Sombre documentary focuses on the former Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, and how he is becoming a Mandela-like figure since his imprisonment in 2002 Here is a film that offers something not generally on offer in the media: an envisioning of the future and a road map, or part of a road map, out of the present situation in Israel and Palestine. It’s about Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, an initial supporter of the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords who became progressively disillusioned with the slow choreography of international consensus, and was ultimately imprisoned in 2002 for autho ..read more

The Clash are the touchstone for a story that stretches back to the 50s, told in interviews with many campaigning rockers There’s no better time than now for a documentary on popular music’s role in the fight against racism and fascism. And in true punk spirit, this lo-fi indie packs in a lot of history and righteous passion for not much budget – even if, to be brutally honest, its core narrative is a very minor part of that history, centred on a bunch of ageing Clash fans. The Clash are very much the touchstone here. Motivated by musicians such as Eric Clapton echoing the National Front’s rac ..read more

Brosnan to … Bolt? Frank Mannion’s follow-up documentary to Quintessentially British presents a grab bag of interviews – some with distinctly un-Irish personalities It features a definition of “the craic” but, frustratingly, this long, meandering documentary about Irishness contains only very small quantities of actual fun. It’s a follow-up from film-maker Frank Mannion to his 2022 doc Quintessentially British, but feels like a commission from Aer Lingus: something to watch inflight from Boston to Dublin, soothingly bland, relaxingly dull. Though to be fair, Mannion gets a big laugh when he ar ..read more

New documentary Hip-Hop and the White House looks back at how presidents have rejected or embraced those within the genre, from Reagan to Trump At the 1985 presidential inauguration ball, a made-for-TV black-tie affair that was something in between a concert and a roast, an expectant Ronald Reagan looked on from the dais for Jimmy Stewart to bring up the next act. “And now,” a grizzled George Bailey intoned, “to present the excitement of youth, the sights and the sounds of a big city, here are [the] New York City Breakers.” More than validation for an emerging medium, it was the moment Reagan ..read more

Freewheeling documentary presents a compelling if somewhat rambling portrait of the hardscrabble roots of many contenders Admittedly, their freewheeling boxing documentary is a little rambling and understructured, but nevertheless director Steve Read and producer-narrator Robert Douglas (both Brits) end up making a compelling and illuminating mosaic about the sport by focusing on an eclectic range of figures, some interviewed on screen. The opening sequence, narrated by Douglas, starts with his personal recollections about how much watching boxing meant to him, especially as a biracial kid fro ..read more

Stephen Giddings gives a committed performance as a recovering alcoholic who’s started betting again in this often tense experimental docudrama The line between fact and fiction is thin to vanishing in this Liverpool-set experimental docudrama, a study of addiction and how it rumbles down through generations. It’s directed by visual artist Melanie Manchot and is being shown as a multiscreen installation in Cornwall as well as screening in cinemas. Manchot worked with a Liverpool recovery group, hiring members, with lived experience, as actors. At its worst the result has a bit of a workshop fe ..read more

Author Félix Bruzzone fronts this haunting film about Campo de Mayo, where his mother was among tens of thousands of people who ‘disappeared’ under the dictatorship The dark past of Campo de Mayo, a military camp that once served as a vast detention centre during Argentina’s so-called dirty war, is excavated in Jonathan Perel’s haunting documentary. Following noted author Félix Bruzzone as he jogs alongside the infamous site, the film is structured around the writer’s run in which the past and the present entwine. His encounters with witnesses of the dictatorship’s atrocities show that history ..read more

The Oscar-winner and the Nobel laureate have teamed up to make Bread & Roses, a new film about the abuse of women in Afghanistan. In an emotional interview, they warn that the west ignores its message at their peril “Strong women are not easy women,” says Jennifer Lawrence, “and a woman’s life is lonely. So much of our experience cannot be shared or understood by men, and our rights are in their hands. That’s why we need each other.” The two other people on our video call nod in agreement. One is Malala Yousafzai, who, with Lawrence, has produced a new documentary about the oppression of A ..read more

A new documentary looks back on the life and career of a photographer who documented an overlooked community Corky Lee spent decades photographing Asian American life, in New York and across the US, capturing the rise of the Asian American movement as well as everyday happenings in immigrant communities often overlooked by the powers that be. He saw his calling as more than just observing and documenting – he was righting a wrong by immortalizing Asian Americans in the civic makeup of the US ..read more

Chronicler of the making of her husband’s Apocalypse Now whose footage and recordings were the basis for a documentary and book In March 1976, Eleanor Coppola arrived in the Philippines, her three young children in tow, to film behind-the-scenes footage on the set of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie Apocalypse Now, which transposed the plot of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness to late-1960s Vietnam. No one could have known then that production on this war epic would stretch on for more than a year, delayed by catastrophic weather, medical emergencies, military conflict ..read more