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The waiting game
A small group of men watch resignedly, silently, as a Post Office van stops at the handful of homes on a bleak Hebridean island. An opera singer fills the soundtrack.
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Meat, alcohol and women: young Gandhi’s struggle to learn and resist
The Overseas Student standing on the stage of the Lyric Hammersmith recalling his three years in London is Gandhi long before the earned the honorific Mahatma.
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Nigerian film with a starring role for Lagos
The Nigerian twin brothers who directed Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) and the two lead actors are the stars of this fascinating film – and so is Lagos.
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Old masters and new community curators show the way
Don’t be deceived by the hype: the Dulwich Picture Gallery bills Journeys as a collection of paintings that throw light on the nature of migration from the 17th century to today.
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Reflections from the Middle East and North Africa
All is not what it seems at ‘Reflections: contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa’ at the British Museum.
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Miniature epic about a monumental journey
‘Flight’ is an epic refugee story on a miniature scale.
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A Bhutanese WeChat romance
Lipstick and love songs prove more alluring than Buddhist bells and a quiet Himalayan village life for a young Bhutanese monk in a new documentary, Sing Me A Song.
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‘Your White Supremacy, like Kurtz’s, still haunts our modern world’
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a novel more quoted - often misleadingly, to make a contemptuous point about Africa - than read. But here’s a film that gives the book an original, urgent and powerful update.
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‘We have been abandoned by every single President’
A crowd patiently waits in the town square for the President who has agreed to discuss complaints about post-conflict development. Finally a helicopter appears – and flies on because the President has changed his mind.
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She looks at her sons in anger, thinking they’ll grow like their fathers, ‘that they’ll also rape’
Thousands of civilians around the world are caught in the crosshairs between army and rebels, with one set of armed men raping, pillaging and burning before abandoning the territory to the next bunch of brigands.
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‘This film is dedicated to queer Africans’
The opening shots of I Am Samuel encapsulate the dilemma of this documentary about a gay Kenyan couple: its gentle opening moments are shattered by a shockingly violent public homophobic attack.
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The presstitute fighting death by a thousand cuts
Journalist Maria Ressa. Is a ‘presstitute”, according to President Rodrigo Duterte of The Philippines and his activist supporters.
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Palestinian portrait of offices and Occupation
Local government “is the most beautiful field of work in our country.” Can you really make an interesting documentary from that idea?
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Trying to fill the cracks in Africa’s Great Green Wall
Forest precedes Man, desert follows. That’s what Africa’s Great Green Wall is designed to counteract.
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Band of heroes
Twelve young teacher musicians from the dusty dirt roads of a Kampala slum take their joyous brass sound to the UK.
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Citizen Penn’s ‘act of redemption’ in Haiti
Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn shows how aid agencies should work in emergencies. Really?
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Nine lives in search of a home
‘Nine Lives‘ is a cry from the heart of a Zimbabwean seeking asylum.
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Culture clash makes waves in a Bangladeshi village
“You are going to shoot a first feature, in Bangladesh, during monsoon, on boats? May Allah be with you! Allahu Akbar!”
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A Palestinian family up against the Wall
200 Metres is a film about a family divided by the Israeli Wall that turns into a Palestine road movie and then into a thriller.
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Farewell Amor, hello family
Many migration films focus on the generation gap between the original immigrants and their British offspring. Farewell Amor adds a variation: the gap between a long-settled arrival and the left-behind spouse.