Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 11/4/2019)

A considerable commercial success at a time when Czech Cinema was still finding its feet, this involving drama is notable for the involvement of several major figures in the development of the national film industry over the ensuing decade. In addition to co-scripting with Lamac, Martin Fric also cameos as a doctor alongside fellow future directors, Gustav Machatý and Premysl Pražský. Over the next four decades, Fric would rack up over 100 credits in his homeland and in Germany, establishing his reputation with The Good Soldier Svejk (1926) and Father Vojtech (1929), which featured Lamac in the title role. Before moving into radio in 1933, Pražský proved a deft visual stylist with Battalion (1927), while Machatý followed The Kreutzer Sonata (1927) with Ecstasy (1933), which acquired a degree of infamy for the nude and simulated sex sequences involving Hedy Kiesler (who would find fame in Hollywood as Hedy Lamarr), which led to the picture being censured by Pope Pius XII, banned by Adolf Hitler and adored by Benito Mussolini, who had his own copy. 

Another key contributor to White Paradise is cinematographer Otto Heller, who eventually found his way to Britain, where he worked on such landmark features as Thorold Dickinson's The Queen of Hearts (1949), Laurence Olivier's Richard III, Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers (both 1955) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960). Together with Lamac, Ondra and screenwriter Václav Wasserman, Heller was also part of the creative team known as `Der starke Vierer' (`The Strong Four'), which is considered to be the Czechoslovakian equivalent of the United Artists initiative launched in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, DW Griffith and Charlie Chaplin.

Orphan Nina (Anny Ondráková, as she's billed) works in the coaching inn owned by guardian, Jakub Rezek (Vladimír Majer). Shuffling behind the bar in a pair of ill-fitting wooden clogs, she dances to the accordion music before being reminded to focus on her chores by her dour boss. Meanwhile, Yvette Larsenová (Lo Marsánová) runs a charitable organisation that seeks to minister to the needs of the inmates of the local prison. While she prepares a care package for Prisoner 77, one of her members (Gustav Machatý) makes a clumsy attempt to flirt with her. However, he smirks when news reaches the warden (Karel Fiala) and his accompanying guard (Premysl Prazský) that No.77 has escaped.

The fugitive is Ivan Holar (Karel Lamac), who was wrongly jailed for embezzlement on the testimony of Rezek. He hears about the breakout from a couple of cops (Jan W. Speerger and Karel Schleichert) and is concerned that Holar will come to the inn to wreak his revenge. However, he has other things to worry about because a Nina has managed to smash most of his glasses after piling them in the shape of a crystal palace, in which she imagines herself smelling roses in a fine ball gown. Unfortunately, her reverie is shattered when a mischievous cat jumps down from a shelf and a furious Revek chases her through the bar to punish her. 

As she climbs the ladder into the attic, however, one of her clogs slips off and hits Revek on the head. Taking advantage of the fact he is dazed, Nina rushes outside into the snow, only to slip and fall down a chute into the cellar. While she tries to warm herself up with the contents of the kegs on the shelf above her, Holar strives to stay one step ahead of the pursuing police. He has escaped in order to take some medicine to his sick mother, (Sasha Dobrovolna), and is mortified when one of the cops hits the bottle with a rifle shot. However, the icy conditions mean that the liquid has frozen and Holar wraps it up in his scarf before seeking sanctuary in the cellar. 

Initially frightened by the intruder, Nina sees that he is a gentle soul and creeps out of hiding to speak to him. He is amused by her prattle and asks her if she will take the medicine to his mother. Donning his large fur coat, Nina clambers up the chute and trudges through the thick snow. However, the cops recognise the coat and start shooting at her and Holar realises that he has placed her in grave danger. Desperate to protect Nina, Holar rushes after her through the woods. 

Meanwhile, Mrs Holarová is being nursed by her neighbour (Marie Veselá), who leaves her to sleep in her chair. Nina arrives and is just about to give the old lady a spoonful of medicine when Holar bursts in from the cold and Nina is touched by the warmth of the mother-son embrace. Overjoyed by the reunion, Mrs Holarová pours drinks and is about to make a toast when she hears a noise at the door. Having already peered through the window, the policemen are embarrassed to be invited inside to shelter from the cold. But they allow Holar to spend some time with his mother before taking him into custody. 

Waking to find her son gone, Mrs Holarová asks Nina to give him a gift she had been saving for him and she is shocked to see Holar's hands in cuffs. Realising she must hide the truth, Nina watches the three men disappear into the distance before attending to the stricken Mrs Holarová. However, she dies in her chair and Nina slips away when the neighbours come to check on their patient. Holar seems to sense something has happened and turns to look back at the isolated shack. But he continues on his way, as Nina returns to the inn and keeps out of Rezek's way while she searches for a shawl. Unwilling to remain under his roof, Nina makes her way back out into the snow and comes across a tree with candles burning on its branches. These have been lit by Tomás (Josef Rovenský), a puppeteer who lives an itinerant existence with his faithful dog. 

As the hound has bolted after a rabbit, there is no sign of Tomás, as Nina gazes in wonder at the candles, which she takes as a sign of hope, as she warms herself by their tiny flames. She falls asleep and Tomás covers her up when he returns with his dog. As he has a handcart, he takes Nina to the inn the next morning and Rezek serves them drinks, as he doesn't recognise his ward with her head covered. When he sees her face, however, he snaps at her and gets into a fight with Tomás when he tries to defend her. However, he gets tossed out into the snow and they leave together. 

Meanwhile, Yvette pays a visit to Holar in prison to break the news about his mother. Back at the inn, Rezek goes into the cellar to check that an incriminating document is still well hidden under the sawdust. However, the cops are lying in wait for him and a gunfight ensues before Rezek is captured after imbibing the alcohol spilling from a punctured keg. His loyal barmaid aims a rifle at the two policemen as they come through the trapdoor, but Tomás disarms her and reads the papers that one of the cops is examining. 

As the warden releases Holar and wishes him well for the future, we see a flashback to the moment that Rezek had switched some documents to cover up his duplicity. Now a free man with his reputation restored, Holar takes the train home and is met at the station by a sleigh driver. While passing through the woods, however, they spot a skier lying in the snow and Holar is surprised to discover it's Yvette. She is glad to see him and he carries her to the sleigh. 

Their arrival at Holar's house comes as a blow to Nina, who has fallen in love with him and has been tidying up the place to give him a warm welcome. Realising that her heart has been broken (like her glass palace), Tomás helps her climb through the window so that Holar cannot see her tears. Having explained the situation to Holar, he follows her back to the inn and tries to cheer her up by giving her a puppet show. She is too sad to watch, however, and buries her face, as Tomás manipulates the marionettes in his little theatre. But all ends happily, as Yvette and Holar are only good friends and, having shaken hands with one of the cops to show there are no hard feelings, he comes to the inn to find Nina. They wander out into the snow and she promptly falls down a hole before they can embrace. But Holar hauls her up and Tomás smiles to himself as he sees them kiss through the window and the curtain falls on his puppet stage. 

While she's best known to British audiences for her collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock on The Manxman and Blackmail (both 1929), Anny Ondra made several pictures with Lamac before relocating to Germany after marrying boxing champion Max Schmeling. Aware that the camera loved her, Lamac ensured she has all the best scenes in this charming drama, as she daydreams like Cinderella and pratfalls like Chaplin. However, he delivers a solid performance himself, as does Josef Rovenský, as the puppeteer who has to suppress his own feelings to ensure a happy ending.

Lamac's direction is typical of the time, as he films short scenes with a static camera and reserves cross-cuts for shifts between middle shots and close-ups. What will surprise many is the amount of time given over to the intertitles used to carry story information and dialogue. Indeed, the screen seems to be filled with type more often than it is Otto Heller's imagery, which is often tinted to add atmosphere to the snowscapes and interiors. Such conservative storytelling would be consigned to the silent scrapheap after the release later in 1924 of FW Murnau's The Last Laugh, which introduced the concept of seamless editing, while also eschewing the use of intertitles in showing how the camera could be moved around the mise-en-scène to place the viewer at the heart of the action. Despite its stylistic restrictions, Lamac's saga remains engaging and significant and is well worth tracking down.

It takes considerable courage to make a documentary about one's own life, as privacy goes out of the window and complete strangers get to view and form opinions about one's habits, choices, actions and emotions. When the subject is as deeply personal as the one that transgender film-maker Jason Barker addresses in A Deal With the Universe, spectators can feel like snoopers, especially when the images are filmed in such a confined space and have such an unapologetically home-movie vibe. 

Barker didn't begin recording his attempt to have a child with his partner, Tracey, with the intention of making a feature. But the video clips kept amassing after Tracey was forced to give up IVF treatment after being diagnosed with breast cancer and Barker (who had transitioned over a decade earlier) decided to stop taking testosterone in a bid to become pregnant. Even then, several years passed before he returned to the footage and opted to shape it into a narraative with the assistance of editor Rachel Meyrick and Hope Dickson Leach, the director of The Levelling, with whom he had worked on the short, Silly Girl (both 2016).

Capturing the depth of the wonderful couple's love for each other, the resulting actuality is moving, inspiring and beautiful. But it's also far too intimate for a critic (especially a squeamish one who doesn't possess the sharing gene) to have the temerity to comment upon in any detail. Therefore, instead of assessing the content - and the role played in it by various cats and window-box pigeons - we shall merely make you aware of its existence and encourage you to seek it out, either in cinemas or on the BFI Player. 

There have been a number of documentaries about the refugee crisis since Karzan Kardozi visited a Kurdistani camp for fugitives from the Syrian conflict in I Want to Live (2015). The following year saw Guido Hendrikx's Stranger in Paradise, Navid Mahmoudi's Parting and Tonislav Hristov's The Good Postman examine the ongoing humanitarian emergency from the perspective of those on the move and those resenting the influx of strangers. Subsequently, Ai Weiwei's Human Flow, Orban Wallace's Another News Story (both 2017), Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo's It Will Be Chaos and Vanessa Redgrave's directorial debut, Sea Sorrow (both 2018), have all focused on the contentious topic.

Nothing, however, has matched the immediacy of Gianfranco Rosi's Fire At Sea (2016), which was nominated for an Oscar and became the first documentary to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. But there is much to commend in Talya Tibbon and Joshua Bennett's Sky and Ground, the latest actuality to alert audiences to the plight of the 1.7 million refugees who have crossed to mainland Europe, which is showing this week in London under the Dochouse banner. 

When Greece and Turkey closed their borders in 2016, thousands made for the former's Macedonian frontier and found themselves incarcerated in the Idomeni Refugee Camp. Among them is Abdullah Sheikh Nabi, who acquired the nickname `Guevara' as a student. He lived in the Kurdish quarter of the Syrian city of Aleppo before fighting broke out between government forces and Islamic extremists in 2012. We see some of the footage he shot during the bombardment of civilian areas and learn that Guevara took the decision to leave for Izmir in Turkey. 

In 2016, the family opted to relocate to Greece and crossed from Asia with the help of people smugglers on a raft. Guevara admits that he wouldn't have made the journey alone, but his family was set on moving and he did his best to protect them. Just five days after their arrival in Idomeni, the Macedonians closed the frontier and the 15-strong party played an active role in the protests that were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. So, after two months of living in deteriorating conditions, the Nabis decided to make their way through the Balkans in the hope of joining Guevara's brothers Badr and Abdo in Germany.  

Concerned that mother Jalila is too old to make the trip, while eight year-old niece Rita is too young, Guevara draws on the positivity of sister Shireen and niece Heba, who is travelling with her father, Suleiman Abdulrahman, who jokes that he is looking forward to dining with Angela Merkel. Setting out on foot, the 15-strong party also includes members of Abu Mohamed's family, Guevara is wary of joining a large exodus, as he thinks they stand a better chance if they go it alone and keep to back roads. The plan is to cross illegally into Macedonia near the village of Moin, but they need GPS assistance and have to hide in bushes from a patrol while waiting for a phone signal. 

Eventually taking a different route because the locals are being paid rewards for reporting migrants, the group is slowed down when Oum Mohamed hurts her ankle. They camp out for a couple of days to give her time to rest, with relative Mohamed Shahadeh being worried about the Macedonian police, as they have a reputation for being strict. However, when Oum Mohamed twists her leg while crossing a busy road, they decide to seek help and are appalled when they are turned in to the authorities by the Red Cross and find themselves back in Idomeni. Their stay is cut short, however, when the Greeks announce the closure of the camp and the Nabis agree to try walking across Macedonia again, as they can't find a smuggler they can trust. 

Joining them is Abu Raman, who had befriended Suleiman in Turkey. However, he proves a difficult travelling companion and Guevara grows tired of his suggestions and complaints. He is also concerned about Suleiman and Shireen, who are finding trekking across hilly terrain tough going. But a bid to make contact with a smuggler misfires, as the man turns out to be a timewaster, and Guevara takes the decision to give up on him and continue walking. Guided by his brothers over the phone, he leads the party to the Serbian border. They have to hide from a farmer on his tractor, but there is no fence or uniformed presence and they are surprised to cross so easily. 

A few kilometres later, however, they are intercepted by the police and taken to the Presovo Refugee Camp, However, no attempt is made to deport them and they are given documents and transit passes for a minibus to take them to Belgrade. Jalila and Shireen are hugely relieved, as they had begun to lose faith. But now they hope they can get to Germany and Heba, Rawshan and Rita can resume their much-interrupted schooling. They look at family photos from happier times and sing songs on the journey before finding a cheap hotel and a takeaway. 

The next morning, a coach takes them to Subotica, near the Hungarian border. In speaking to other refugees, however, Guevars learns that they are restricting the numbers of those allowed to cross each day and that there is nowhere for them to stay, as they have ditched their camping gear. They move on to the camp at Kelebija, where they are given tents and manage to borrow some blankets. But the local cops demand bribes and Guevara is unhappy with the conditions on the ground and the need to sign up to a waiting list that dictates when they can move on. 

After 18 days, the Nabis pack up to leave. But Guevara is informed that single men have to wait 28 days before they can cross and he is forced to remain behind while the others move on to Bicske to the west of Budapest. Billeted in modular huts, the others are relatively comfortable (and even adopt a small grey kitten), while Guevara is intimidated by an interrogator who transfers him to the Tompa Detention Centre. When they speak to him by phone, he urges them to keep going in case the Austrians close the border and trust that he will find a way to join them. Abdo has misgivings about the smuggler they contact, however, and flies to Hungary to help his family buy train tickets for Vienna. 

Taking a branch line, they reach Keleti Station in Budapest and split up into small groups so as not to attract attention. However, on arriving at Central Station in Vienna in the small hours of the morning, they run into a police search and Abdo calls cousin Ali in Salzburg for advice. They meet up in Linz to plan a strategy, only to learn that the Austrians have released the family with 14-day passes and heavy hints to use the time to smuggle themselves into Germany. As Abdo tries to find a trustworthy contact from a safe house in the Alpine town of Zell Am See, Guevara worries that they are making a mistake 

Shireen gets son Qasem to sing a song to boost his uncle's spirits, while Abdo tells everyone to make sure the tell the German police that their final destination is Sweden, as they are happier to let refugees pass through than stay. They set off in the early hours and reach the southern Bavarian town of Traunstein, Abdo and Ali have a nervous wait to meet up with them at the station and they have to divide up again to avoid prying eyes. Clutching her beloved cuddly toy, Rita goes with Laila on the train to Munich and there is much relief when they reunite on the bus to Berlin. Exhausted, they sleep for much of the way and wake in time to be greeted in the German capital by an overjoyed Badr. 

Still in Tompa, Guevera is just happy they have reached journey's end and Heba admits that she can't quite believe that they have made it across seven countries in one piece. They spend a day by the sea in Rostock, where Heba reveals that the family doesn't have a home - it simply has the sky and the ground. However, she becomes more optimistic when news comes that Guevara can join them and he confides on the train that he misses the adventure of being on the road. He knows there will be problems ahead in Germany and laments being so far from his benighted homeland. But he is determined to make the most of his fresh start and reminds the audience that his plight can happen to anyone, anywhere at any time. 

As captions reveal that the Nabis were granted temporary asylum and that one in a hundred people in the world is displaced from their homes, Tibbon and Bennett sign off by admonishing the United States for taking 70,000 refugees in the same period that has seen Germany welcome over a million. Their point is well made, although the Americans are far from alone in adopting such protectionist attitudes. Indeed, they might have made more of the hostility that refugees face in countries like Hungary rather than leaving it to moil in the background. Similarly, the co-directors might have made more of the jeopardy than the hardships that the Nabis and Abu Mohameds endure during their trek.

While the group's fortitude cannot be doubted, some will be puzzled by the fact that they risked being slowed down or detected by the presence of a camera crew. Although some cameraphone footage is used, the bulk of the imagery appears to have been photographed by Axel Baumann and one is left to wonder how his presence didn't attract unwanted attention. There's no question that his eye for a telling image adds some gritty poetry to the drama of the odyssey, but it's not always possible to determine which incidents have been caught on the hoof and which have been stage-managed when the coast is clear(er). Nevertheless, editors Howard Sharp, Emma Morris and Oren Sarch do a solid job and one hopes that Tibbon and Bennett will be able to offer a progress report on this intrepid and touchingly close-knit family's future fortunes.

Colombia holds an evident fascination for British documentarist Kate Horne. Having recalled the kidnapping of presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt in Hostage in the Jungle (2010), she was nominated for an International Emmy for Gabo (2015), a profile of Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Now, she returns to South America for The Witness: Cain and Abel, in which she accompanies photojournalist Jesús Abad Colorado in his bid to discover the fate of the subjects of some of the iconic pictures he has taken during a 25-year career chronicling the armed conflicts that have torn his country apart. 

Since it erupted in the mid-1960s, the civil war in Colombia has claimed over 220,000 lives and impacted upon the lives of over eight million victims. As he photographs the overgrown ruins he equates with a slow return to normalcy, Jesús Abad Colorado recalls entering a village in May 1992 in the aftermath of a massacre. On peering through the window of a classroom, he notices that the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel had been written on the blackboard and realised its relevance to the struggle between government forces and left-leaning rebel groups like the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Following the signing of a peace accord by the FARC commander Rodrigo Londoño and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, in November 2016, Colorado (who is known by the nickname `Chucho') decided to revisit some of the places he had visited during the conflict. The first port of call is the farming community in the mountains of San José de Apartadó that had declared itself neutral in a bid to escape the fighting. It was here in 2005 that Colorado had taken `The Girl With the Cross', which depicted Camila, the surviving daughter of farmers' leader Alfonso Bolívar marking his grave after a February massacre that had driven much of the community into the hills. 

We see monochrome images of severed body parts and children staring defiantly into the lens. As he looks at contact sheets from the time, Colorado explains that his story about the incident had helped convict the government soldiers who had abetted the murderous paramilitaries and he remains haunted by what he witnessed. On reuniting with old friend Conrado, however, he learns that the villagers still live in fear, in spite of the ceasefire. 

According to Colorado, every Colombian has a story to tell and his begins with a photograph taken before he was born in the period known as La Violencia. It shows his grandparents. José Maria and Maria Loris, and Colorado goes to the archive at the University of Antioquia to find a newspaper report of the August 1960 masked gang murder of José and his 18 year-old son, Germán, on their farm, Patio Bonito, near the town of San Carlos. Heartbroken by witnessing her son's throat being slit, Maria Loris died four months later and the surviving members of the family relocated to Comuna 13 in the city of Medellín. His mother still lives in the same house and Colorado joins her in saying the Prayer of St Francis, as he reveals that his parents taught him that revenge should never be an option when coping with misfortune. 

We learn that Colorado decided to switch from majoring in journalism to photography when a number of prominent reporters were killed in the early 1990s. Inspired by photographer Leo Matiz, he opted to work in black and white because of its documentary authenticity. In 2002, when paramilitaries joined with the army to flush out guerrillas from his Medellín neighbourhood, Colorado took a pair of pictures he called `Onlookers'. 

The first shows a woman in a blood-spattered shirt standing in front of a Red Cross logo whose child had just been taken away from her, while the second captures a young girl looking through a bullet hole in a window. Colorodo reunites with the latter (who is infuriatingly left unnamed), who poses with her surviving family for a colour snap. However, the brother she had pushed out of the shot in 2002 was later killed and she shrugs because death became such a mundane part of daily life during this pitiless period. 

Wondering whether those featured in his pictures realised the effect that they had on those who saw them, Colorado returns to San Carlos, where he had taken `Colombia's Child' in 1998. The picture shows a 10 year-old boy dressing one of the 11 victims of a massacre and his look of concentration and reverence remains deeply poignant. Now in his thirties, the unidentified subject recalls being puzzled that Colorado had been allowed into the hospital to take a photograph that he considered to be inappropriate. However, he now accepts that such images served as testimony to alert the wider world to the crisis in Colombia and he poses with picture and with his wife and son. 

As the town of Granada in Antioquia was targeted by all sides during the civil war, 10,000 residents moved away. Yet, it was here that Colorado took his most surreal picture, `La Novia', when he came to join a peace march following a car bombing that devastated much of the main square in December 2000. As he tried to console the grieving, he noticed a bride named Beatriz entering the beautiful red-and-white church with a long curved train behind her and a placard calling for an end to the fighting beside her. He has become friends with Beatriz and her husband, Oscar, and walks to their farm to give them some photographs of the family. Their children are proud of their parents for surviving the struggle and staying together and Beatriz cries while trying to explain how happy she is to have been spared. 

Colorado persuaded the editor of El Colombiano to put a colour version of the wedding photo on the front page of the newspaper as a symbol of hope and it remains one of his personal favourites. But the failure to bring about a truce brought him to the village of El Chocó in Bojayá to take `El Cristo mutilado' in May 2002. Showing the devastation caused by a bomb that killed 79 people inside the church, this stark image captured the worst civilian atrocity committed by the FARC, as 45 of the victims were children from the neighbouring school. In the forefront of the picture is the limbless Christ that had been blown off the altar crucifix and Domingo, the caretaker, wishes Colorado had shown the world the body parts he had been forced to collect. But he explains that images of graphic horror have a negative impact, while something more subtle forces people to think.

When he returned to the village to photograph Domingo singing at a dance, Colorado demonstrated the indomitable courage of the locals in this remote riverside community. Indeed, this spirit of resistance has compelled him to keep telling stories about his compatriots rather than covering war zones elsewhere. He visits the display of ordinary snapshots in the Never Again Museum in Granada to attest to the power of images and returns to the town to take `Desaparecido: José Alejandro Duque' when FARC commander Pastor Alape came to apologise for its crimes in 2017. Among the most painful photographs that Colorado has taken are those of mothers grieving at the graves of their lost sons. Unlike those demanding answers about the Disappeared, they had somewhere to mourn and, having spotted a woman and her brother holding up a sign appealing for information about their missing father, Colorado not only takes their picture, but also confronts Alape while he waits inside the church to issue his plea for reconciliation. 

Not everyone is willing to forgive and forget, however. In 2007, Colorado had gone to San Carlos to visit the family of Gloria Milena Aristizábal, who had gone missing on 4 May 2001. Left to raise her daughter's four children, Gloria's mother had heard a voice in the church telling her to dig under a nearby tree and Colorado had taken `The Rosary' when young Jaimy Alejandra had recognised her mother's beads. Now expecting a child of her own, Jaimy Alejandra believes peace to be a myth and Colorado reminds us that there is more to a conflict ending than the guns falling silent. 

Feeling he has ghosts of his own to lay to rest, Colorado joins his aunt on a trip to Patio Bonito to pay their respects to her father and brother. A chapel has been erected on the site of the farm and they light a candle and recite the Lord's Prayer together. Needing to check on Camila, he goes to the FARC Demobilisation Camp at Gallo in Córdoba, where she is raising her own daughter after laying down the weapons she had taken up to avenge her father. He shows her a picture of herself in a camouflage uniform and she reads an extract about child soldiers from the magazine article she treasures because it contains the only picture of her late father. She recalls with dignified pride evading the paramilitary commander who had vowed to execute the children of San José de Apartadó to prevent them from joining the FARC cause. But she admits that she would now forgive him if it helped bring about a lasting peace. 

In a closing sequence, Colorado visits the school in Camila's home village to take a pictures of the pupils. He is nervous about the future and hopes that the smiling innocents posing for him never have to make same choices as Camila. One can only echo his sentiments at the end of an affecting and effective actuality that reveals Colorado's commitment and compassion, as well as the political and psychological obstacles that Colombians will have to overcome if they are going to reclaim their country from the warring factions. 

Seemingly letting Colorado set the agenda, Horne directs steadily, as she and cinematographer Guillermo Galdós make extensive use of drones to provide a fresh perspective on the scarred landscape (or is it a God's eye view?). One has to presume she has excellent reasons for leaving so many of the contributors unnamed, but keeping them anonymous has something of a dehumanising effect. Nevertheless, editor Guy Creasey slips efficiently between archive footage and Colorado's impeccably composed photographs, which speak volumes about the brutality of the conflict and the size of the task facing his compatriots in ensuring that future generations seek reconciliation rather than revenge.

Educated at Cambridge and currently based at the University of Sussex, Piotr Cieplak is the author of Death, Image, Memory: The Genocide in Rwanda and Its Aftermath in Photography and Documentary. Yet, while this volume sought to show how professional and amateur photographers and film-makers strove to record the 1994 atrocities and the evidentiary and memorial value that their efforts continue to have, Cieplak is also interested in how ordinary Rwandans view the images and footage of lost loved ones taken before the turmoil. Consequently, he has made The Faces We Lost, which is showing in London through Dochouse.

Now in her sixties, Mama Lambert is a retired Tutsi teacher who considers herself fortunate to have an album full of pictures of her lost children. Many were taken at family functions and she reels off the names of sons and daughters who were killed by the Hutus. She has had some of the snapshots reproduced as portraits by a local artist to help her move on and make the most of the life she has devoted to giving witness and solace. But the pain of witnessing the slaughter of her father and children has not dimmed over two decades and she laments the fact that her medical daughter Claudine would have tried to help those who taunted and tortured her. 

By contrast, Adeline Umuhoza was too young to have known the father who was murdered back in 1994. But she treasures the sole photograph she has of him and consults it when making decisions. Indeed, she has changed her entire personality to reflect his air of calm consideration. Yet, it's only since the Genocide that Rwandans have started commemorating the dead with images, as well as the more traditional forms of word and song. As Aline Umugwaneza from the Rwanda Genocide Archive points out, however, the visual has become increasingly important since so many lives were lost in such a short space of time and the sheer scale of the butchery is confirmed by Claver Irakoze from the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which has 250,000 victims buried in 14 mass graves, as well as an archive of six to eight thousand photos. 

Living in a small town some 40 minutes from the capital, Oliva Mukarusine also has a full album and particularly cherishes the only existing picture of her beloved husband. She has no idea where his remains were deposited and has confronted those responsible for the killing to no avail. As we see the skulls preserved at the Ntarama Church that stands as a memorial to 5000 victims, Oliva reveals that her album has been such a source of comfort that she often spends the pittance she earns as a seamstress on snapshots of herself so that relations can see what she is doing with the life that was spared. 

Memorial guide Serge Rwigamba notes that each picture represents a human being rather than a number and the fact that an image lives on to be seen by visitors gives its subject a form of victory over death. But, while Mama Lambert was fortunate in returning to her home to find her photos had not been destroyed, Claudine Mukantaganzwa was not so lucky and has to keep describing her husband to daughters Rebeca and Rachel, who were too young to remember him. They live in rural Rwanda, where Claudine refuses to give up hope of finding a picture of the kindly man who had made her so happy. She becomes tearful while recalling their last meeting and wishes that he had found somewhere to hide when the Hutus came to the village. 

Serge and Claver take their jobs very seriously, as they are helping visitors connect with `the faces we lost' by reminding them that the pictures represent people just like them. Octagenarian Cecile Mutabonwa concurs, as she returned to the southern city of Huye from exile in Burundi to discover that the killers had also tried to erase the memory of their victims by damaging photographs in which they appear. Retrieving the scattered pictures from her own albums, she claims the survival of so many precious images as a triumph over the savagery designed to eradicate the Tutsis from their homeland. She claims that a loved one can never fade from the heart, but a photo helps seal them in the memory. 

Fifty thousand victims are remembered at Murambi, which has been left pretty much as it was on the day of the massacre. Back in Kigali, Paul Rukesha of the Aegis Trust discusses the significance of digitising the archive so that those who can't visit in person can share in the national act of memorial. He considers the psychological scars left by the Genocide to be a form of incurable illness that can be medicated through photographs that evoke happier memories. Like Adeline, Paul keeps a picture of his parents on his phone and he is glad he will be able to share it with his own children so they can gain some sort of impression of their grandparents. 

By contrast, Claver lost his mother's ID card and, with it, the only picture he had of her and he admits he feels a pang when others entrust images for safe keeping. He has come to appreciate the value of the visual and now snaps the landmark events in his life, Fortunately for Serge, he was able to find a picture of his father and keeps a copy at home to remind him of the family bond, while also donating the original to the Archive so that he can be commemorated as a victim. However, it's Oliva who sums things up most neatly, when she declares that her photo album is a record of the long journey she has made and she will continue to be photographed as an act of defiance and as a celebration of her ongoing existence. 

Discreetly photographed by Naizi Nasser and accompanied by a jaunty score by Emmanuel Habimana, this is a deceptively simple film. Cieplak could never lay claim to being a great stylist, but he gives the speakers the space and security to explore heartrending memories and materials in their own way. By so doing, he captures statements of unforced potency and profundity, especially from the grieving quartet of Mama Lambert, Claudine, Oliva and Cecile, who muses while flipping the pages of one album how the friends of a lifetime suddenly became mortal enemies who sought to remove them from the face of the earth.