Cameraperson – Review Phil W. Bayles January 29, 2017 Reviews It’s often said that the act of observing something affects the behaviour of the thing that’s being observed, but it’s equally true that it changes the person doing the observing. In Cameraperson,...
Golden Girl – Doc/Fest Review 2016 Ellen Dwyer June 18, 2016 Reviews Frida Wallberg is a Swedish World Champion boxer; the film starts with her defending her title with success, but then follows her journey as her second fight as defending champion almost costs her her life....
Snow Monkey – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 18, 2016 Reviews Oliver Stone reckoned that the first casualty of war is innocence, and if George Gittoes’ documentary Snow Monkey is anything to go by, he was right. Gittoes, a war photographer who has spent decades in war...
Sonita – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Ellen Dwyer June 18, 2016 Reviews Sonita is a powerful documentary about a fourteen year old Afghanistan refugee, now living in Iran, as she dreams of becoming a female rapper in a country where women singing is illegal and her family demands...
Unlocking the Cage – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Ellen Dwyer June 15, 2016 Reviews Unlocking The Cage follows a small team of lawyers and animal right activists spearheaded by one man, animal rights lawyer Steven Wise, as they boldly set out to make history by proposing that animals should...
Presenting Princess Shaw – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 15, 2016 Reviews Someone once said that putting videos on YouTube is like throwing messages in bottles out into a churning sea made up entirely of messages in bottles. Israeli YouTuber Kutiman (real name Ophir Kutiel) plucks...
The Confession – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 15, 2016 Reviews In the eyes of the British government, Moazzam Begg is a dangerous man - a radical extremist with connections to extremist Islamist groups from Bosnia to Afghanistan. Begg, who was born in Birmingham to...
Notes On Blindness – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Ellen Dwyer June 15, 2016 Reviews As University lecturer John Hull started to lose his sight in the early 1980s he recorded an audio diary of three years, which documented his journey to total blindness, utter despair and finally renewed...
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Ellen Dwyer June 14, 2016 Reviews Dr Maya Angelou has had an incredible life and it is her gravitas and presence which makes this documentary. From her early childhood to her final days the film follows her life in detail through a wide...
#MyEscape – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 14, 2016 Reviews The mass wave of refugees fleeing the Middle East for countries like Germany is unlike any diaspora in living memory; not just in its scale but in the way it is being documented. We’re all used to seeing...
Ambulance – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 13, 2016 Reviews In 2014, war broke out between Israel and Palestine and the city of Gaza suffered 51 consecutive days of bombing. While most people tried to get as far away as possible, young filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly grabbed...
Rwanda & Juliet – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 13, 2016 Reviews There’s something more than a little off-putting about the start of Rwanda & Juliet. The idea mounting a production of Shakespeare’s immortal love story in a country still scarred by genocide is...
Crash And Burn – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 13, 2016 Reviews Motorsport pundits like Eddie Jordan will tell you that Tommy Byrne was one of the greatest drivers to ever compete in Formula One. Byrne himself, now working as an instructor in the US, would tell you that...
Life Animated – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Ellen Dwyer June 13, 2016 Reviews Rarely is a documentary about a disability uplifting, rarely does it have the audience in stitches and even rarer is it filled with clips of Disney. Life Animated has all three. Owen Suskind (23) is a young...
Command And Control – Doc/Fest 2016 Review Phil W. Bayles June 13, 2016 Reviews In movies, the launching of a nuclear missile is undertaken with the utmost solemnity. Stony-faced men in military uniforms speak into big red telephones, nod silently at each other and turn keys in unison. In...