Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/2/2019)

In prison for a stabbing, 12 year-old Zain Al Hajj (Zain Al Rafeea) comes to court in Beirut with his lawyer, Nadine (Nadine Labaki), to sue his parents, Selim (Fadi Yousef) and Souad (Kawsae Al Haddad), for having given birth to him. The judge (Elias Khoury) questions the boy about why he has brought the case, but he is anything but intimidated by the proceedings or by the fact that his charge has caused a media storm. 

We flashback to show Zain living with several siblings in a cramped flat in a rundown part of the city. His mother sends him to buy Tramadol, which she crushes up to wash into the clothing she takes to her oldest son, Ibrahim, who can sell the drug to his fellow inmates in the overcrowded prison. Zain works as a delivery boy for the family's landlord, Assaad (Nour El Husseini), who has designs on his 11 year-old sister, Sahar (Haita `Cedra' Izam), but he has nothing but contempt for him and throws away the treats Assaad asks him to pass on. Indeed, when he discovers that Sahar has started having periods, he urges her not to tell Souad, as she will sell her into marriage.

After a long day selling fruit juice on the pollution-choked streets, the kids come home to meagre rations and a lecture from their father on the pointlessness of education. In fact, Selim and Souad have failed to register any of their children, which disqualifies them from applying for the ID card they need to obtain an education and healthcare. But they recognise the importance of keeping in Assaad's good books. Thus, they agree to let him take Sahar and Zain is distraught when Selim takes her away before he can execute his plan for them to run away together. Battling his parents, on the staircase in a bid to prevent Sahar from leaving, Zain flees into the streets in furious distress at having failed his sister. 

Back in court, Selim protests to the judge that he didn't think he was doing anything bad in finding his daughter someone who would care for her. He blames his own upbringing for shaping his decisions and wishes he had never got married because all the wisdom about children being a boon is misplaced, as fatherhood has brought him nothing but misery. His lawyer tries to silence him, but he shares his son's readiness to speak his mind. 

Flashing back, Zain takes a bus to the coast and gets chatting to an old timer in a superhero outfit who claims to be Spider-Man's cousin, Cockroach-Man (Joseph Jimbazian). When he disembarks at a fairground, Zain rushes after him but loses sight of him. He mooches round a while and mischievously pulls open the blouse being worn by the female figurehead on one of the rides. Ethiopian migrant Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) spots him while she is cleaning and she finds him some food before he heads off to ask the stallholders for a job. 

Unable to find any takers, he follows Rahil to her corrugated shanty shack and she agrees to let him stay if he babysits her toddler son, Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole). Glad to have somewhere to shelter after spending his first night in the open, Zain keeps the infant occupied and, because he is used to caring for his siblings, he even manages to change a nappy without too much fuss. Rahil is amused to find them asleep together in the paddling pool play pen in the middle of the hut and listens as Zain describes his sister's happy wedding day, as he tucks into the birthday cake she has stolen for Yonas from the funfair cafeteria. 

In court, Rahil tells the judge that Zain was like a brother to Yonas and explains that she was surprised when he lashed out as he did. She reveals that she had worked as a domestic for six years before getting pregnant and she had been living on a permit forged by Aspro (Alaa Chouchnieh), who operated in the Souk Al Ahad. Once again, we flashback, as Rahil pleads with Aspro for more time to find the money for a new ID, as the one he found for her is about to expire. He wants to take Yonas off her hands and put him up for a lucrative adoption and taunts her that her son is a non-person who will have a miserable life because she was too selfish to put his needs first. 

She asks Yonas's father to steal the ID card belonging to her former employer so that Daad (Samira Chalhoub) can impersonate her at the employment registry and make a claim to transfer Rahil's sponsorship to Cockroach-Man (whose real name is Harout), who is posing as the owner of an electrical goods shop. However, when the clerk asks for his phone number, Harout just lists figures in numerical sequence from three to seven and they are sent packing. In dire need of cash, Rahil sells her braided hair and calls her mother to say she won't be able to send her any funds. But she is arrested by a patrol and Zain is left to fend for Yonas on his own. 

He goes to the souk to ask Aspro if he has seen Rahil and he suggests it would be better to leave Yonas with him. But he refuses and spends the day wandering around the market after befriending Maysoun (Farah Hasno), a Syrian girl who sells trinkets to passing motorists. While the boys sleep rough for the night, Rahil squeezes the milk out of her breasts so that the authorities can't see that she is nursing and take her baby away. On his way back to the shack, Zain steals a bottle from another baby, but Yonas doesn't like the taste and will only eat powdered milk sprinkled on ice cubes. Zain also takes a skateboard off a couple of other shanty kids and uses it to haul Rahil's pans to the souk to make some money. 

He bumps into Maysoun, who tells him that Aspro is arranging for her to go to Sweden. She also tells him about the food bank and he practices a Syrian accent and tells the aid worker that Yonas is only black because their mother drank a lot of coffee when she was pregnant. They get hold of some supplies and Zain finds a prescription in one of his tops. He fills some water bottles and goes around the neighbourhood selling Tramadol shots. He also persuades a garage owner to turn his hosepipe on them after Aspro accuses them of smelling like dogs. But he keeps Yonas out of the shyster's clutches, even though he promises him a reward if he agrees to sell. 

Returning to the shack to find that the landlord has thrown out Rahil's belongings and changed the lock (with cash hidden in the metal bed frame), Zain is aghast and realises that he has no other option than to sell Yonas to Aspro, as he can't bring himself to simply abandoning him on the street in the hope that a Good Samaritan picks him up. He kisses the child fondly and keeps looking back at him, as he wanders away from Aspros's stall and makes for the family home to find his identity papers. Astonished to see him after such a long time, Selim tells him that he has no documents because they are all considered worthless parasites. He shows him a letter from the hospital and lets slip that Sahar has died. Grabbing a knife, Zain runs through the streets with his parents in hot pursuit to stab Assaad. 

In court, the now-paralysed victim comes to give testimony. He insists that his mother-in-law was married at 11 and that everything would have been okay if Sahar hadn't become pregnant. When Assaad explains that his wife had died because the hospital refused to admit her without paperwork, Souad launches into a passionate diatribe against Nadine for daring to presume to know how it feels to walk in her shoes. She swears she would do anything to protect her children and blames the system for failing to help her be a good mother.

Bundled into Roumieh prison for his crime, Zain runs into Rahil when she hears his name being announced over the tannoy. He tells the authorities about Aspro taking Yonas and they start searching for him. Meanwhile, Souad comes to visit to inform her son that she's pregnant. Such is his dismay that his parents will subject another child to the misery that had befallen him, he calls a TV debate show he had seen in one of the cells and announces that he wishes to sue his parents. A montage shows the process kicking in, as he is assigned Nadine as his lawyer. Yonas is rescued from a warehouse full of people waiting to be trafficked and reunited with his tearful mother. But the films ends on a freeze frame of Zain's smiling face, as he poses for a photo for his ID card. 

Many will recognise this closing shot as a reference to François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), which also charted the turbulent childhood of a boy left to fend for himself. But this deeply harrowing film comes closer in tone to Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), as well as such later works of gut-wrenching neo-realism as Hector Babenco's Pixote (1984) and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! (1988). Labaki is not alone in attempting to alert the world to the shameful conditions in which so many children live and it says something for the Academy that it has nominated her film and the similarly themed Shoplifters in the same year. Yet, even if this magnificent film is seen on every continent, the sad truth is that little or nothing will change.

Some have accused Labaki of peddling poverty porn. But there is nothing sensationalist about her depiction of Zain's ordeal. Indeed, it has a Dickensian integrity that makes this a notable and noble work of art, as well as a clarion cry from the depths. Moreover, life kept imitating the story during the six-month shoot, as Zain Al Rafeea had been a delivery boy before casting director Jennifer Haddad found him, while Syrian refugee Cedra Izam had been hawking chewing gum when she was found. Worse still, Eritrean migrant Yordanos Shiferaw was arrested during filming because she was undocumented. Given the circumstances of the largely non-professional cast, there's little wonder that they give such authentic performances. But what makes them all the more remarkable is that Labaki trusted them to improvise a lot of their dialogue, with the result that it has a tang of anger and immediacy that no amount of polished scriptwriting could achieve, even though Labaki was assisted on the scenario by Jihad Hojeily, Michelle Keserwany, Georges Khabbaz and producer husband Khaled Mouzanar, who also contributed the evocative, if occasionally manipulative score. 

On the technical side, Hussein Baydoun's production design is soberingly realistic and confines Christopher Aoun's otherwise restless camera whenever the action is set in the family flat or Rahil's shack. Chadi Roukoz's sound design reinforces the sense of people living on top of each other, with every baby cry piercing through the hubbub of traffic noise, while Konstantin Bock and Laure Gardette's editing suggests the speed at which people have to live in order to stand still. 

But, for all the brilliance of the film-making, it's the intensity and honesty of the performances that makes this as unforgettable as such forerunners as Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (1950) and Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut (1999). With his sad watchfulness and sparky spirit, Al Rafeea is a genuine find and his rapport with Boluwatife Treasure Bankole (giving one of cinema's all-time best performances by an infant) is a delight to behold, even when he ties the child by the heel in an effort to abandon it by the side of the road. One can only hope that, even if they never get to act for the camera again, that the young cast find fulfilment, as they will touch the lives of everyone who sees this exceptional picture.

Having earned BAFTA nominations for the shorts Je t'aime John Wayne (2000) and Heavy Metal Drummer (2006), Toby MacDonald makes the step up to features with Old Boys, which relocates the Cyrano de Bergerac story to a neverland boarding school setting that appears to be hovering in an indeterminate time zone encompassing the last 30 years. Conjured by Freddy Syborn and Luke Ponte, the satirical tone owes debts to such classroom classics as Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968), Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl (1980) and Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998). But, while it may not be particularly original and its insights into class, gender and toxically privileged masculinity lack incisiveness, this is puppyishly ingratiating and splendidly played by a fine ensemble. 

With its motto, `Virilitor Age' (`Act Manfully'), Caldermount College is the last bastion of the kind of macho boorishness that Dr Thomas Arnold hoped he had eradicated in the mid-19th century. Consequently, sensitive scholarship boy Martin Amberson (Alex Lawther) doesn't fit in at all, in spite of his efforts to impress his classmates by trying out for the team to play the Old Boys at `Streamers'. A variation on the Eton Wall Game played in a fast-flowing stream with a square ball, a set of rugby posts and a target tree stump, this bruisingly boisterous pursuit is the pride and joy of the games master, Huggins (Joshua McGuire), who is so aghast when Amberson prevents star player Henry Winchester (Jonah Hauer-King) from scoring a point (by blocking a shot at the stump while retrieving his asthma inhaler) that he puts him on half rations and condemns him to a pyjama-clad cross-country jaunt to fetch a pail of water from a pump on the school perimeter, known as a `bucket run'.

Taking a tumble on his way back, Amberson makes the acquaintance of Agnes (Pauline Etienne), the daughter of the new French master, Babinot (Denis Ménochet), a pulp novelist whose wife has just left him and who needs a revenue stream while he works on his next tome. But, while he is instantly smitten, Agnes only has eyes for Winchester, whom she sees hesitatingly reciting poetry in her father's class, at the prompting of Amberson, who hopes to attain a little reflected popularity by being at Winchester's beck and call. Thus, when Agnes asks him to deliver a parcel to Winchester and it contains a video message (that mashes up Bob Dylan's placard shtick to `Subterranean Homesick Blues' and Plastic Bertrand's `Ça Plane Pour Moi'), Amberson offers to help him reply in return for a dialling down of his bullying. 

Rescued from doing mid-stream sit-ups, Amberson guides Winchester though a video response edited to Dr Feelgood's `Riot in Cell Block No.9' and discovers that his tormentor has no experience of talking to girls whatsoever. Not that he's an expert himself and he falls from the window ledge of the cottage in the grounds when Babinot bursts into Agnes's bedroom while Amberson is delivering the tape. But he gets to peer in through the window and watch her enjoying his handiwork and remains content to be the go-between if it means spending time with the bashful lovebirds. Moreover, having impersonated Winchester over the phone to thanks Agnes for a cake she has baked, Amberson gets to direct the doltish jock in a video filmed in the cricket pavilion (with the school brass band playing Richard Strauss's `Also Sprach Zarathustra') to show how he intends fulfilling her hope he will take her to the moon. 

However, Winchester is nettled when Amberson criticises his performance (which is more slapstick than romantic) and suggests he is little more than `a labrador in trousers'. So, he dons his cricket whites, straps on his guitar and serenades Agnes from beneath her bedroom window with a ditty about the `umpire of love'. He is nonplussed when she admits to knowing nothing about cricket and allows Amberson to pose him in a projected moonscape that prompts Agnes to invite Winchester to shin up the drainpipe and kiss her. Unfortunately, Huggins is out walking his dog and he accuses Winchester of being a peeping tom. But he refuses to squeal on Winchester when Babinot drags him before the Head Man (Nicholas Rowe) and not even the threat of expulsion can sway him. 

Winchester and his clique are suitably impressed by Amberson's loyalty and they include him in the Streamers team for Founder's Day. However, Winchester is reluctant to throw away his future on a flirtation and asks Amberson to let Agnes down gently. But, instead of ending things, Amberson takes them to a new level by writing billet doux and encouraging Agnes to follow her dream of becoming a stage designer in Berlin. As the Head Man has ordered Babinot to move to a nearby housing estate to remove temptation from the boys, they leave notes in a fence at the school rifle range and, when Agnes catches Amberson making a drop, she coaxes him into accompanying her to the local pub, where they chat about first kisses and indulge in a spot of people watching before holding hands while riding on the pillion seat with a couple of elderly bikers. 

She still thinks that Winchester is the author of the notes, however, and sneaks into the school during a screening of The Dam Busters (1955) to ask him to meet her at the Norfolk Arms before she runs away to Germany. Amberson overhears the conversation and, after Winchester informs him during a floodlit roll call in the quad that he has no intention of keeping the assignation, he flits away to declare his feelings. Unfortunately, Huggins (who lives opposite the Babinots) sees her leave and alerts to the school to the rendezvous and Winchester cycles into town to create a diversion so that Amberson can say his piece. However, he succeeds only in crashing the Head Man's car and Amberson realises that Agnes has interpreted his folly as a romantic gesture and skulks back to his dorm before anyone notices he's gone. 

While Agnes departs for Berlin, Amberson comes to offer his condolences to Winchester, who has been expelled. He has no idea how he will fare in the big bad world and looks very vulnerable as he questions his `Mighty Winch' credentials. But he urges Amberson to tell Agnes the truth and he makes a mad taxi dash to the ferry port to get his first slapped face and his first kiss before returning to Caldermount to toss away the chance to become a Streamers hero in order to be true to himself. As the film ends, he tells his father that he is going to go his own way from now on and a closing montage shows the flipbook drawings Amberson has been creating throughout the story become increasingly sophisticated pieces of animation, as he starts to achieve his goals. 

This charming ending sums up the appeal of this enjoyable wallow in schoolboy nostalgia. MacDonald and his writers are well aware of the problems with public school life, but they resist the temptation to hammer them home and, as a result, their criticism is all the more deftly effective, especially where Winchester's fate is concerned, as a potential casualty in the military skirmishes that will occur over the ensuing decades. They do plump for happier endings for Amberson and Agnes, however, even though they fail to establish the extent of the struggle the latter endures with her caricatured Gallic father and provide too little domestic context for the former's rebellion against his own parent to feel anything more than a tokenistic afterthought. 

Nevertheless, Alex Lawther and Jonah Hauer-King are admirable, with Lawther giving a much more relaxed performance than he was required to give in Trudie Styler's exhausting school saga, Freak Show (2017). The Eton and Cambridge-educated Hauer-King also steps up from his last showing in Steve McLean's Postcards From London (2018), as he captures the complacency that can fool a big man on campus into believing life will always be a cakewalk. Pauline Etienne finds it harder to register as the sketchily limned dream girl, while Denis Ménochet and Nicholas Rowe have to make do with a couple of choice speeches. 

But the biggest disappointment is the waste of Joshua McGuire's socially gauche games master, who hilariously rides up in full uniform in a miniature tank to reprimand Amberson for getting caught up in a woodland corps exercise. An old boy whose Caldermount experience has prepared him for nothing more than bachelorhood and maintaining the college's preposterous rituals and regulations, Huggins feels like a Tom Sharpe character who has strayed into Marek Kanievska's Another Country (1984). Just as that film made evocative use of Brasenose College and the Bodleian Library for its setting, so cinematographer Nanu Segal and production designer Max Bellhouse exploit to full advantage the distinctive features of Lancing College and the glorious Sussex countryside that surrounds it. Indeed, Toby MacDonald can be justifiably proud of a lightweight, but genial debut that provokes plenty of gentle smiles while skewering the odd cloistered myth.

Mention movies about Royal Air Force bombers and most people will think of Michael Anderson's The Dam Busters (1955) or Walter Graumann's 633 Squadron (1964). There are several more, however, including Harry Watt's documentary classic, Target For Tonight (1941). But even the most devoted watcher of Talking Pictures TV will be hard pressed to have seen such wartime outings as Walter Forde's Flying Fortress (1942) and Anthony Asquith's The Way to the Stars (1945), as well as `now it can be told' sagas like Philip Leacock's Appointment in London (1952), Boris Sagal's Mosquito Squadron (1969), Don Shaw's Bomber Harris (1989) and Michael Caton-Jones's Memphis Belle (1990). 

When it comes to the RAF, the filmic focus has largely fallen on fighter pilots, as such recent releases as David Blair's Hurricane, Denis Delic's 303 Squadron and documentarists Anthony Palmer and David Fairhead's Spitfire tends to confirm. But, arriving in their slipstream, comes Callum Burn's Lancaster Skies, which not only seeks to pay tribute to the crews under Bomber Command, but also to the kind of feature that was produced in the immediate postwar period. Given that they only £80,000 at their disposal, the 26 year-old debutant and his team have done a sterling job with scale models and a smattering of computer-generated imagery. Thus, it's easy to forgive the odd wobble. 

It's 1944 and rear gunner Alfie Hammond (Tom Gordon) is fatally wounded while on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. His crewmates watch him leave the airfield in an ambulance with the same sense of grim acceptance that Spitfire pilot Douglas Miller (Jeffrey Mundell) needs to show during a brief visit home before joining up with his new squadron. Plane mad younger brother, Ron (Eric Flynn), has just been killed and mother Ann (Tina Hodgson) is upset that Douglas has signed up for another unit after having done his bit in fighters. Father Frank (Tony Gordon) is more understanding and offers his son an illicit cigarette in the garden shed, as they reminisce about Ron's reckless love of speed. Douglas flicks through some of the airplane drawings his brother had made before Ann walks him to the station.

Flight Lieutenant Miller arrives at the base to a frosty reception from his new crew. But George Williams (David Dobson) - who had picked a fight the night before in the local pub with a soldier who thought flyboys have it easy and sneered at the contention that they made it home safely on the flip of a coin - takes him to the sergeant's mess for lunch and introduces him properly to Robert Murphy (Henry Collie), Thomas Mayfield (Vin Hawke), Henry Smith (Josh Collins), James Parker (Steven Hooper) and Charlie Moore (Kris Saddler), who remains sniffy, along with Peter Hollingsworth (Roger Wentworth). Indeed, Moore takes such exception to Miller hauling him up for not saluting in a corridor that he rattles on about it for the rest of the day and is still mithering when they go for a bonding session a the Red Lion. 

Disappointed not to be flying because his Lancaster isn't ready. Miller is reticent in the pub and doesn't stop when WAAFs Jo (Rosa Coduri) and Kate (Joanne Gale) join the party. However, Moore also feels awkward when Hammond's widow, June (Leila Sykes), comes into the Red Lion because he feels responsible for his pal's death. He is still down in the dumps the next day during a boxing bout with another airman and he needs to be knocked down before he can bounce back up. Williams also tries to bring Miller out of his shell by showing him the car he has hidden behind the hangars. But he opts not to join the gang at the pub that night and Kate is put out because she has taken a shine to him, even though he is clearly an odd fish.

While Williams gets blotto with Jo, Kate ponders how to get Miller to notice her. But he has been thinking about her while reading on his cot and arrives at the pub in time for Moore to throw up on his shoes. When he doesn't reprimand him and pays for a taxi to get him back to the camp, Kate is suitably impressed and invites him to go and see Laurel and Hardy in Edward Sedgwick's Air Raid Wardens (1943). They go for a walk and Miller tells her how his brother had been evacuated to the country and had been trying to get a better look at a low-flying bomber when he had wandered into the road and had been killed by a drunken motorist. Her own brother had been killed at Dunkirk and, when Miller gets back to the quarters he shares with Williams, he hears how Hammond had been hit on the way back from a raid on Bremen and could have had his bleeding staunched if he had spoken up instead of suffering in silence. However, the mood lightens when Miller discovers that Smith and Mayfield have been making money on the side by selling the same pair of boots to various villagers and sharing a cut with the local bobby who confiscates them as government property.

The following night, the crew is dispatched on a raid on an industrial complex outside Berlin. Everyone is quiet at supper, with only Miller having an appetite. As he prepares his gear, Williams tosses away his hip flask because he has noticed among Miller's belongings on the desk the comic that Ron had clutched in his hand when he had struck him with his car and he realises that the boy he had killed is his new friend's brother. His grim mood is shared by Moore, who freezes when night fighters attack the bomber and Miller has to struggle to keep the plane on course. Moreover, Parker is badly wounded and Williams reports back to his skipper that it doesn't look good. But they drop their load with a direct hit and, even though Miller has to shut off one of the four engines after it is damaged, the crew refuse to bail because they have faith he can get them all down in one piece. 

Ending on a handshake between Williams and Miller and an exchange of words based on the title of Ron's comic, `A Wing and a Prayer', the action fades to black and a caption that 55,000 of the 125,000 airmen who flew with Bomber Command during the Second World War lost their lives. It's a suitably sobering end to a noble enterprise that adeptly leaves the audience wondering whether the plane will land safely and whether Williams will face the consequences of his unintentional folly. 

Known for much of its four-year production as Our Shining Sword, this is quite an achievement from a twentysomething film school graduate and his dad. In addition to sharing the scripting duties with his producer-designer father Andrew and cinematographer Sam Parsons, Callum Burn also edited the footage and designed the sound. Laudably, he has resisted the temptation to show off his directorial gifts by putting the story first and the result is a well-told tale that recalls the tone and rhythm of the postwar films he so clearly admires. Indeed, it's tempting to see Jeffrey Mundell and Joanne Gale as a latterday Michael Dennison and Dulcie Gray.

While they make a charming couple, it's the banter between the stiff upper-lipped Mundell and the shellshocked David Dobson that proves key, as each man unknowingly struggles to come to terms with the fallout of the same incident. Dobson has a Nigel Patrick air about him and his performance rather highlights the more modest talents of some of his castmates. However, Burn just about avoids caricature, even though the narrative relies heavily on familiar tropes. But any acting blips are more than atoned for by Burn Senior's splendid models, which are based on the Lancaster bomber Just Jane at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre. 

Dozens of features are made annually by aspiring film-makers on shoestring budgets across the UK and so few of them make it beyond local screenings and the odd festival berth. The British film industry should do a great deal more to get these pictures seen by bundling them into touring programmes to play at venues like the Ultimate Picture Palace. It would also make sense for independent producers on the lower rungs to club together and fund an online viewing platform so that audiences can connect with emerging talents for a nominal fee without a percentage having to be snaffled by an established streaming site. With hundreds of bloggers just waiting to provide reviews and social media buzz, it seems astonishing that an entrepreneurial bright spark hasn't had the idea before. Just saying.

Dochouse returns with Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar's The Silence of Others, a compelling chronicle of a six-year bid to bring to justice some of the surviving henchmen who enacted the repressive policies of Generalisimo Francisco Franco during the 40-year dictatorship that ended with his death and the return of democracy in 1975. Executive produced by Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar, this is a well-intentioned and useful introduction to Spain's attempts to deal with the legacy of the Civil War and cap enduring support for Falangism.

In a rather slapdash opening, Carracedo and Bahar simplistically explain that the Civil War began with a coup that ultimately left Franco in power. We see newsreel footage of Franco with Adolf Hitler and Republican prisoners being shot by the Falangists. But details are few and far between, as the narrator reveals that Parliament moved quickly after Franco's death to pass an Amnesty Law that not only pardoned all political prisoners, but also protected those who had imposed totalitarianism and tortured and murdered its opponents. This attempt to encourage a fresh start by making amnesia part of the reconciliation process was nicknamed El Pacto del Olvido (`The Pact of Forgetting') and the narrator describes how decades of ignoring the past in schools has resulted in the millennial generation having little or no idea about the extent of the suffering inflicted and endured by their great-grandparents. 

Those who lived through these tumultuous times have not forgotten, however, and María Martín shuffles with the aid of a walking frame from her rustic village to the spot where her murdered mother was deposited in a mass grave when María was six years old. There are no monuments to mark the site. Indeed, a road has been laid over it. But Maria continues to tie flowers to the metal crash barriers, even though she knows they will be removed within a couple of days by those who wish to keep the past buried. 

In Madrid, José María Galante (aka `Chato') points out the building that's home to Antonio González Pacheco, a notorious Franco lieutenant who was dubbed `Billy the Kid' because of his lawless cruelty. Thanks to the Amnesty Law, he has never been made accountable for his actions and Galante has joined forces with wheelchair-bound human rights lawyer Carlos Slepoy to bring a prosecution while those who can still testify against Pacheco are able to do so. He recalls how Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was tried under the statute of Universal Jurisdiction after Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón brought charges against him in 1998. However, when Garzón attempted to investigate Francoist era crimes in 2010, he was suspended and charged with prevarication. Consequently, Slepoy decided to pursue his case against Pacheco through the courts in Argentina.

A close-up montage follows, as those backing the prosecution (including María Martín and José María Galante) outline the crimes committed against themselves or their relatives. In Buenos Aires, María Servini is appointed `Investigating Judge' for the case and she explains how, despite the Amnesty Law, there is no statue of limitation for crimes against humanity. However, she needs witnesses and human rights lawyer Ana Messuti travels to Extremadura near the Portuguese border to meet María Martín, who tells how mother Faustina López González was accused of being a Communist and had her head shaved before she was paraded through the village behind a marching band and shot, along with two other women and 27 men. She insists she is less interested in revenge than in being able to reclaim her mother's remains and bury them alongside her husband. But, in a town that still has streets named after Franco and his cohorts (and with María's own children being divided over the wisdom of prosecution), Messuti knows that they face a difficult task and that the Spanish authorities will try to play a delaying game in the hope that some of the key witnessed pass away.

While past and present prime ministers Jose María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy join King Felipe VI in calling for Spaniards to focus on the future and not open healed wounds, we accompany Galente to his cell in the abandoned political prison at Segovia in Castile. Following the murder of student leader Enrique Ruano in 1968, Galente had devoted himself to resisting El Caudillo and Felisa `Kutxi' Echegoyen recalls being taken to the General Security Headquarters (DGS) in Madrid and being beaten by Pacheco and his sidekicks. The building on Puerta del Sol is the scene of regular memorial demonstrations by those who were `disappeared' into its cells and, yet, a quick vox pop on the streets of the capital reveals that few under the age of 30 know anything about the Amnesty Law or the Pact of Forgetting. 

When the case was first brought in 2010, there were only two plaintiffs. But this number has risen to 89 by 2013 and Judge Servini orders the Argentine Consulate in Madrid to provide live video conferencing facilities so that she can speak to witnesses. However, on the day the first testimony is to be heard, the ambassador decided to block the connection because he feared such an act would provoke Spain into breaking off diplomatic relations. 

A cut from the ceremony to mark the first anniversary of Franco's death in 1976 to a `Make Spain Great Again' rally in 2016 shows that the Falangist ideology has not gone away and Jaime Alonso of the Franco Foundation insists that Franco was never wrong and should be revered for saving Christian Western civilisation from Communist tyranny. However, shots of the Generalisimo with presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, as well as French leader Charles De Gaulle and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim shows the extent to which he was backed in his actions during the Cold War. Following the accession of King Juan Carlos, the majority of those who had held office under Franco kept their jobs and only two votes were cast against the Amnesty Law.

But María refuses to forget and keeps writing letter signed with a reference to the fact her father was told that pigs would fly before his wife would be exhumed. Her granddaughter, María Ángeles Martín, returns to the village of Pedro Bernardo and describes how her mother used to be terrified of the Civil Guard. As we see footage of a religious procession through the streets in 1960, María reveals that people used to give her the cut throat gesture because they wished they had killed her along with her mother. Yet, her son, Luis, argues with María Ángeles about the rationale behind changing street names, as he believes the past should not erased and that the bad should be commemorated along with the good to ensure mistakes are not repeated. 

In Madrid, Galente bitterly resents the fact he wakes up each morning on Calle del General Yagüe, which was named in honour of one of Franco's comrades in the coup and who became known as `The Butcher of Badajoz' after he executed 4000 prisoner's in the city's bullring. A sequence reveals several other street plaques, as well as Franco's Arco de la Victoría, and this whistlestop tour puts momentum back into the campaign, as Galente, Slepoy and Messuti travel the country to gauge support for their cause in outlying towns. 

Among the people they meet is María Mercedes Bueno from La Línea near Gibraltar, who was told that her baby had died on Christmas Eve in 1981, when she was an unmarried 18 year-old. However, she has now learned that lots of infants were stolen from mothers who had been informed of fatalities and she discovers that the practice had been started in the 1940s by Dr Vallejo Nágera, who has studied eugenics in Nazi Germany and had been convinced that the children of Communists carried a `red gene' that could be tamed by giving them to families loyal to the regime. Bueno believes that the post-Franco machine continued the practice on moral grounds to punish the poor for having too many children and single women for their promiscuity and she thinks the Nágera factor should be added to the war crimes case. 

By September 2013, the number of plaintiffs has risen to 235 and Servini decides to order the arrest of four suspected torturers and invites those fit to travel to fly to Buenos Aires to give their testimony. Among them is Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra, who is seeking justice for the father who died in November 1939 and was buried in a mass grave. The party visits the Secret Detention Centre in Buenos Aires, as the narrator notes that Latin American countries like Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Guatemala adopted their own versions of the Pact of Forgetting after dictatorships were overthrown. However, as in Rwanda and Cambodia, these were challenged during Truth and Reconciliation processes and the Spanish activists hope that something similar can happen in their homeland. 

Back in Madrid, extradition claims are made against Pacheco and Civil Guard captain Jesús Muñecas Aguilar and the camera floats around the four statues in Francisco Cedenilla's `El Mirador de la Memoria' overlooking the village of El Torno as we hear the voices of the witnesses giving their long-withheld testimony. Some time after her return, Ascensión hears that Judge Servini has ordered Spain to exhume her father so that he can be given a dignified burial. The mass graves in the cemetery in Guadalajara were fenced off for 30 years and mourners used to throw flowers over the barbed wire. Nearby is a memorial to Franco loyalists and Carracedo and Bahar compare this with El Caudillo's own tomb at Valle de los Caidos (`Valley of the Fallen').

Meanwhile, cases are being compiled against the medics who stole babies and the ministers who condoned slave labour. Among those in their sights is Martín Villa, a cabinet member in the last years of the Francoist era and a deputy prime minister under Juan Carlos. Judge Servini travels to Spain to hear testimony in these cases and UN Special Rapporteur Pablo de Greiff backs their efforts and even recommends the suspension of the Amnesty Law because people don't forget. 

On the day of Pacheco's extradition hearing, Galante and others testify about their torture in a meeting near the courthouse. But, while they demand justice, the court denies the petition because they don't view the charges being brought against Billy the Kid as being crimes against humanity and, therefore, the statute of limitations has expired. However, shortly after María Martín is buried, Salvini orders the detention of 20 people, including Martín Villa. 

By January 2016, the order has been given to open the mass graves in Guadalajara and Ascensión is joined by children Chon and Paco to witness the exhumation. The chief investigator has never seen such a deep grave and is convinced it was excavated with mass murder in mind. Determined to continue her mother's fight, María Ángeles becomes actively involved in the campaign to open the grave outside Pedro Bernardo, while Salvini urges them to keep battling, as Amnesty Laws in Latin America were eventually overturned. As if to prove her right, Madrid Council voted to change the name of several streets with Francoist connotations and Galante is delighted that his address will finally be cleansed. Shortly afterwards, Ascensión got to see her father in his last resting place. 

Closing captions reveal that Spanish courts continue to block the extradition of the Servini 20. But local courts have started to hear cases, including those in Madrid and Barcelona. Moreover, a movement has been launched to annul the effects of the Amnesty Law. The camera records people visiting Cedenilla's four sculptures in the Valle del Jerte and poignantly captures a small girl touching the hand of one of the figures. As the film ends, the sun sets on the memorial and the silhouettes stand defiantly against an inky blue sky.

By its very nature, any film following a legal case over several years is going to feel stop-startish. But the Emmy-winning duo of Carracedo and Bahar tell their stories with a care and cogency that only makes one wish more fervently that they had devoted more time to putting the Amnesty Law in its full historical context, particularly as the education system has ensured that the bulk of the Spanish audience would also need some extensive background information. More space might also have been devoted to the recollections of the victims and their families, as there is a considerable disparity between what we know about the fate of María's mother and Ascensión's father. Similarly, the plight of the stolen baby mothers is somewhat marginalised, while references are made to slave labour without any details being provided.

It might also have been useful to hear more from some die-hard Francoist supporters to discover the extent to which the Civil War has not been forgotten on the Falangist side, either. Similarly, the opinion of those who know next to nothing about their country's past might also have been canvassed, along with those from the 1936-75 period who are content with the status quo. This may seem a lot for a single documentary to cram in, but this is a topic of compelling significance, as the 80th anniversary of the ending of the conflict looms. 

Nevertheless, Carracedo and Bahar pay handsome tribute to the courage of María, Ascensión, Galante and the late Carlos Slepoy, as well as to the integrity and doggedness of Judge Salvini. Their use of the Valle del Jerte is moving in the extreme and Carracedo rightly allows her camera to linger over the bullet holes fired by a Francoist adherent that Cedenilla claimed made his work complete. The contributions of editors Kim Roberts and Ricardo Acosta and composers Leonardo Heiblum and Jacobo Lueberman should also be commended and it's to be hoped that this important statement is widely seen across Spain.

Documentarist Olivia Lichtenstein was watching Mike Myers and Beth Aala's Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (2013) when she was struck by the story of one of the fabled agent's most fondly remembered clients. After three years of research and recording, she has now put him back into the spotlight in Teddy Pendergrass: If You Don't Know Me, which will screen briefly in cinemas before showing on the BBC later this year. 

Born in South Philadelphia to a mother who had endured seven miscarriages, Theodore DeReese Pendergrass was raised to be independent and childhood friends Mikido Soto, Jr. and LT Brinkley recall how fearless he was in walking to school through turfs patrolled by the vicious rivals gangs. But he was also a religious child and his 100 year-old mother Ida recalls her pride when he stood on a bench to sing `If I Could Write a Letter to Heaven' at a very early age. In interview clips and extracts from one of the 60 cassettes on which he recorded his memoirs, Pendergrass reveals that he learned how to move an audience by singing in church and it was his talent that spared him the fate of so many neighbourhood kids, as he went to the famous Uptown Theatre rather than Vietnam. 

Cousin George Mouzon confirms that Pendergrass was inspired to go into show business when he saw Jackie Wilson perform and fellow Blue Note Lloyd Parks describes how they started out harmonising on street corners. According to Questlove of The Roots, this typified the community influence on black music in the United States and Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the hit-makers from Philadelphia International Records, remember how lucky they were to find so many gifted artists at the same time. They credit Harold Melvin with finding Pendergrass and making him the voice of his combo, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on their debut single, `I Miss You', in 1972.

Joe Tarsia, the recording engineer at Sigma Sound Studies, and broadcaster Dyana Williams remember how Melvin put himself forward as the leader of the quintet and Parks and bandmate Jerry Cummings admit they were hacked off to find themselves shunted into being backing vocalists for a named artist who wasn't actually the front man. But hits like `Don't Leave Me This Way', `The Love I Lost' and `Wake Up Everybody' taught Pendergrass that Melvin was not only hogging the limelight, but he was also squirrelling away most of the cast. So, having seen bundles of notes under his mattress in a luxury Hollywood suite when the rest of the group were in a second-rate hotel, he walked away and pianist Alfie Pollitt of the Teddy Bear Orchestra jokes that everyone called it `Break Up Everybody' because it ended an era. 

Melvin tried to persuade Gamble and Huff to drop him, but they produced his first solo single, `I Don't Love You Anymore', in 1977 and Pendergrass laughed off the death threats that Soto claims he received. He also moved in with his girlfriend-cum-manager, Taaz Lang, who helped him form the Teddy Bear Orchestra, with Sam Reed as the musical director and James Carter on drums, Robert `Wa-Wa' LeGrand on guitar, Cecil Du Valle on keyboards and Joe Kohanski on trombone. Backing vocalists Melva Story, Harriet Tharne Colder and Sherry Yvonne Wilson became Teddy's Angels, although they claimed not to have heard of him. Karen Still from the Philadanco dance troupe was also in the dark, but agreed to sign up when she heard they were going to play Carnegie Hall. 

However, while ex-girlfriend Edy Roberts states that Lang was central to Pendergrass's life, news of her murder on 14 April 1977 seemed to come as a relief to the singer, who admitted that he deeply resented a contract that gave her a large part of his income. DJ Sonny `The Mighty Burner' Hopson claims that Pendergrass had connections with the Black Mafia and Soto also feels his response to the loss of someone supposedly so close to him was disconcerting. Record promoter Linda Wills says there were lots of gangsters hanging around the Philly music scene because it was raking in the loot and crime reporter Tyree Johnson states categorically that Lang was bumped off by the Black Mafia. We hear Pendergrass deny having anything to do with the death on his tapes, but the suspicion is left to linger, even though bandmates who played at her funeral insist his emotions were genuine while singing `This One Is For You'. 

It was at this juncture that Shep Gordon offered to represent Pendergrass and not only took him of the Chitlin' Circuit (that guaranteed venues to African-American acts), but also forced him to ditch his dancers (and that's how he came to marry Karen). Following a gig at the Roxy in Los Angeles in August 1978, Gordon and co-manager Daniel Markus decided he should play `women only' shows to exploit his looks and charisma. Gamble and Huff also began writing songs like `Turn Off the Lights' that played up the sex symbol status. But, while cousin `Petey' Dent and label owner Allan Strahl smirk about the underwear that was tossed on to the stage and lovers like Yvette Ganier purr at the memory of their dalliances, Karen recalls refusing to go on the road and she didn't want to see her husband revelling in the trappings of his fame. 

She remembers him being a complex and often conflicted personality and Ida confides how he had reacted badly to meeting his father, Jesse, when he was 11, only for him to be murdered a short while later. On tape, he declares that he wanted to avoid being an absentee father and boasts of having three children in the same year by different mothers. Half-siblings Teddy, Jr. and LaDonna agree he wanted the best for them, but was so used to looking out for himself that he sometimes found sharing difficult. Trumpeter Sly Bryant and other members of the Teddy Bear Orchestra concur that Pendergrass could be egotistical and difficult. But, with five consecutive platinum albums to his credit, nobody was going to argue and friend Jesse Boseman says he was the king of the neighbourhood. 

However, Pendergrass's high profile couldn't protect him from police harassment. Ida remembers him running from a ruckus on 8th Street when he was a kid and the cops arrested him because he fitted the profile given by a robbery victim. He was taken to the Youth Study Centre and this left a deep impression on him, as he witnessed white prejudice at close quarters. Edy Roberts remembers his blue Rolls Royce being followed wherever it went and press clippings detail the arrests and confrontations that he had to put up with at the peak of his career. 

Ultimately, he left the hood and moved into a 34-room mansion, with additional revenues coming from the sale of his own range of blue jeans. Sedonia Walker of Teddy Bear Enterprises says he was a dream to promote and Gordon admits he hoped Pendergrass would become the Black Elvis. TBO percussionist Greg Moore says he would have been bigger than Michael Jackson and Prince if he had kept going and Du Valle is sure he would have had a crossover hit with Lionel Ritchie's `Lady' if things had turned out differently. But, as the only footage of Pendergrass performing the song (in London in early 1982) fades and the date 17 March 1982 appears on screen, out minds are cast back to the opening sequence of the Rolls flipping in the crash that would leave him paralysed from the waist down. 

Having dropped off Yvette Ganier, Pendergrass was taking nightclub entertainer Tenika Watson back to his place when the brakes on his new green Rolls failed on Lincoln Drive and Sonny Hopson called for help after his son had witnessed the accident. Firefighter Larry Shellenberger notes it was a dangerous spot, but Hopson and Watson remember Pendergrass being twitchy with the cops around him, as he was suing the police department for $500,000, and he begged them not to leave him alone with them. He was admitted to hospital by Dr Robert Sataloff, who explains how Pendergrass had broken his neck in the impact and Gordon and Markus reflect on the agony of having to break the news that he would never walk again.

Fading away from a poignant rendition of `All By Myself', the story resumes in the cold light of day, as the press ran scoops about Pendergrass being drunk at the wheel. Then it emerged that Watson was transgender and advertising sponsors and his record labels melted away and Gordon and Walker reveal that he quickly found himself alone and short of funds. On 26 March 1982 (his 32nd birthday), Sataloff told him how lucky he was to only be quadriplegic. But depression made rehabilitation tougher and Karen recalls him discussing suicide. However, having suffered similar injuries, psychotherapist Dan Gottlieb got in touch to offer his support and he staged a mock funeral so that he could hear how much people would miss him if he was no longer there. Moreover, Sataloff began studying his vocal style so that he could determine the extent to which he would be able to start singing again. 

By this time, CBS had decided to drop Pendergrass and Gamble and Huff were powerless to fight his cause. But Elektra signed him up and he recorded an album in 1984, with Gordon eager that songs like `In My Time' would sound like personal messages of thanks to the fans who had remained loyal. The album went gold and he appeared at Live Aid to sing `Reach Out and Touch' with Ashford and Simpson and received a tumultuous reception. Moreover, as the closing captions reveal, he recorded six more albums (four of which went gold) and Valerie Simpson avers that the light needs to keep burning brightly over his legacy. The Teddy Bear Orchestra reunites for the first time in 36 years to accompany singer Aliyah Khaylyn due duet with Pendergrass's Soul Train vocal track on `Wake Up Everybody', as we learn he campaigned for spinal injury charities up to his death on 13 January 2010. 

While more attention might have been paid to Pendergrass's music and what set him apart in the crowded R&B field, this reverential, but responsible profile cannot be faulted for presenting a warts`n'all account of the man and his myth. Making the most of the wealth of archive material, as well as Pendergrass's taped recollections and some frank talking-head contributions, Lichtenstein and editor Riaz Meer are able to delve into the darker recesses while also celebrating a glittering and, ultimately courageous career. 

Harold Melvin (who died in 1997) is initially made the villain of the piece, although the CBS suits who cancelled Pendergrass's contract might also have been named and shamed. But Lichtenstein also leads us to suppose that Pendergrass had secrets to hide. That said, she also leaves us with a few unanswered questions about the on-screen absence of his eldest daughter, Tisha, although she is probably wise to have avoided mention of the sordid legal battle for ownership of the estate between the children and Pendergrass's widow, Joan, who doesn't merit a single mention in the film and neither do the reasons for his apparently amicable divorce from Karen in 2002. Even in a sometimes frank tribute, it would seem that some things are better left unsaid.