Exploring the whistling traditions of the Hmong people of northern Laos, whose language straddles the boundary between music and speech, this film witnesses a collision of ancient tradition with modern urban life. With urbanisation and the advent of modern technology rapidly replacing this culture, Hmong whistling is dying out. Following the stories of three individuals from Long Lan village, they reflect on their experience as practitioners of a vanishing musical language ..read more

Documentary suggests that when performer Gena Marvin takes to the streets she is squaring up not only to prejudice but to the state It often takes actual physical courage to be different anywhere you grow up – but it takes superhuman courage to be different in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Queendom is a study of queer drag performance artist Gena Marvin (born Gennadiy Chebotarev), who challenges the machismo of the Putin regime, the attack on Ukraine and the Russian state’s homophobic attitudes in general by taking to the streets in Moscow, either as part of a demonstration or on her own, always in ..read more

Kleber Mendonça Filho offers a poetic but somewhat unfocused memoir-essay about place, cinema and time Home is clearly where the art is for Bacurau director Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose childhood apartment is the locus of the first part of this poetic but somewhat bemused memoir-essay about place, cinema and time. Twice renovated by his historian mother, the apartment was the site of his first early imaginative forays behind the camera, and appeared in his first two features, Neighbouring Sounds from 2012 and, four years later, Aquarius. Mendonça’s native city of Recife has also been subject t ..read more

Kate Blewett’s documentary shows the lasting effects of war and considers the way that three ex-soldiers look to cope with their traumas Interviewed for this documentary about veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder, war photographer Lalage Snow talks about her series of triptych portraits of soldiers: three photos, taken before, during and after deployment in Afghanistan. You find yourself searching for the psychological scars written in their tired, thinner faces. In some of the “after” shots, it’s as if war has completely rewired them. Their features look subtly but noticeably d ..read more

In a visually impressive documentary, film-maker Stefan Pavlovic spends time with a fisherman and former soldier living in an abandoned church Growing up in Montreal in a Bosnian household, Stefan Pavlovic yearned to connect with his family origins, a longing entwined with political upheaval and displacement. Travelling to Orah, a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the film-maker strikes a rapport with Zdravko, a solitary fisherman similarly unmoored in the sea of history. Taking the form of a visual pilgrimage, Pavlovic’s poetic documentary shifts between the scenic tranquility of the l ..read more

One woman strives to uncover the person misusing her image online in insufficiently probing look at a growing problem This alarming but slightly unsatisfying documentary feels like the first chapter in a story that is only just beginning to unfold. A female university student – the film calls her Taylor but her identity is concealed – discovers that somebody has harvested her image from social media and used it to create deepfake pornography. It is, we learn, a rapidly growing issue. Victims describe reactions of shame, anorexia and suicidal thoughts, but currently have little in the way of le ..read more

A new documentary looks back at the 80s toy craze and the battle over who really created the dolls in the first place Black Friday is said to have originated in Philadelphia in the 1960s, when members of the city’s police department used the term to describe the chaos that broke out when droves of suburbanites flooded downtown to shop on the day after Thanksgiving. The American tradition swelled to monstrous proportions in the early 1980s, when grainy and horrifying footage of citizens knocking each other to the ground became a fixture of holiday-weekend local news. These sharp-elbowed consume ..read more

A short documentary, focusing on a father and son relationship, offers a surprisingly tender immersion into the rough world of banger racing • Watch A Mouthful of Petrol now Wayne is a fixture on the banger circuit – a rough style of racing in self-built cars. Now that his son Jai-Dee is nearly 13, his debut “full contact” race is finally in view. Jess Kohl’s new short film immerses us into the boisterous world at the same time as revealing a tender relationship between a father and a son. This cinematic coming-of-age story poignantly reframes expectations of masculinity in a tough sport ..read more

Matthew Heineman’s look at the Grammy-winning musician and his wife has moving moments but keeps us at a distance In American Symphony, a moving but scattershot documentary following the recording artist Jon Batiste during a whirlwind year, the transcendent moments tend to come along when its subject is anchored to a piano. Batiste, a musician who harmonizes between genres like jazz, classical, R&B and funk, is most famous for leading Stay Human, the house band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and taking home Album of the Year at the 2022 Grammys. That prize pairs nicely with his Osca ..read more

A female student bravely investigates who is behind deepfake images of her online in this compelling documentary Germaine Greer famously said that women have no idea how much men hate them. Her maxim has a new relevance in the light of this terrifying (and enraging) documentary about the explosion of deepfake porn targeting women: famous women, of course, like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who dare to get above themselves, but also private women who are just trying to live their lives and have been hit with this revenge-hate tactic from fantasists, ex-boyfriends, would-be boyfrie ..read more