. But, while Varda is delighted with the effects, she is disappointed by Nathalie's embarrassment at having become an accidental icon. 

Passing through fields of sunflowers, JR and Varda drive on to the Usine Arkéma at Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. The town cinema owner, Jimmy, had told them all about Varda and they were keen to collaborate. As the factory makes hydrochloric acid, there is lots of salt in the storage bay and Varda and JR strike a pose as if they are explorers in an Arctic wilderness. They meet Claude Fiaert, Patrick Bernard and Amaury Bossy, the youngest worker on site, who is part of the health and safety team and is pleased to have a meaningful job. He's good at table tennis and Varda watches on as he plays JR on a tiny table with upturned cans for a net. 

They have decided to use the long, low walls of a passageway for their pasting and the workforce is charmed by the idea that they will all appear in the same place at once, as shift patterns mean that they are rarely all on site at any one time. JR makes them extend their arms above their heads and lean to one side so that it looks as though one group is reaching out to the next. The staff members are pleased to see managers mingling with underlings and Varda is touched that Didier Campy Comte is going to remain on the wall even though this is his last day before retiring. But, before they leave, Varda and JR can't resist decorating the water tower standing over the site with dozens of photographic fish. 

We flash back to see Varda and JR snapping the fish in the market and a graphic eyeball match cut takes us to an ophthalmologist's surgery, where Varda is having injections for the condition that blurs her sight. She jokes about the needle being nothing compared to the razor blade that slashes the pupil in Luis Buñuel's Un Chien andalou (1928) and JR tries to cheer her up by positioning a human eye chart on the steps of the clinic. He is impressed that she can remain so cheerful in the face of physical discomfort and decline and she mischievously avers that it's important to retain one's sense of perspective.  

A drone shot swoops over the abandoned settlement of Pirou-Plage in Normandy, which has been reclaimed as a `ghost village' by local artists. Folks of all ages come from the neighbouring villages to picnic and participate in a DIY art event and Varda devotes herself to people watching, while JR and his crew snap, snip and stick. In a Tatiesque tribute to Jour de Fête (1949), a uniformed postman cycles in with a letter `N' to give to a woman in the window of a ramshackle house. Yet there's a slight sense of artifice that this unfinished estate has been commandeered for a demonstration in how strangers from diverse backgrounds can rub along if they have a common goal.

Varda has known village postman Jacky Patin for a long time and she shows him the painting he once did for her. She repays the favour by having a full-figure portrait appended to a wall in the village and he is amused that the shutters of the house open across his face because he thinks he has an ugly mug. He once cycled everywhere with a radio on the handlebars and the farmers used to give him melons and tomatoes. But he now uses a yellow van, although this enables him to run errands for his elderly customers. 

Descending on the picturesque town of Reillanne in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the pair create an open-air portrait gallery and 75 year-old bric-a-brac artist Pony-Soleil-Air-Sauvage-Nature comes to watch. With his parchment skin, hair in gnarled dreadlocks and snaggle teeth forming a cheeky smile, he takes Varda to his dwelling in the woods, which is full of pieces he has fashioned from items others have discarded. He claims to have inherited his warmth from his father and his coolness from his mother and, while he has to make do on a basic pension because he cheerfully admits that he hasn't worked a day in his life, he is essentially content. 

As they are watched by one of Varda's cats in her back garden, she opines that every new person she meets feels like the last one. JR tells her to stop playing the doomed granny and she ticks him off for being a cocky free spirit. But they are soon on the road again and calling in on goat breeder Patricia Mercier at Goult in the Vaucluse. Having visited a factory farmer who burns off the horns of his herd when they are kids to stop them fighting (and make them more docile when it comes to milking), Varda and JR are pleased to see that Patricia's animals are as nature intended. She maintains around 60 goats with one assistant and they do all their milking by hand. Similarly, she only uses natural ingredients in her cheese and Varda likes her all the more because she also keeps around a dozen cats. 

Local man Abdeslam Ould-Ja is amused by the giant close-up of a glaring goat on the wall of an outbuilding and vows to join the fight to outlaw de-horning. He suggests that farmers put rubber balls on the tips of the horns to stop them fighting and wonders whether using different colours could help them identify their animals. But, when Varda goes to take JR's picture in front of the paste-up, she gets cross with him for refusing to remove his sunglasses and they stomp off across a field in opposite directions. 

Varda recalls the black-and-white photograph she had taken in 1954 of a white goat that had fallen off a cliff and landed on the stony beach below. She had posed a naked man and a child in the background and revisits Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, which JR also knows well from a motorcycling holiday. He had remembered a Second World War blockhouse that had tumbled off the cliff and landed on its side and he brings the team to work out how long the tides will give him  to cover it with an image of Guy Bourdin, a fashion photographer friend of Varda's who had posed naked for her in the ruins of an abandoned house. She suggests attaching this picture to an unfinished cinderblock house, as they are always looking for beautiful settings rather than evocative or authentic ones. 

JR teases her that it's a terrible idea, but feels so guilty at mocking her that he agrees to post Bourdin on the Nazi fortification. Varda takes him to her friend's old house and to the beach hut where she had positioned him for another picture. As the wind whips around them, JR strikes the same pose and Varda is clearly touched. While the crew begin the tricky task of pasting Bourdin's portrait with the tide getting nearer, Varda chats to the major of nearby Sainte-Marguerite, who reveals that the pillbox was deliberately pushed over the cliff in 1995. However, the fact that it landed on its side was a fortuitous accident and JR makes a wonderful job of arching Bourdin's image so that it looks as though he is slumbering in a giant military hammock. When they come to inspect their handiwork the next morning, however, they are saddened to see that it had been washed away by the tide. 

Hunkering down on the beach, JR declares that the elements make short work of the majority of his outdoor postings and Varda frets that Nature will sweep her away before she's had a chance to finish the film and take a photo of her co-director without his specs. While they're in Montjustin, they visit the graves of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his second wife, Martine Franck. Varda is struck by what a tiny cemetery it is and she discloses that she's not afraid of death because she doesn't expect there to be anything on the other side. 

Footling on, they take a break in a café and JR reveals that he has always had a soft spot for old ladies. He takes Varda to meet his 100 year-old grandmother, who has no problem with him always wearing his glasses and hat. However, she isn't in a particularly talkative mood and, so, the pair decamp to the docks at Port du Havre in the Seine-Maritime. Varda has never been to Le Havre before and sings a song she had learnt as a child. JR introduces her to Christophe, David and Denis, who had worked with him on a project to put a pair of eyes on the side of a ship and who support his contention that the docks are like a village. 

Varda goes to meet their wives, Nathalie Maurouard, Morgane Riou and Sophie Riou, who drives trucks on the waterfront. The three blondes are dressed in black and sit in a nearby field in much the same way that Godard posed his trio of students in his pre-Dziga Vertov Group outing, Un Film comme les autres (1968). The women are proud of the solidarity between the dockworkers and they readily agree to pose for pictures that will be plastered across a stack of shipping containers on the wharf. 

As JR and Varda take a crane to inspect the work, they recall the last time they were in a lift together. They had gone to the Louvre to parody the sequence in Godard's Bande à part (1964), in which Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur had charged through the galleries. Varda had plonked herself down in a wheelchair and allowed JR to push her through the Renaissance section, as she whispered the names of the artists they were skating past before they came to a halt in front of a couple of Giuseppe Archimboldo's. It's a gleeful digression, as is the dockside timelapse montage that concludes with Nathalie, Morgane and Sophie sitting (with varying degrees of confidence) in the open maw of the containers immediately beneath the faces of the container totems towering above the port. 

Varda hadn't been able to see clearly when the women had started flapping their arms like wings. So, JR takes extreme close-ups of her eyes and the soles of her feet so he can affix them to the side of tankers that will be pulled by trains across France. In this way, Varda can visit places she has never been and a railway worker in the marshalling yard thinks if's a sweet idea, even though he isn't entirely convinced that it's art. In order to show her gratitude, Varda bundles JR on to a train for Switzerland. En route, she plays him a clip from Les Fiancés du pont Mac Donald, which she made with Godard and Karina in 1961 and used as the film-within-the-film in Cleo From 5 to 7. He is excited to be going to meet one of his heroes. But Varda warns him that Godard can be unpredictable and that she's not seen him for a few years, even though he was once very close to her and film-maker husband, Jacques Demy. 

On arriving in Rolle, they stop at a café for some herbal tea before their 9.30am rendezvous. But there's no sign of Godard, who has written a cryptic message on the window that reminds Varda of the note he had sent her when Demy died. Unsure whether he is being cruel or touchingly apologetic, Varda is clearly shaken by his choice of words and she just about holds back the tears before calling Godard a `dirty rat' for letting her down. She scrawls a note of her own on the glass cursing him for his inhospitableness. Yet, she also appends a little heart and leaves a packet of his favourite brioches on the door handle.

They sit by Lake Geneva and JR wonders whether Godard was pranking her by challenging the narrative structure of her film. Varda is unsure, but certainly didn't appreciate the reference to her lost spouse and she smiles when JR tries to cheer her up by removing his shades. Amusingly, Varda blurs the shot to approximate her vision and they turn to gaze at the water, with Varda perhaps reflecting that the subtitle of his 1961 vignette was Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires, which translates as `Beware of the Dark Glasses'. 

If the pain wasn't so palpable, one might almost suspect that Varda had set up the climactic Godard no show, as this quirky Situationist road movie is strewn with references to the man, his films and his unpredictable ways. There seems little doubt that Varda is partly drawn to JR because he reminds her of her fickle, but phenomenally talented friend. But the personal politics surrounding this unhappy ending shouldn't be allowed to cloud the fact that this is a celebration of the best aspects of human nature. That said, it shouldn't be forgotten that Varda and JR barely scratch the surface of the social issues their raise on their tour and nor should it be overlooked that the vast majority of the faces that beam for the camera before being plastered on buildings in what are relatively cosy burghs are white. 

This evidently says more about the kind of people who would come forward to participate in such a joyous experiment than any selection policies. Varda has never been anything less than conclusive in her work and JR's choice of subject matter suggests likewise. But the social make-up of the sitters feels scarcely representative of Emmanuel Macron's France (or Marine Le Pen's for that matter) and suggests that this affectionate and occasionally whimsical odyssey doesn't have quite the same critical edge as Raymond Depardon's not entirely dissimilar documentary, Journal de France (2012), 

It might strike some that the notion of forgotten people seems a tad démodé in the age of instant imagery. But just as items are slipping through the holes in Varda's memory, so countless inhabitants of La France périphérique are at risk of falling between the cracks in an increasingly divided country. As she demonstrated with The Gleaners and I, Varda is such a compassionate and inquisitive humanist that she would strive to ensure that no one gets left behind. But it's harder to fathom JR's political stance from this elusive appearance, as the nature of the project dictates that the onetime graffiti artist spends more time problem solving with his team than he does communing with the common folk. Yet, while Varda provides the film's driving heartbeat in returning to features for the first time since The Beaches of Agnès (2008), JR proves a consistently empathetic companion and a more than willing apprentice. Few would complain if they felt the need to reunite.