Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/3/2019)

It's 1993 and writer Jacques Tondelli (Pierre Deladonchamps) returns from dinner with hustler friend Jean-Marie (Quentin Thébault) to chat with journalist neighbour, Mathieu (Denis Podalydès), who has been babysitting Loulou (Tristan Farge), the young son with whom Jacques shares custody with his mother, Isabelle (Sophie Letourneur). They smoke heroin, as Jacques blames his father for the fact he is broke. However, the jovial mood changes when Marco (Thomas Gonzalez) leaves a phone message to ask if Jacques can put him up for a few days, as he is close to losing his battle with AIDS. 

Meanwhile, in Rennes, student Arthur Prigent (Vincent Lacoste) teases girlfriend Nadine (Adèle Wismes) about the fact she has so few books in her room. She wants him to spend the night and accidentally tosses his keys into the guttering outside her window. Arthur shares digs with Pierre (Clément Métayer), but often sneaks out at night to go cottaging. When Jacques comes to Brittany to supervise the staging of one of his plays, he ducks into a cinema showing Jane Campion's The Piano (1993) to let his temper cool and notices Arthur watching him across the empty auditorium. Slipping into the next seat, Jacques flirts with Arthur while discussing the fact that life is often dumber than films and offers to meet up with him later that evening. 

While waiting outside the theatre, Jacques is hijacked by an actress in the production (Marlene Saldana), who reveals that he is HIV+ while walking him back to his hotel. Following at a discreet distance, Arthur seems unconcerned by the news and invites Jacques back to his flat. On realising that Pierre is having a party, Arthur suggests they drive to Mont St Michel and watch the sunrise. But Jacques considers this a cornball offer and is about to make his excuses when Arthur kisses him. Following a quick fumble in a dark corner of the courtyard, the pair head to a snack bar, where Arthur is surprised to learn that his conquest is a famous writer. 

When he says he prefers dead authors, Jacques smiles that he won't have long to wait. They chat about their backgrounds, with Jacques claiming to have been unloved by his family and too ready to sleep with people who could help his career. Arthur describes the pain of losing his father in a car crash at 15 and having to leave his boarding school. But neither reveals too much, as Jacques doesn't expect to see Arthur again, even though he gives him a phone number and allows him to spend a chaste night in his bleach-scented hotel room.

Back in Paris, Jacques shares a bath with Marco, who is in a bad way and can barely climb into the tub. As the cuddle in the warm water, they reminisce about their liaison, with Marco accusing Jacques of always over-complicating things. Enjoying the feel of another body close to his, Jacques tries to prolong the encounter, but Marco is in pain and annoys his host over breakfast by revealing that he is going to back to his boyfriend's place after the weekend. Slipping out of the room to let them squabble in peace, Loulou sits by the open window and works quietly at his French knitting. 

When Loulou leaves to spend time with his mother, Marco gets tearful because he knows he'll never see him again. But Jacques snaps at him and badgers Loulou to hurry up when he stops to coddle a neighbour's baby. Nadine also gets cross with Arthur when he stops to pick-up Stéphane (Luca Malinowski), a hitcher he keeps checking out in the rearview mirror. Having dropped Nadine off, Arthur takes Stéphane home and they have just had sex when Jacques calls out of the blue. He hadn't replied to any of Arthur's postcards, but now urges him to get rid of his guest so they can chat about the nicknames gays use to codify the different types of men. Fascinated, Arthur starts taking notes and each fantasises about having the conversation in the flesh. 

Borrowing Mathieu's car, Jacques sets out for Brittany in the middle of the night. But he thinks better of it and turns around. He has started to write to Arthur, however, and he keeps some of the missives in his tent at the summer camp where he is working as a counsellor. Notwithstanding their break-up, Nadine drops in to see Arthur telling a story to the kids on the beach and lingers until after lights out to discuss his antics with other men while they were dating. She confesses that she has told her parents that he's gay and he is concerned that they will contact his mother, who has no idea about his lifestyle. They are disturbed when some of the older kids create a ruckus and she leaves after reading some of the lustful remarks in Jacques's note.

He keeps seeing Jean-Marie and they are on a trip together when he learns that Marco has died. During a check-up, Jacques is informed by the doctor (Loïc Mobihan) that he has a nasty infection that will require him to be hospitalised for tests. However, the doctor reassures him that he is doing well and shouldn't worry unduly. Feeling down, Jacques wanders the streets and has a half-hearted tryst with a stranger before wandering past the theatre where Isabelle Huppert is starring in Orlando (1994). Suffering from stomach ache, he has a bath and imagines Marco with him in the tub. But he knows, in truth, he is sharing his fate and feels more resigned than resilient.

Arthur comes to see him, but Jacques hides out in Mathieu's apartment because he is hooked up to a drip and doesn't want to be pitied. Mathieu despairs of him and, when he mentions that Arthur is going to an ACT UP meeting, he suggests that he also shows a bit more solidarity with his fellow sufferers to ensure that the authorities and the pharmaceutical companies do something to tackle the epidemic blighting their community. 

However, Jacques can't stay away and, the next afternoon, he follows Arthur to the Seine and admits to fibbing about being away. He has to go into hospital the next day and is feeling fragile, but Arthur insists he is happy just to spend time together and they return to Mathieu's apartment for an evening of drink and dancing. Slumping on the sofa, Arthur gives his views on gay Frenchmen and asks if they can all share a bed. However. Mathieu feels uncomfortable when Arthur gets frisky and leaves him with Jacques, with a mixture of envy and embarrassment. 

While Jacques is admitted, Arthur explores art galleries and goes to the cemetery in Montparnasse to visit the grave of François Truffaut. He arrives at the hospital to meet Isabelle and Loulou and admits to being surprised because he had no idea they existed. As the latter doesn't want to see his father in distress, he goes outside and Arthur keeps him company. When mother and son leave, he undresses to lie beside Jacques, who had collapsed after watching from the window as Arthur and Loulou played with some kittens that a woman had tried to smuggle in to show the patient she was visiting. He laughs at how shameless Arthur can be and snuggles up to him. 

Returning to Rennes to say his goodbyes, Arthur meets up with Nadine, Pierre and Fabrice (Rio Vega) and breaks the news he is moving to Paris to make films and be with the man he loves. On the way to a nightclub, he calls Jacques from a pay phone and, after leaving a message, waits for him to ring back. However, he has just handed over his diary and his final manuscript to Mathieu, as he plans to kill himself to avoid a lingering decline that will only upset his loved ones and cause himself unnecessary pain. He hopes that Loulou will think fondly of him and forgive him for his shortcomings as a father. As the doors close on the lift, as Jacques heads up to his apartment, Arthur sits on a wall waiting for a call that will never come. 

Despite its frequent brushes with cliché and sentimentality, this is an involving and touching drama that recalls a dark time without rancour or recrimination and thoroughly merited the prestigious Prix Louis-Delluc. Pierre Deladonchamps and Vincent Lacoste may spend much of the picture apart, but they have an insouciant chemistry that makes their unlikely relationship work without straining for romantic effect. Deladonchamps's scenes with Denis Podalydès and Thomas Gonzalez are also nicely judged, as Honoré recalls how loss became as inevitable a part of homosexuality as the anguish of coming out. 

Indeed, he manages to touch on all of the main plot strands of gay cinema in this period without resorting to the kind of crude sexual gymnastics that were not uncommon in edgier movies. Moreover, by hanging a poster for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) on Deladonchamps's wall, Honoré also manages to namecheck an icon of gay cinema, while also paying his respects to another key influence on his work, François Truffaut. 

Both Jacques and Arthur (possibly named for Demy and Rimbaud?) are flawed individuals, with the former cruelly denying Marco his chance to say farewell to Loulou and the latter blithely endangering Nadine's health with his nocturnal adventures. But, while the self-centred Jacques consistently complicates things and Arthur acts before he thinks, they seem well suited and there is genuine regret in Jacques's lament that he tried to avoid seeing Arthur because he knows their relationship is doomed before it can begin. 

Yet, in working parts of his own experience and personality into these characters, Honoré also recognises the value of friends and Adèle Wismes, Sophie Letourneur, the ever-excellent Podalydès and the admirably mature Tristan Farge all make telling contributions, as do cinematographer Rémy Chevrin, production designer Stéphane Taillasson and editor Chantal Hymans, who helps Honoré weave his tale of two cities without it feeling overly convoluted or coy.

The latest presentation from CinemaItaliaUK arrives at the Genesis Cinema in East London on 24 March and takes us to Castel Volturno, the Neopolitan hinterland town that has already been the setting for Matteo Garrone's The Embalmer (2002), Gomorrah (2008) and Dogman (2018). Indeed, The Vice of Hope also marks a return to this rundown coastal district for director Edoardo De Angelis, who used it as the setting for Indivisible (2017), a study of exploited conjoined twins that starred Angela and Marianna Fontana.

Living in a rough seaside community, Maria (Pina Turco) works as a minder for Aunt Mari (Marina Confalone), who trafficks the babies born to the prostitutes at her brothel, Volturno. As her mother (Cristina Donadio) is an addict, Maria can't afford to lose her job, which entails taking the girls upriver to a shack presided over by the shaven-headed Marcolina (Imma Mauriello). However, she is put under pressure when Fatima (Odette Gomis) vanishes and Hope and Natalie inform Maria that she has run away because she has decided to keep her baby. Aunt Mari warns Maria of the consequences of losing a girl, but she confesses that she has not been concentrating on the task in hand for the past three months because she is pregnant. 

Having performed surgery on Maria when she was abused as a child, Doctor Corvino (Marcello Romolo) is amazed that she has conceived (as is Maria, as she claims it doesn't have a father). He warns her that she will almost certainly die unless she has an abortion, but Maria feels as though the God who has never shown her any mercy might, for once, be on her side. Her friend Tina has also had some bad news, as she has a tumour and has decided to get married before having an operation. Maria wishes her well, as the hem of her white dress is muddied by the puddles on a typically cold and wet day and urges her not to fret about the four babies she gave away because she was doing her best for them. 

Annoyed at finding Fatima, who claims to have returned after a change of heart, Maria drops her off on the bank away from Marcolina's place and urges her to make for the local church, where the priest will help her keep her baby. Rather than return home, Maria asks old friend Blessing (Juliet Esey Joseph) if she and her loyal pet, Dog, can stay with her at the shack she shares with her disabled daughter, Virgin (Yvonne Zidiouemba), and other African women in need of sanctuary. They are celebrating Christmas and Maria tucks into chicken and potatoes, while Virgin fusses over Dog. She knows she won't be able to stay long, but she is happy to have somewhere to lie low while she considers her next move. 

Maria remembers Virgin as a baby and, as they share her single bed, she gives her a knitted hoodie as a gift. She is convinced she is carrying a son and Virgin asks if she will name him Man. When she introduces Maria to neighbour Carlo Pengue (Massimiliano Rossi), she makes the same joke, as they tuck into barbecued chicken. A former carnival barker, Pengue shows them the unwanted souvenir photographs he took of kids on the Tilt-a-Whirl and curses the parents who were too cheap to pay for a nice memory. 

Maria recognises herself in her First Communion dress and Pengue remembers her being the only child he ever photographed who wasn't afraid. However, she was abducted shortly after the picture was taken and he falls silent when she starts to cry. In order to help her reclaim the moment, Pengue takes the pair along the riverbank to the fairground and joins them in riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, with its lights blazing and music blaring out into the winter night. Whooping with joy, Maria lets herself be transported back to a happy place she never dreamed she would revisit.

Two weeks later, Blessing tells Maria that she needs to start earning her keep. But she refuses to prostitute herself and only just manages to get away when Marcolina lands on the jetty in search of her. Running across the fields, Maria hides out in the marshes. However, Dog is bitten by a snake and dies and she wanders into the nearest town to seek help from the priest. She sees Fatima (who appears to be working the streets) and, changing her mind on the doorstep, Maria catches the bus back to the brothel, where Aunt Mari sees her return from her balcony. 

Now 28 weeks pregnant, Maria agrees to see the doctor and her mother accompanies her. Aunt Mari is there and she tells Maria that her baby will go to the woman who had bought Fatima's child (who is now with social services). Her mother asks if they can have some money for the baby, but Aunt Mari says they are already in her debt and the best she can do is call things quits. If they want cash, they will have to work for it. Compounding her misery, Maria learns that Tina has died and, when her mother says it must be nice to sleep forever, Maria declares that she won't bother to wake her next time she overdoses. 

After 40 weeks, Maria boards the little boat to take her to Marcolina's place, where she is billeted in a tiny room with two other girls. She talks to her bump to make sure it knows she was its mother and shows it the difference between hot and cold by exposing her belly to the fire and the open door. Next morning, she slips out and takes Marcolina's horse on to the beach and tries to shoo it away. However, she is cattle prodded by her jailer and wakes to find Aunt Mari sitting in a deckchair on the tideline. She tells Maria that freedom is merely an empty field, while slavery has rules and rewards that make life tolerable. 

Aunt Mari asks where she'll go if she leaves and Maria says Pengue will take her in. The old woman scoffs because he has been ostracised since being accused of raping Maria when she was seven (when, in fact, he was the one to pull her out of the river). But Maria has made up her mind and she takes the boat to ask Pengue if he will raise her child if she fails to survive its birth. They take the boat and grab Virgin from her mother's shack to spare her a life of humiliation and speed along the coast to find a refuge. Stopping on a windswept beach, they find a derelict structure and Pengue lights a fire and prays to the God he doesn't believe in, while Maria gives birth. Cutaways show Fatima, Maria's mother and sister, Aunt Mari, Blessing and Marcolina, who drops her cattle prod on the rocks as the black horse gallops away across the sand. As the film ends to the mesmerising sound of the rolling waves, Maria introduces her son to the world, as the sun comes up over the sea. 

Every bit as gritty and uncompromising as Dogman, this compelling drama ends with a curious post-crawl coda that seems to feature Edoardo De Angelis tiptoeing into the beach hut where the four fugitives are sleeping to put some extra wood on the fire, cover the baby and place Maria's hand on its little crib. If that is the director cameoing, it's poignantly effective and well worth waiting until the end of the credits for this deft variation on all those paintings of the Holy Family. 

It's easy to see why Castel Volturno keeps luring film-makers, as it must be amongst the bleakest places on the entire peninsula. Nevertheless, production designer Carmine Guarino does a magnificent job in making the shambolic structures at the coast and along the Volturno River feel lived in and alternately forbidding and cosy. Cinematographer Ferran Paredes Rubio also captures the landscape with such bleak authenticity that one can almost feel the cold and damp coming through the screen to the accompaniment of Enzo Avitabile's potent score. 

Writing in collaboration with Umberto Contarello, whose credits include Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2013) and Loro (2018), De Angelis pulls few punches in depicting the misery that (the presumanly Camorra-connected) Marina Confalone inflicts upon the luckless women who come into her orbit. However, after already surviving one brush with death, the excellent Pina Turco is ready to beat the odds again in not only defying the sinister Confalone, but also in deciding to keep the child that could kill her. One wonders how long the slumbering foursome will be left in peace, as they won't have gone far in Massimiliano Rossi's little boat and will make a very identifiable group, with the limping Yvonne Zidiouemba in tow. Nevertheless, few will disagree that, given the sobering alternatives, their risk is well worth taking.

Born in Baghdad, Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji sought refuge in the Netherlands in 1995. Having studied theatre in Iraq, he trained as a cinematographer and director at university in Leeds and has since produced a number of features and documentaries examining life in his homeland. Both Ahlaam (2006) and Son of Babylon (2010) assessed the effect of the US invasion on ordinary people and he continues with this theme in The Journey, which is set on 30 December 2006. Sharing a neo-realist ambience with Youssef Chahine's Cairo Station (1958) and a central premise with Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now (2005), this has its moments of contrivance and sentimentality. But it also captures the mood of a country at odds with its past and uncertain of its future. 

It's the first day of Eid and Baghdad Central Station is about to re-open after months of devastation. While security is tight for the arrival of the American and French ambassadors, Sara (Zahraa Gandour) manages to mingle with a party of schoolchildren to get past the troops guarding the concourse after approaching through the sidings. With a haversack on her back and her waist packed with explosives to make her look pregnant, she removes her hair covering and prepares to press the button to blow herself up. 

But something makes her delay and she wanders away from the crowds and up a staircase to look down on the station from above. Chased down by a security guard, Sara surveys the scene around her. Mona, a young flower seller (Huda Abd Al Ameer) clings to the leg of an American soldier in the hope he will buy from her and takes out her frustration on her stuttering shoe-shiner brother, Ali (Hayder Abd Al Ameer), who she castigates for his laziness. Near Nadia (Haneen Raad Qasim), a burqa-wearing woman clinging to a holdall, a mother (Kazemih Hindi Imran) urges her teenage daughter (Zahraa Emad Abdul Hussen) to put on the shoes that complete her wedding ensemble. Her hectoring is accompanied by the music being played by a small band of buskers led by a clarinettist-singer Hassan, (Ali Al Khassaf), but they can't drown out the chatter of Salam (Ameer Ali Jabarah), as he hollers into his mobile phone and slaps cigarette seller Jasim (Hassanein Al Rubaie) for talking back to him. 

Sitting on a bench to compose herself, Sara is mortified when the cocky Salam sashays over and plonks himself beside her. He claims to be a prosthetic limb salesman, but he also has a number of dodgy sidelines. Aware she is being watched by her controllers, Sara tries to give him the slip, but he follows her and she pins him to a wall in annoyance. Spotting the detonator in his hand, Salam pleads for mercy, as Sara ushers him into an empty room off the main concourse. Babbling about being his widowed mother's only son, he makes a bolt for the door and ducks into some carriages in the marshalling yard. In jumping down, however, he hurts his knee and Sara slips a bundle of explosives into his jacket pocket to make him a more compliant hostage.

Challenged by a gun-toting station guard, Sara calmly explains that her husband has been traumatised by an explosion and is going to see a doctor in Basra who can help him recover. Accepting her story, the security man lets her return to the station, where they sit and watch the passing parade. The musician notices Maryam (Iamen Laeibi Mahdi) on a bench and sits beside her to apologise for the fact that he was unable to marry her because he had been a political prisoner for the last 22 years. She is furious that her family has disowned her and that she has waited in vain for all this time and he insists that he is in no position to marry her because he is broke and trying to reacclimatise to freedom. 

Ali sidles over to Sara and Salam to return a book of photographs that she had dropped. He asks to shine Salam's shoes and is hurt when he's told to make himself scarce. Keen to keep him isolated so he can't give her away, Sara directs Salam to a quieter part of the station. The reluctant bride nearly collides with them, as she makes an attempt to escape from her mother, and Sara panics when she hears American voices shouting about stopping a fleeing suspect. However, it's Nadia they are chasing and she forces her bag on Salam, as she runs through an engine shed. Sara pushes Salam behind a pile of sleepers, but he opens the bag and discovers it contains a crying baby.  

Salam cradles the infant and begs Sara to spare them, even though he admits to being a worthless crook who cheats everyone he meets by selling them shoddy goods. She snatches his phone when it rings and stamps on it, just as Mona approaches them with her plastic watering can full of wilting flowers. Anxious to keep her safe, Salam tells the girl to sling her hook. But she is mouthily persistent and threatens to call the soldiers unless they give her money. When they refuse, Mona begins shouting that they have stolen a baby and Sara stuffs some banknotes into her hand to silence her. Cursing them for being mean to her brother, the scrappy girl skips away mocking them for being such soft touches.  

As she walks along the sidings, however, she is ambushed by Jasim, the self-proclaimed King of the Station, and Sara and Salam look on impotently as the tweenager and his cohorts bully Mona and steal her money. Watching from a nearby train, Ali blames himself for being unable to help his sister and tosses away the colouring book he has hidden in the back of a seat in an empty carriage. Sara and Salam wander past and she takes the baby off him and deposits it in a concrete shed. He loses his temper and tells her she has no right to treat an innocent child in such a way and contradicts her claim of being a martyr seeking to punish the Americans and purify society by accusing her of being a heartless terrorist. Salam also suggests she's a hypocrite, as she would never detonate her bombs if her mother was present, and he gathers up the child while Sara's mind races like the train leaving the station behind her. 

Back on the concourse, Maryam watches the band playing, while Sara tells Salam to feed the baby when it starts crying. The little girl looks into her eyes as she drinks and Sara has to steel herself. However, they are interrupted by Ali, who hands Sara a brown envelope that someone had asked him to pass on to her and tells her to keep the money, as he didn't like the man who gave it to him. Finding a golden wedding ring inside the package, Sara locks Salam inside a phone kiosk so she can call her mother. She asks if the medicine she has sent has arrived and apologises for not having seen her for so long, as she has been busy. Trying to keep a tremble out of her voice, Sara wishes her mother a happy Eid and hurries into the washroom to gather herself. As Salam peers through the door, he sees her place the ring on her wedding finger and recover her sense of purpose. 

A religious procession has snaked on to the concourse and Sara stands in the middle of the chanting worshippers. Before she can press the button, however, she and Salam are swept away by a security patrol and bundled into an interrogation room. While Sgt Mike Wood (Zion Forrest Lee) takes a call from home, Sara takes the bomb out of Salam's jacket pocket and tells him to take the baby. He is led away, while Sara is taken into another room, where the child's mother is being questioned. Wood asks Sara to translate, as he intimidates the terrified woman and she explains that her bag contained her daughter and that she had given her away because men from her home village in the north are trying to kill her for bringing shame by conceiving out of wedlock. Wood loses his temper and puts a gun to the woman's throat when she blames the Americans for arresting her lover, but Sara invents a story that she had been hoping to join her baby's father in the US and Wood suddenly mellows and surprises his oppos by ordering them to let the pair go. 

Like a sleepwalker emerging from a trance, Sara drops the ring on the ground and explains that she had been convinced of her mission by a sheikha. Returning the infant to its mother, they board a train after Salam promises Sara that everything will be okay. They haven't gone far, however, before another suicide bomber blows themselves up and the passengers are ordered to head back to the station. Determined to rescue Sara, Salam steers her towards a rusting engine. But, on unbuttoning her shirt, he concludes that the device is too sophisticated for him to handle. While he goes off to find his friend, Hussein (who repairs radios), Ali and Mona turn the tables on Jasim and cling to each other, as she realises that he has been protecting her since their parents left to stay in Basra. 

Sara sits next to Maryam, who is comforting Abu Safaa (Ahmed Lafta Atia Daradji), an old man who is taking his son's coffin home. As a preacher denounces terrorists for misleading the people and turning them against their American liberators, the grieving father reveals that his boy was killed by a suicide bomber on his way to college and Sara feels a pang of guilt. Security guards inform them that the station is closing for curfew and Maryam joins the other members of the band in shouldering the casket, as Hassan leads them into the street with a mournful tune. The runaway bride joins them and Ali and Mona invite them all to stay at their lodgings for the night. 

As they settle down, Abu Safaa tells Sara to trust in God, as he will show her the right path. In the candlelight, she notices some drawings on the wall and Ali tells her that he saw his parents die and has been hiding the truth from his younger sister. She gives him the toy phone that had been a gift from her father and goes outside to join Mona in watching the Eid fireworks lighting up the city skyline. Inside, the band plays and the bride drapes her veil over Maryam's head. 

Fearful that Salam is not going to find her, Sara makes a phone call and is walking along the tracks when Salam catches up with her. He apologises for failing to find his friend, but takes her by handcart to the rendezvous with her handlers. Leaving him at the buffer at the end of the line, Sara approaches the vehicle. However, a police car hoves into sight and her contacts speed away and Sara and Salam are forced to flee along the railway lines and seek shelter in a bombed-out mosque. Sinking to her knees, Sara asks her companion how this will end. 

Waking alone the next morning, she looks up at the sun through a hole in the roof and curses the false promises that had brought her to this sorry state. Sobbing, she pleads for a second chance, as a verse from the Qu'aran is sung on the soundtrack. She returns to the station and the films ends on a close-up of Sara's intense expression, as she fixes her eyes forwards in a bid not to see any of her new friends going about their business on the concourse. At this calculatingly ambiguous juncture, the screen fades to black. 

It's never easy to juggle the disparate elements in a microcosmic saga like this one and some of the plot strands elude the grasp of Mohamed Al-Daradji and co-scenarist Isabelle Stead, as they try to weave them into a cohesive and cogent study of innocence unprotected. Ultimately, the threads involving the arranged marriage, the enforced separation and the bereaved father feel as though they have been included to tick thematic boxes, while Nadia's plight is largely skated over because her primary purpose is to present Sara with a moral dilemma that delays her mission. Even Sara and Salim are denied backstories, as Al-Daradji concentrates on their immediate situation in order to examine the potential ramifications of a suicide bombing rather than the ideology and/or individual histories that prompted it. 

As with Nicole Garcia's Gare du Nord (2013), the audience is asked to accept a number of specious coincidences and contrivances in order for the storyline to develop. The laxity of the security will perplex many, particularly during the interrogation sequence, in which Sara is able to pick Salam's pocket without any of the supposedly highly trained soldiers noticing. Moreover, it's unlikely that US troops would pick a random stranger to translate for them, especially in what is clearly viewed as a critical situation. Nevertheless, Al-Daradji succeeds in making the scene unbearably tense, while also making his point about the disconnect between ordinary Iraqis and the invading infidels intent on portraying themselves as liberators.  

Rarely letting her sunken-eyed mask of focused impassivity slip, Zahraa Gandour makes a chillingly unpredictable protagonist, while con man Ameer Ali Jabarah deftly sheds his sleazy charisma to become her unlikely conscience. Siblings Hayder and Huda Abd Al Ameer also show well, as the orphans struggling to survive in the face of their bullying peers and general societal indifference. On the technical side, Saef Alden and Duraid Munajim's camerawork has a fluidity and an immediacy that is reinforced by Al-Daradji and Pascale Chavance's careful editing, while delicate use is made of Fabien Kourtzer and Mike Kourtzer's score. So, despite its schematics and caricatures, this heartfelt snapshot of Iraq's ongoing nightmare is both effective and affecting.

One hundred and seventeen years after Georges Méliès invented cinematic science fiction, Argentinian debutant Joaquín Cambre borrows the title of the Frenchman's pioneering fantasy, A Trip to the Moon, for a slice of magic realism that is consciously divided into a `quiet' and a `crazy' half. It's a bold conceit and Cambre is ably abetted by his inspired creative staff and a cast that fully enters into the spirit of a saga that never quite has the dramatic courage of its visual convictions. Nevertheless, this is an intriguing outing and one that exposes the timidity of so much British film-making. 

Riding home after cycling in an empty swimming pool, 14 year-old Tomas (Ángelo Mutti Spinetta) muses on our place in the grand scheme of things and how time whizzes past without us being able to do a thing about it. He lives in a Buenos Aires tenement block with parents Susana (Leticia Brédice) and Aníbal (Germán Palacios), as well as his younger brother, Coco (Tiziano Duarte), and his older sister, Juliana (Micaela Amaro), who refuses to eat the supper her mother has prepared and tries to order pizza to eat in her room with her boyfriend (Julian Ponce Campos).  

Leaving the table, Tomas goes into his own room to gaze at the Moon through his telescope. However, he sees a pink laser beam being directed at him and sees teenager Iris (Ángela Torre) waving at him in her bra. Interrupted by Susana, Tomas insists he is studying geography, but dozes off on his bed and has his recurring nightmare about the car crash when he was a boy (Justino Mutti Spinetta) that killed his father. When Dr Livenson (Luis Machin) asks if he still has his dream. Tomas lies and the psychiatrist declares that they are making good progress and gives him another prescription for his medication. 

Best friend Checho (Luca Tedesco) has a plan to break into the staffroom and steal the papers so they can pass a geography exam. But Tomas is distracted when Iris approaches with her boyfriend (Federico Venzi) and teases him that he would be better off spying on her than gazing at the Moon. Space fascinates Tomas and he is reading a booklet he bought from a street market when Susana comes in with his dinner on a tray and his tablet. She insists on watching him take it, but he doesn't swallow the little blue pill and puts in a Tic Tac box, which he hides away. 

Susana disapproves of Tomas's friendship with Checho, as she thinks he's an idiot. He fails in his bid to steal the exam papers and Tomas is surprised he doesn't have a Plan B. But Checho promises he will think of something. On his way home, Tomas is stopped by Iris's boyfriend, who stomps on his glasses and the boy has a panic attack that pitches him back into the crashing car. He views the Moon through the cracked right lens and seems unconcerned by this hindrance to his vision. Instead, he covers his wall and ceiling with egg cartons to make it feel like the inside of an Apollo spacecraft. 

Much to his surprise, Iris comes to the apartment and she apologises for her boyfriend's boorish behaviour. She also tells him to let her know when he's finished redecorating his room and he nods. His father is amused to see an older girl calling on him, but everyone turns a blind eye to Juliana making out in the pantry. However, Susana gets cross with Tomas when he packs winter clothes for their forthcoming trip to Brazil and she wishes he would behave normally for once (after he wobbles along on his bike with a pile of cardboard boxes lashed to the back).

Hanging out at the empty pool with Checho, Tomas spots Iris rolling a cigarette on the other side. Checho recognises her from school and sends Tomas to ask if she can remember the questions on the geography paper, as he has been told by his parents that they will confiscate his stuff if he's held back a year. Instead, they lie on the tiles and watch the clouds move across the sky. He invites her to look at the Blood Moon through his telescope and she listens intently, as he explains the phenomenon. However, he drifts off into a reverie, in which Iris floats through space singing along to her guitar with astronauts in formation around her. She snaps him back on to terra firma and invites him to a party.

Checho accompanies him to the rooftop bash and they feel out of place among the older kids. But a drop of alcohol and the sight of Iris dancing under the strobe lights takes Tomas out of his shell and he bops along with her until the effects of the hooch and the adrenaline cause him to pass out, with a vision of an astronaut floating alone in space. When he wakes, he is disappointed to see Iris smooching with her beau and, in red-tinted light, he goes home and crushes his pills into a fruit smoothie using Juliana's vegan tubs from the fridge. 

With the test looming, Checho is furious with Tomas for not asking Iris about the paper and says he will blame him if he fails. He tries to get the paper Juliana sat, but her boyfriend tears it up when they catch him in her room and she slaps his face when he insults them. During his next appointment with Livenson, Tomas declares that he has made all the preparations for a trip to the Moon and the doctor decides to double the dosage of his medication. Iris comes to see him and strums on her guitar before looking at some lunar craters through his telescope. She says she'll drop by tomorrow, but he scares her by looming over her and telling her that he is going on a long journey and won't be around. 

Going to Brazil depends on passing the test, but Tomas has no intention of taking it. He sends a copy of Juliana's selotaped paper to Checho after seeing Iris's face in the Mélièsian Moon. He has made his window look like a rocket porthole and dresses in dark blue pyjamas that have a spacesuit sheen before removing his glasses to sleep. 

The next morning, he slips a note under his locked door asking his family to go along with him. Anibal can barely rouse himself to get out of bed, but Susana is scared and calls Livenson, who tells her to go with the flow. She knocks on Tomas's door and the next shot shows Susana, Anibal and Juliana in grey spacesuits inside a rocket with lots of flashing lights on its vaguely authentic dashboard. Coco is already suited up as co-pilot and Tomas reassures his mother that everything is going to be okay.

The reluctant travellers are surprised by the juddering effects of take off and Juliana throws a tantrum because she refuses to use the space toilet. Anibal is busy with his phone, but Susana wants to know why Tomas is so intent on taking this trip. He says he is on a mission because a decade has passed since the momentous car journey and, when Anibal grumbles about him raking over old coals, Susana tells him to take responsibility for what happened. 

Angry at having to play along with her little brother, Juliana lashes out at him and accidentally kicks out one of her mother's dental implants. As she refuses to use the toilet facilities, she wets herself and is still sulking as Tomas serves them food from a refrigerated pod. For a brief moment, the family shares a meal together. But they are interrupted by Iris coming to collect her guitar and Anibal gets knocked out trying to open the door. Tomas also slumps down into a flashback to the Red Moon night when Anibal had told his son not to tell Susana about the crash that has evidently killed the occupant(s) of the car that Tomas had watched burn while his father was unconscious at the wheel. 

Coming round with blood coming from the back of his head, Tomas smears the porthole when he presses his hand on the glass. He decides to end the mission and fetches a key. But he is too weak to fit it into the lock and he hallucinates that Iris keeps calling to him as the Woman in the Moon. Jettisoning Aribal out of the door and into oblivion, Tomas lands on the lunar surface and goes for a space walk. He notices Iris's trainer imprints in the dust and finds her sitting in her normal clothes on a rock. She removes his helmet and persuades him to take a pink pill and tells him to relax. They look over to the Earth and she reminds him that he had told her the Moon was its mirror image and suggests that they can stay here and watch themselves as the Sun is blotted out in an eclipse. 

Suddenly, we're in Livenson's office and Tomas is supported by Susana and Juliana as he finishes telling them what happened on the fateful night a decade ago. Anibal arrives late and is told to stay for a serious chat, as Tomas is allowed to leave and he cycles off. He repeats the theory about time and experience from the opening, but has now realised that the key to being adrift in space is to learn how to float. Arriving at the empty pool, he plonks himself down next to Checho, who has the slumped posture of someone who failed his exam. As he turns to look at him. Tomas is yanked into the full pool by Iris and they swim in the depths as the credits roll. 

With Tomas's condition somewhat sketchily limned and the precise nature of the trauma's cause only being hinted at in a self-consiously stylised reveal, not everyone is going to buy the sudden shift from pastel rite of passage to steel grey fantasy, but writer-director Joaquín Cambre is to be applauded for such an audacious sleight of hand, even though he comes back down to Earth with something of an anticlimactic bump. Exploring how everyday items can play an extraordinary role in the construction of a coping mechanism, the story of Tomas's life-changing odyssey is designed and photographed with an exquisite eye for detail by Alejandra Isler and Nicolas Trovato. Emilio Haro's moiling score also does its job to perfection, as Cambre boldy goes without exactly taking a giant step. 

He's superbly served by Ángelo Mutti Spinetta, whose face has a choirboy innocence that is clouded by the troubling thoughts that keep haunting him. In many ways, his chemistry with Ángela Torre tilts the story in the direction of a Young Sheldon variation on the Leonard-Penny romance in The Big Bang Theory. The odd faint echo can also be heard from Rachel Tunnard's Adult Life Skills (2016). But this ambitious project very much has its own personality and it's most likely that Méliès would love it.

While serving as a camera assistant on pictures like Wally Pfister's Transcendence (2014) and Spike Lee's Chi-Raq (2015), Bing Liu was recording hours of footage of himself and two skateboarding friends from Rockford, Illinois. Often holding the camera while careering through the empty streets on his board, Liu mostly kept the edge of the frame. But he is a vital presence in Minding the Gap, a remarkable documentary that shows what happens to the skaters from films like Stacey Peralta's Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) who didn't go on to land lucrative sponsorship and endorsement contracts and inspire a generation of alienated slackers. In many ways, this resembles executive producer Steve James's Oscar-winning basketball study, Hoop Dreams (1995). But it also feels like a compressed version of Michael Apted's celebrated Up series, which began with Seven Up! in 1964 and will continue with 63 Up later this year

Chinese-American Bing Liu has spent 12 years filming pals Zack Mulligan and Keire Johnson. As Zack is white and Keire is black and younger than the other two, they make a distinctive trio, as they spurn the custom-built skate parks to zip around the streets and concourses of Rockford, Illinois on their battered boards. We first see them climbing a fire escape before deciding not to do anything reckless and return to ground level to glide with an relishable sense of freedom across a traffic-free bridge and off into the dusk distance. 

The scene is deceptive, however, as the trio's daily lives are anything but blissfully carefree. Seventeen year-old Zack is expecting a baby with girlfriend Nina Bowgren. But, as he divides his time between skating and smoking dope, the need to become a responsible adult seems beyond him. By contrast, mother Roberta considers Keire to be a bright lad who can find a niche in the world. However, as he was often brutally beaten by his father as a child, he has developed a fearsome temper and Liu records him smashing his own skateboard and that of a kid who had been bullying him. When asked about the incident, Keire declares that the parental punishments he used to receive would nowadays be considered child abuse and he admits to having cried as a boy because he believed everyone did. 

Some years after their skating heyday, Liu pays a call on Eric, the owner of Groundfloor Skateboards, who had been convinced he was gay because he was such an introspective child. However, he had discovered that Liu was having such problems with his mom that skating had become his way of staying sane rather than just looking cool. We see a montage of the younger Zack and Keire doing tricks to Nathan Halpern and Chris Ruggiero's lovely piano score and they pull off some neat moves with a palpable sense of being in their element. But Keire snaps his board during one flip and a close-up reveals that he has written on it, `This Device Cures Heartache.'

Advancing a few years, Zack and Nina are parents and keep arguing over who should look after baby Elliot. He has found a job with erratic hours. But, as Nina makes much more money as a waitress, she feels entitled to the odd night out with her friends and, even though Zack dotes on his son, he feels stir crazy and picks a fight with Nina the moment she gets home. However, things start to look up when a downtown gym asks Zack to build some skateboard ramps, as his carpenter father, Rory, had taught him the basics while converting his mother's roller rink into an indoor skate park. Glad to take time out from his dishwashing job, Keire helps out and Zack regrets becoming estranged from Rory after he suddenly switched from being laid-back to ultra-strict and began imposing all sorts of rules and expectations that caused him to rebel. 

Despite the change in fortunes. Nina and Zack continue to argue and Liu asks if they have ever thought about sitting down and talking things out. But Zack says `nope' with a degree of macho incredulity that explains why Nina moves out of their apartment to live with her Aunt Vickie. Keire is also finding it tough coping with Roberta's new boyfriend (whom he loathes) and Liu captures him urging his mother to end the relationship. He also recalls the day his father died and how shocked he was, even though they didn't get on. After his parents had separated, Keire had gone to live with his disciplinarian dad, but so resented being forced to take a Saturday job to help pay the bills that he had snapped and left home after punching him. 

Liu has a half-brother, Kent Abernathy, who shows him around the family home in a nice suburban street and the room in which Liu used to get walloped by their dad. Kent admits that just hearing the screams was scarring for him and Liu ventures that his torment explains why he invested so heavily in skating. He is also finding it difficult to accept that Zack and Nina are still apart, even though they clearly still have feelings for each other when they meet up for Elliot's birthday party. As Rory is also in attendance, Zack feels compelled to act out and pushes his luck while flirting with Nina, who flips him the finger before driving away in dismay at his immaturity. 

Once again, however, Liu comes to question what he witnesses when Zack's friend, Kyle, shows him a phone recording of Nina threatening to kill Zack during an argument (although we don't see the footage). When Liu confronts Nina about the incident, she insists he had been beating her and notes that Kyle hadn't bothered to record that. She says Zack threw her into a coffee table and shows Liu the scar on her eyebrow. Moreover, she also explains how Zack frequently became violent while under the influence and never apologised afterwards  Speaking openly to the camera, with composure and only the slightest sense of upset, Nina shrugs in asserting that that's the way things are in a town with above average male unemployment and other emasculating circumstances. 

Emboldened by Nina's frankness, Liu decides to interview his mother, Mengyue Bolen, who met his stepfather when he followed her home from her workplace. Clearly ill at ease in front of the camera, Mengyue swears that she knew nothing about the abuse that Liu had endured, but admits that Denis could be two-faced when he wasn't buttering her up. Liu holds his counsel, but there's little sense that he's satisfied with his mother's answers. 

Meanwhile, Zack begins complaining that he doesn't get enough time with Elliot. However, it's evident that he's drinking heavily and is still behaving like an adolescent. As a consequence, Keire has distanced himself from the gang and is now hanging out with some younger friends. They discuss seeing less of Zack and, after we hear him reveal in voiceover that his gym partner ran off without paying his bills and left him flat, another member of the group lets Liu into the apartment. The power has been cut off and there are cat and dog droppings everywhere. But there's no sign that Zack has been there in quite some time. 

Some detective work leads Liu to Denver, Colorado to find Zack working in a sandwich shop. He claims to be doing okay and has a new girlfriend, Sam. But it's clear from his interview with Liu that he's still not sure where he's going. Zack feels he's a bad influence on Elliot because Nina's family is more middle-class and mainstream in its choices. But, his bid to play the class card is trumped by Nina telling Liu that she is actively pursuing her ex for maintenance because she doesn't think it's fair that he can just duck out of his responsibilities. 

After an unspecified period of time, Zack returns to Rockford with Sam and seems content to let her pay for stuff, including a name tattoo on his wrist. He is drinking again and refusing to conform because he claims he has made his choices and shouldn't feel guilty about them. Nearby, Keire announces that he is moving out because his brother keeps stealing his cash. But he is relieved that Roberta is single again and he seems content playing with his young nephews. Liu tells Keire that he made his documentary because he saw something of himself in Keire and the way he handled his situation. He is flattered, but taken aback, as he doesn't necessarily think he's been having that tough a time. He goes to find his father John's grave. It takes some locating and Keire cries when he gets there. But he is soon skating again because it makes him feel good. 

Seeking closure in his own story, Liu interviews Mengyne again and she hopes that the film will help him move on because she thinks he needs to stop dwelling on the past. Despite still being on the defensive, however, she admits to understanding why her son would harbour resentments and wishes she could have done something to have protected him and make his youth less traumatic. 

When Liu asks Keire if he thinks Zack would hit women, he says no. But Zack reveals that, while he opposes violence, `the bitches' need slapping when they are yapping and trying to provoke. Zack confesses that he feels like a wreck and drinks to hide the fact that he knows his decisions keep making his life worse. He blames his parents for some of his problems, as they fought incessantly when he was 10-12. However, he doesn't think they messed him up. Instead, he opines that he adopted a clown persona and let it control him and then struggled to keep it up when harsh reality set in. But, even though Liu feels conflicted in the face of so much stacked evidence, he can't forget the fun-loving kid he grew up with and appears to cut his friend a little judgemental slack.  

Closing captions reveal that Nina is training to be a high school counsellor, while Zack is living with Sam and paying his way with Elliot by working as a roofing foreman. Keire has moved to Denver, where he not only found a job, but also a minor sponsorship deal with a skateboard shop. We see him doing some tricks. But, once again, he splinters his board when he gets frustrated. Lastly, Liu and Kent walked their mom down the aisle when she remarried. However, nobody looks particularly comfortable in the stiffly posed photograph to commemorate the happy day. 

It must have been a daunting task reducing footage amassed over 12 years to feature length. But the 24 year-old Liu and co-editor Joshua Altman to a magnificent job in piecing together the storylines, while also maintaining the conceit that the boyhood buddies were still in each other's Rockford pockets when they had actually drifted emotionally and physically apart. In addition to being an artistic endeavour, this is also clearly a cathartic exercise for Liu, as he decides to unleash his inner Howard Beale and confront his friends and family about the abuse they have both received and inflicted and consider the extent to which such dysfunctionalism is endemic in modern America. 

Intriguingly, while much of the damage is caused by father figures, the older mothers on view scarcely emerge scot-free in comparison with Nina, who has taken active steps to remove her child from harm's way and sought to ensure that Zack contributes financially, even though he may not yet be ready to be a role model. With this as his calling card, Liu seems set to build on his solid grounding with various Hollywood camera crews. It remains to be seen, however, whether he will be tempted back to Rockford to see how Zack and Keire are faring.

Since switching from being a writer for Spy magazine and Vanity Fair, 
Matt Tyrnauer has built himself quite a reputation as a documentarist. Having debuted with the prize-winning Valentino: The Last Emperor (2009), he has also been lauded for Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2107) and Studio 54 (2018). In between the latter pair came Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, which is showing this week in London under the Dochouse banner. A profile of 94 year-old Scotty Bowers that seeks to lift the lid on Tinseltown's clandestine liaisons, this feels very much like the work of an insider. But this is hardly surprising, as Tyrnauer's father, Robert van Scoyk, was one of America's leading writer-producers during the golden age of terrestrial television, with frequent credits to his name on such unmissable shows as The Virginian, Bonanza, Columbo and Murder, She Wrote. 

Loving being the centre of attention at his 90th birthday party at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, Scotty Bowers signs the odd copy of his revelatory autobiography, Full Service. Agent David Kuhn says he has told the truth with discretion and Stephen Fry, Variety veteran Peter Bart and Katharine Hepburn's biographer William Mann agree the veil needs to pulled back. Yet wife Lois Bowers can understand why people are cross that he has shattered illusions, as we see a flurried montage of famous faces who are about to have their closets flung open. 

Looking out over Los Angeles from his humble home, he claims to have painted the rainbow over the city and it came to earth at the Richfield gas station at 5777 Hollywood Boulevard, where he used to organise partners for gay, lesbian and bisexual movie stars. When one chat show host calls him a glorified pimp, Bowers agrees. But he was simply trying to help people in goldfish bowls escape for a few hours and be who they really were with no strings and no harm. 

Having joined the Marines at 18, Bowers had endured four years of war before opting against returning to his hometown and settling in Hollywood. His first customer at the gas station was Walter Pidgeon, who invited him to swim in his pool and one thing led to another. Journalist Paul Teetor suggests the town was waiting for a fixer like Bowers, as there were lots of crafts people and technicians seeking same-sex hook-ups at a time when the slightest hint of gossip could destroy a career. Among them were MGM set decorator Edwin B. Willis, who put the word about that Bowers could offer a service and he recruited some 20 assistants from the Crossroads of the World shopping mall on Sunset Boulevard. 

Charging $20 a visit, Bowers would arrange for clients to use a two-roomed trailer behind the forecourt or check into the Town Motel over the road, where the desk clerk kept him informed of vacancies. He even drilled holes in the walls of the washroom cubicles to cater for voyeurs. At a book signing, he is challenged about betraying confidences and ruining reputations, but he insists the `secrets' were common knowledge in postwar Hollywood and that there is nothing wrong with being gay. Ex-Bowers boy and now a retired trial lawyer, Jack Kimberling heartily concurs that they were helping people out and photographer Michael Childers recalls how director George Cukor regarded him as a valuable friend - who just happened to provide 15 strapping men each week for his Sunday pool parties. Had he not been fond of him, Cukor would never have allowed Bowers inside a charmed circle that included Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. 

Digging out some old snaps from a garage store, Bowers shows them to Lee Shook, who came to Richfield in the early 1950s and became a favourite of Charles Laughton. He also has a house at St Andrew's Place, where he lived for many years with his common law wife, Bette. It's filled with bric-a-brac he calls `goodies', but they are strewn over the floor, as he is hardly ever here and it has become something of a hoarders repository. A message on the answerphone takes him to another book signing and he sees a volume on Cary Grant. Over a clip from Garson Kanin's My Favorite Wife (1940), Bowers reminisces about Grant's relationship with `roommate' Randolph Scott and how the Bristolian ditched costume designer Orry-Kelly to move in with him. At the time, their romance was an open secret that the gossip columnists chose not to publicise. But fans are very proprietorial and didn't want Grant's image sullied (in their eyes) by talk of homosexual threesomes and moresomes organised by Bowers. 

According to Mann, Hollywood was a hot bed ot taboo busting in the 1920s, but everything changed when the Production Code was enforced in 1934 and Joseph I. Breen began telling the studios what they could and could't put in their pictures in they wanted the vital release certificate. Moreover, the studios began inserting `morality clauses' into contracts and Rock Hudson biographer Robert Hofler explains that anyone outed in the press would be fired immediately. But Fry believes that Bowers was a safety valve for gay stars, as they knew they could trust him and that his boys would be discrete. 

Recalling how she married Bowers in 1984, Lois despairs of the tat he has stuffed into their Kew Drive home, but accepts that hoarding is part of who he is. He looks on adoringly as she sings in a piano bar, but she admits she might not have married him if she had known about his life before they met. She refuses to read the book, as Hollywood tittle-tattle doesn't interest her and neither does the man Bowers used to be. But the lore fascinates Bowers, who takes us to the home of actor Beach Dickerson, as we see him in action in Roger Corman's Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961). Creeping around his unoccupied home by torchlight, Bowers shows pictures of Dickerson with Elvis Presley, godson Corbin Bernson and Jennifer Aniston, Bowers was bequeathed the house, but hasn't done much with it and admits that Dickerson's ashes are still in the car parked on the drive. 

Lois is nonplussed when Bowers learns he's got a royalty cheque coming for $188,000 and he tootles off to the Taschen residence to see editor Dian Hanson and they discuss photographer Bob Mizer, who is seen posing underwear models in a clip from Marine & the Photographer (1960). They also discuss `big users' like Tom Ewell, Roman Novarro and Cole Porter, who was played by Cary Grant in Michael Curtiz's Night and Day (1946). Bowers grins as he discusses Ewell and Porter's appetites for group sessions and his listeners hug themselves with glee.

While in a confessional mode, he reveals he had threesomes with Bette Davis and her husband during the Second World War and indulged J. Edgar Hoover's love of cross-dressing. He found girls for Judith `Mrs Danvers' Anderson and introduced Cary Grant to Rock Hudson, who went off on a $20 date. Bowers also claims to have kept Vivien Leigh amused while Laurence Olivier was out with young men and kept William Holden supplied with nubile girls. The latter invited him to watch him film a scene with Gloria Swanso in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950), but he got bored because it took them forever to set up the shot. 

Bowers goes to see choreographer Tony Charmoli, who had painted his portrait and used to film him in home movies that veered from the playful to the pornographic. He and Kimberling insist that he introduced people rather than pimping and his service became more valuable during the 1950s Vice Squad clampdown on homosexuality in Hollywood. Onetime hustler Paul `Al' Lamastra is also grateful to Bowers for keeping him going in dark times, who recalls clients like Cukor, John Schlesinger and Paul Lynde, whom he dismisses as a nasty drunk. They have nothing but fond memories and Bowers's unique status as an eyewitness persuades Taschen to ask him to contribute to a book on 1940s male friendship.

Meanwhile, one of the garage owners asks him to move his stuff and Bowers finds some old school photographs featuring a lesbian teacher who asked him to set her up with his girlfriend. He beams that he could do people favours at 11 and boasts he never had a problem performing from that day to this. Raised on a farm in Grand Ridge, Illinois with an older brother and younger sister, Bowers bears no ill will to the neighbour who used to do things to him (which he doesn't consider abuse) and even jokes about the priest who preyed upon him when his mother remarried and took him to Chicago. As word spread, he had over 25 priests paying him in collection box change and he also shone shoes and sold papers to make a dime. 

It amuses him that people always kept hearing about him on grapevines and, as a consequence, he was interviewed frequently by pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey. He took him to parties and orgies and Bart eulogises that Bowers was a missing link in the sexual revolution. However, the Vice Squad were beginning to bite and he took up bartending before the gas station was busted. Into his 90s, Bowers still does the odd chic house party and reminisces about scandal rags like Confidential, which delighted in ruining careers in fulfilling its boast to tell the facts and name the names. Bowers insists he turned down big fees to confirm stories that were written and ready to go, but another bartender ratted on him having a threesome with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner at Frank Sinatra's house. 

He also made Cecil Beaton's diary in the 1960s and he reads the passage with pride and describes how the photographer put him in touch with `Wally and Eddie' (aka the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) so he could bring playthings to their bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In his opinion, he was just helping them to have fun. But Tyrnauer asks if he thinks he lived the life he did (and now hoards junk he buys cheap from yard sales) because he was traumatised as a kid. Lois suggests he might have benefited from therapy, but Bowers swears he never did anything under duress and never felt his sideline was in any way wrong.  

Flicking through an old photo album that includes a topless snap of Bette, he reflects fondly on their union and credits her with being a grand gal (and the mother of his daughter. Donna). But he admits he was too busy to be a one-person guy and was always out tricking to make ends meet and enjoy himself. He picks out pictures of Donna by torchlight in his other home and regrets not spending more time with her, as she died after having a backstreet abortion when she was 23. Chatting with Kimberling, he confides that he worked that day, as normal, as he needed the routine to prevent him from being overwhelmed by grief. 

Lois is unhappy at having to teeter around the cramped house and wants Bowers to tidy up. But he refuses and she can't bring herself to get in social services because she loves him and doesn't want him to get into trouble. Another birthday comes round and he leaves what's left of the telephone-shaped cake for the skunks he feeds on the patio to keep them away from his cat's food. He shows the camera a card from his sister, Phyllis, who is two years his junior and calls when he hears she's in hospital after a fall. Keen to stop her reading Full Service, he also phones his nephew, Dale, and tells him to keep it out of her reach. 

The book takes him to a LGBTQ+ housing shelter, where he tells the audience that Hepburn and Tracy were never lovers. Mann confirms they lived in separate cottages on Cukor's property and Hepburn tried to make it seem as though they co-habited in later life. Columnist friend Liz Smith says Hepburn had numerous passionate relationships and Bowers says he fixed her up with over 150 girls over a 40-year period. He also sat with Tracy during all-night drinking binges and never betrayed a confidence, as he knew what was at stake. 

The studio chiefs weren't chumps and knew who was gay and straight. But they were prepared to keep up the pretence if stars played the game and kept their fans happy. Hofler recalls how Rock Hudson married agent's secretary Phyllis Gates after Life magazine did an article asking why he was still single at 29. We see footage of them on the town together and appearing to conform to the middle-class role model the studios wanted to peddle. But Gates was a lesbian and was every bit as much a pawn in the star game as Hudson himself.

Back in the present, Bowers is doing publicity for Taschen's My Buddy book and gets tearful when recalling the foxhole buddies he had during the war. He fought in key battles like Guadalcanal and it seems clear if he is suffering from any post-traumatic disorder, it originated in this period in uniform. The loss of his brother, Donald, on Iwo Jima in 1945 also impacted deeply upon him. Fighting back tears, Bowers says loss made him glad to be alive and he vowed not to waste a second. 

After seven years, Bowers finally gets round to scattering Dickerson's ashes and rather gauchely pours them through a hole in his decking because he wanted to stay on the hillside. He hoses them down to stop them blowing away and reflects on how AIDS changed the scene and how Hudson's death in 1985 shattered the myth about gay activity in Hollywood. Shrugging that he had been lucky, Bowers refuses to complain about a kidney problem and is grateful that Shook is willing to donate one to help him. He is also delighted when Proposition 8 was passed to allow same-sex marriages and compares the tenor of the times with the postwar period when people could only be themselves in a gas station caravan. 

The various contributors consider him a pioneer who helped hold up a mirror to society. Fry suggests he just breezed over the hurdles set up to keep people apart and that was his talent. As we see him soldiering through dialysis, he remains a free spirit and he smiles with pride as Lois sings `My Buddy' to a small, but appreciative bar crowd. The image fades, but Bowers remains with us and continues to share his stories with those willing to listen and accept his honesty and integrity at face value. 

Observing without judging, Tyrnauer wisely allows Bowers to go his own way in this engaging portrait, as that's what he has done for nine decades. Some may question his withholding information from Lois before they married, but they have muddled along for 35 years and their affection for each other is evident, even though he makes her live knee-deep in clutter. He is frank enough to admit to mistakes and the decision to quit matchmaking when the AIDS crisis struck suggests that he always put the welfare of his clients and his hustlers above monetary gain.

Echoes abound of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's The Celluloid Closet (1995), which was based on a book by Vito Russo. But Tyrnauer is less interested in generating nostalgia or in exposing the private lives of erstwhile superstars than in comparing attitudes to homosexuality over the last 75 years. Ably abetted by editors Bob Eisenhardt and Daniel Morfesis, he laces the action with movie clips and glamour shots, as well as pictures from Bowers's own albums. Thanks to cinematographer Chris J. Dapkins, Tyrnauer also captures the changing face of Hollywood, which seems much less glamorous since they knocked down Richfield and replaced it with a fire station. 

Given that he has made his reputation as a Middle East specialist while writing for some of the most prestigious newspapers in Britain and America, Bartle Bull III may seem a peculiar choice for the director of a documentary about amateur boxing. However, the foreign editor of Prospect magazine (and the son of a Madgalen College, Oxford alumnus) appears very much at home in the world of grassroots pugilism in making Cradle of Champions, which, class chasm apart, has much in common with Stevan Riley's Blue Blood (2006), which profiled five unlikely contenders hoping to represent Oxford in the annual Varsity boxing match against Cambridge. 

Each winter, amateur boxers from around the world compete in the New York Daily News Golden Gloves tournament, which has produced more professional world champions (40+) than the Olympic Games. It's a tough proving ground, with Floyd Patterson, Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali) and Sugar Ray Leonard all failing in their bid to secure the precious golden gloves necklace presented to the winners in each weight category. All five boroughs are involved in the 10-week competition, which sees 25 venues stage the 30 fight nights. 

Having already won the lightweight title at the 2013 event, Titus Williams from Long Island is looking to regain the crown he had failed to defend. Standing in his way, however, is Staten Islander James Wilkins, who is a cocky kid who knows that the gym keeps him out of trouble and that boxing is his most promising route to a better future. A previous winner at bantamweight, he has moved up a division and will now come into direct competition with Williams. Five-time middleweight champion Nisa Rodriguez also hopes her ringcraft can improve her prospects, as she has a five year-old son, Emerson, to raise in the Bronx and giving him the best start is more important to her than making the US Olympic team. 

As the 2015 tournement begins, we see all three contenders breeze through their opening bouts. The camera trains on the crowd supporting family members and friends with more enthusiasm than expertise, as they all know dreams can come true at the Golden Gloves. However, trainer Joe Higgins knows what he's doing, as he pep talks Williams between rounds, as he is the owner of the famed Freeport gym that was set up to keep kids out of trouble and off drugs and has since produced a number of champions. An ex-Marine who recovered the body of his fellow firefighting brother on 9/11, Higgins uses boxing to teach fighters to respect themselves and each other. As far as he is concerned, he is preparing youths for life and not just bouts.

Williams has benefited from such support and he is prepared to put in the lonely miles at the crack of dawn to realise his ambition. Thus, as Week Four brings us to Holy Cross High School, he has to swallow the disappointment of seeing Wilkins get a bye into the semi-final and focus on his opponent. Having lost to a debutant in 2014, he is desperate to regain top spot and follow in the footsteps of hero Floyd Mayweather, as meeting him made him more determined than ever to provide a nest egg and leave a legacy. With Higgins encouraging from his corner, Williams wins easily enough and Wilkins is well aware he's the man to beat. 

He is based at the Park Hill Boxing Club and is driven by the desire to make his grandmother proud after she raised 24 grandchildren in her cramped apartment to stop them from ping-ponging around the boroughs because of family problems. However, he still has much to learn and, in his frustration during a sparring session, judo throws a partner who insists on holding him. His coaches try to calm him down, but it takes owner Pat Russo to connect with him. An ex-cop who realised that the kids in the notorious Sunset Park area needed an outlet for their anger and stepped in when the gyms once run by the Police Athletic League were closed down. Fellow trainer Julio Salinas Albino wanders round the office that has replaced his gym and becomes emotional because he had done so much to lure kids away from the infamous Blood gang by showing them what they could achieve through a little dedication.

While Rodriguez teaches basketball and swimming at a girls' high school, we see little of her, as she tries to juggle being a mom with her training. Instead, Bull shows us Williams and Wilkins with their families. We also see Higgins at home, as he cooks spaghetti and meatballs and explains how he had to retire after 9/11 because of throat problems and he is grateful to have the gym to keep his mind off his health issues. He considers his boxers to be humble warriors and is proud of the love they show each other before and after fights. 

Held at the swanky New York Athletic Club in Manhattan, the semi-finals are a suit-and-tie affair and Wilkins resents having to get toffed up to compete. He jokes to one of his coaches that his brother can't support him tonight because he's on the run from their father and Bull emphasises the different world feel by showing the oysters being prepared for the guests who are about to watch our lightweight duo do battle.  Williams glides through his contest with cool assurance, but Wilkins gets tangled in the ropes during the second round and his trainer has to defuse him during the break. It's mother Christine Ciccone's birthday and her screams can be heard from the back of the room, as she lives every second of the third round, which her son takes on points and he has the wherewithal to show good sportsmanship to his vanquished opponent after his arm is raised by the referee.

As if to prove that women's sport isn't on a level playing field, Rodriguez's semi-final is held in much less salubrious surroundings. But she wins by stopping her opponent in the first round and she is congratulated by a proud Emerson, who meets her at the venue at the end of the night. She is now in her sixth final and poses for pictures with her rival, Stacia Suttles. Meanwhile, at the Daily News offices, three-time champion and tournament director Brian Adams and his team bag up the golden and silver gloves that will be presented on finals night. He is looking forward to the Wilkins/Williams fight and notes that the former has gone into a training camp to prepare for the bout at the Barclays Centre. 

While Wilkins struggles to concentrate in an unfamiliar gym, Williams goes to church with his mother and Bishop Derrick Farmer jokes from the pulpit that he probably learned how to duck and weave avoiding her whoopings as a boy. Ciccone also covers the walls of her son's bedroom with passages from the Scriptures to inspire him and she is confident his dream will come true. Rodriguez also puts in the training hours at John's Boxing Gym. But, even though she has interesting things to say about women having to fight water retention in order to make their category weight, she's shortchanged again in a section that shows us Wilkins pounding the snow-covered pavements and Williams getting the backing of his buddies in the locker room, as Higgins plans the schedule that will enable him to prevail. 

The trio arrive at the imposing arena and spend some time soaking up the atmosphere before the crowd arrives. They go through weigh-ins and medical checks before psyching themselves up in the wings. Rodriguez is first to fight and she stops Suttles with a third standing count in the final round to become only the fourth person in Golden Gloves history to win half a dozen titles. Interviewed afterwards, she claims to have done it for her community because she couldn't let them down. But she only has eyes for Emerson and hugs him with pride when he is allowed to run towards her. 

Eventually, Williams and Wilkins get their shot. The latter refuses to make eye contact during the referee's instructions and his trainer chides him for letting nerves get the better of him in the first round. With Ciccone bellowing from the stalls, he does better in the second and the action is cut in such a way to keep the audience guessing who has prevailed. After three fiercely contested rounds, the camaraderie between the fighters and the cornermen is wonderful to see. But, as Williams regains his title, a distraught Wilkins proves anything but magnanimous in defeat and storms out of the ring after confronting Adams. 

Closing credits inform us that slugger Wilkins turned professional and has a 3-0 record after knocking out his opponents. Following suit, the classier Williams has lost one of his eight bouts, but also has two knockouts to his credit. By contrast, Rodriguez remained an amateur and reached the semi-finals of the Olympic trials before going on to win a seventh Golden Gloves. Curiously, while we hear that Russo continued to run his gym, no mention is made of Higgins, even though (from a quick check online) he appears to be alive and well. 

Considering the New York Golden Gloves were proposed by writer Paul Gallico when he was working for the Daily Post in 1926, Bull might have spent longer on the history and lore of this enduringly significant championshiips. He might also have mentioned that the Golden Gloves originated in Chicago and now has franchises in major cities across the United States. Moreover, he might have used captions to identify key figures like Wilkins's trainer, whose name is lost in the final crawl. But the biggest flaw in this otherwise enjoyable actuality is the narrative imbalance, which consistently leaves Rodriguez on the margins, in spite of the fact that the 28 year-old now has eight Golden Gloves to her name and hopes to make the Puerto Rican Olympic team in 2020. 

At times touching upon issues covered in Frederick Wiseman's Boxing Gym (2010), Bull largely avoids delving into the social side of the backstories and, as a result, viewers are left to piece together snippets of information without coming close to a full picture. Once again, a few name tags might not have gone amiss here and it's surprising that producers as experienced as Maiken Baird and Donald Rosenfeld let things drift. Nevertheless, the camerawork of Tom Hurwitz and his team is kinetic and involving, while Michael Levine's editing is particularly pugnacious during the sporting sequences. Peter J. Miller's sound and Marty Beller's score are also spot on. So, what next? A dissertation on Islamic Fundamentalism from Steve Bunce?

Canadian activist Rob Stewart was 24 when he made Sharkwater in 2006. A globe-trotting bid to repair the damage that movies like Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) had done to the reputation of sharks and our understanding of their vital role in the ecosystem, this acclaimed documentary also raised Stewart's profile as an environmentalist. But, while it did much to increase awareness of the savage way in which sharks being harvested at a terrifying rate, the film failed to snag the public conscience in the same way as Louie Psihoyos's Oscar-winning dolphin study, The Cove (2009). Consequently, Stewart embarked upon a follow-up feature, Sharkwater Extinction, which is being posthumously released this week after its 37 year-old director died of hypoxia during a diving accident in the final stages of the shoot.

The cruel practice of finning was banned in 90 countries after Sharkwater showed animals being caught to have their fins sliced off for soup before being tossed back into the water to bleed to death. Yet, while the film went some way to encouraging others to share Stewart's passion for sharks, 150 million of the creatures are still being slaughtered each year and scientists can only account for around half the number. So, he makes an illegal return to Costa Rica in February 2016 to gauge the extent to which laws are being flouted. 

He learns from conservationist Randall Arauz that President Luis Guillermo Solis has overturned the laws preventing shark finning and he responds to Stewart's challenge at a press conference by saying that local communities have a right to make a living providing they do nothing to excess. Outraged by this, Stewart joins activists Regi Domingo and Brock Cahill on a trip to Puntarenas, where fisherman William Flores informs them that the Taiwanese mafia have bought docks along the coast and use them to store illegally caught fins smuggled in by boat at weekends when the coastguard isn't operating and fly them out of the country legally because transportation is not an offence. Will Allen uses a drone to film fins being stored in a factory belonging to a local millionaire, but Flores refuses to name him for fear of reprisals.

Having beaten a hasty retreat, Stewart recounts how he had goldfish as a kid and had his first encounter with a shark when he was nine. The fact that this potentially lethal creature turned tail on making eye contact taught him all he needed to know and he became obsessed with reversing the demonisation that horror movies had done much to reinforce. He blames Yves-Jacques Cousteau for branding the oceanic whitetip `the most dangerous of all sharks' and heads to Cat Island in the Bahamas in May 2016 to film them, as 99% of the planet's population has been eradicated in the last 30 years because its fin is so large and lucrative. According to Stewart, they are `absolute sweethearts' and, as they swim around him, he notes the curiosity in their eyes and the mischievous streak that confirms their intelligence. 

He goes fishing off Miami, Florida with hunter Mark `The Shark' Quartiano, who claims rumours that the hammerhead population is in terminable declines as `Shark Week propaganda'. When his client gets a bite, Stewart and Australian activist Madison Stewart dive in to film the struggle and remind us that sharks have been on Earth for 450 million years and have a right to better treatment from avaricious and thoughtless humans. The creature is hauled aboard to be photographed and Stewart is distraught at the way it flounders in the water after being released and just gives up the ghost as she watches. She curses those who kill for sport and wonders what goes through their minds when they are having their `fun'. 

Landing in Panama to film fishermen bringing their catch to shore, Stewart points out that apex predators like sharks contain dangerous levels of mercury and shouldn't be in the human food chain. He joins marine biologist Maike Heidemeyer and researcher Sebastian Hernandez in visiting a dump of confiscated fins and is dismayed to learn that over 38,000 sharks have perished needlessly. As this is one of the most important breeding areas in the world, it suggests that poachers are prepared to catch young as well as the adult sharks and such indiscriminate methods are having a ruinous effect on stock levels. 

In November 2016, Stewart makes for Cabo Verde in Africa with marine biologist Joe Pratt and shark tagger Art Gaetan. They film on the dock, as he repeats the message about the loophole in trading fins from container rather than fishing boats and gets aboad a freezer vessel transferring its cargo to a Japanese ship and films the thousands of carcasses in the hold. The sequence is cut to show the risk they took in securing evidence of offshore trans-shipping and the music has the ominous beat of a thriller. But, while the editorial methods may be unduly melodramatic, the flagrancy of the smuggling is shocking and the point is well made that governments that have supposedly signed up to ending the trade in sharks fins have turned a blind eye to the widespread abuse of the system. 

In December 2016, Stewart decides to film gill net fishing off the coast of Los Angeles. This is an illegal tactic that sees sharks, whales, dolphins and sea turtles being caught in nets designed to catch swordfish. They see a blue shark and a thresher dying slowly after becoming tangled in the curtain net, but they are unable to linger as the support boat is being shot at from the trawler and they have to make a rapid getaway. 

A month later, Stewart goes shopping in Miami to show how readily available shark meat is in supermarkets. However, he also takes various pet foods and cosmetic products to Florida International University to have them tested for the presence of shark and is amazed by the results produced by marine biologist Diego Cardeñosa. Over footage of a fisherman clubbing a shark on his boat with a sledgehammer, Stewart reveals that people are smearing endangered super-predators on their faces without knowing it. As he swims with sharks, he urges us to check we are not using products with unlisted ingredients. However, he doesn't say how this might be done, as we don't all have access to university laboratories to run checks. 

On 31 January 2017, Stewart arrives in Key Largo, Florida and a caption reading `The Last Dive' clues the audience that tragedy is about to happen. As they head out, he shows us the rebreathing apparatus that circulates air and allows divers to stay underwater for prolonged periods without causing the air bubbles that often scare animals off. He hopes to film the rare sawfish or carpenter shark and we see the meticulous preparations before the team enter the water. As Stewart glides in the blue depths with his camera, the image fades to a blackness that is only interrupted by a flare shooting up into the night sky and pictures follow of the search for Stewart's body after he failed to surface. The soundtrack carries news snippets from bulletins around the world and the sadness of his loss is somewhat lost in the audiovisual blur that concludes tellingly with the hope that his legacy will lie with those he has inspired to make a difference. 

Accompanied by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's `Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World' medley, a lengthy closing passage shows Stewart at various stages of his life and addressing conferences and rallies to drive home his messages about sharks and the future of the planet. It's well meant, but affirms the suspicion that this is more a work of commemoration than advocacy. However, a closing caption that over 25,000 sharks will have been killed while audiences are watching the film overwhelms the revelation that Stewart's footage persuade the California State Legislature to outlaw gill net fishing. 

There's no question that Stewart was an engaged and effective campaigner and his loss is all the more sobering because it appears to have been avoidable. The circumstances in which his film was completed must have been extremely trying. But the fact remains, this is more a patchwork of incidents and encounters than a concerted and considered treatise. Editor Nick Hector has done what he can with the spectacular underwater footage and the impassioned pieces to camera in which Stewart seeks to sum up each episode. However, with Jonathan Goldsmith's score veering between pounding rock and mawkish strings, the wistful tone depletes the anger we should be feeling at the sickening greed that drives this cruel trade.  

At one point during the summation, Stewart concedes that he often found himself hating humanity after witnessing its barbarity and folly. But he fails to take a rounded view of the situation by ignoring the socio-economic conditions that drive so many people on breadlines across the globe to accept blood money in order to feed their families. This is not the only recent documentary on conservationist themes to assume the white man's burden. However, the focus on Stewart as a personality, as well as an activist, will leave many feeling uneasy about underlying ethos, while they sympathise with the cause.

There have been a handful of documentaries about how we dispose of our rubbish, with Lucy Walker's Waste Land (2010) and Candida Brady's Trashed (2012) being the standouts. However, Michael Kot's Shipbreakers (2004) and the `Brothers' segment of Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death (2005) respectively revealed the impact that breaking up obsolete shipping has had on the people and ecosystems of Alang in India and Gadani in Pakistan. Now, Austrians Florian Weigensamer and Christian Krönes examine in Welcome to Sodom how the lives of the residents of the Agbogbloshie wetland near the Ghanaian capital, Accra, have been transformed for the worse since it became the West's designated dumping ground for its discarded electronics. 

Following close-up of a chameleon and a voiceover description of how the gods punished humanity after sending a creature to see how humans had been treating the Earth, a caption informs us that the once-pristine swampland around Agbogbloshie has been poisoned since becoming the largest dumping for electronic goods. Home to 6000 people, the area has become so toxic that the residents call it `Sodom' after the biblical sink of depravity. A preacher covering his face with a newspaper recalls the story after the camera executes a slow pan across a nightmarish landscape filled with grazing goats and scavenging humans. 

We follow a young girl who drags a homemade magnet over the dirt to pick up any pieces of iron she can find. She stuffs the soil in a sack and hopes that the international trading price is generous today, as this is her sole source of income. When she brings the haul to the scales, the weigher tries to cheat her. But she protests and earns nine cedis for her efforts (which converts to around £1.25). Nearby, young men dismantle white goods to find the precious metals inside and a man named Americo explains how he spends his days looking for aluminium, copper and zinc in fridges, computers and phones. He claims to be a businessman and reveals that his mother named him after the Land of Opportunity in the hope he would prosper.

As two men load up a cart with monitors freshly arrived from Europe (and hope they have invested wisely in items with high yields), another bundles up wires to make a bonfire to melt away the plastic and recover the metals within. He says Ghanaians are good at recycling and always know that the metals they sell will return to them eventually in another burnt out item. Black smoke billows as he prods the blaze and, in voiceover, he describes local superstitions about fire and how it rises up from the earth and can blacken the heart. He claims not to feel the heat, as he smokes ganja so he can withstand the heat for long periods. 

An aspiring rapper takes his rhythms from the sound of hammering around him. But it would appear from the credits that the impromptu show staged for the workers is given by members of the Iyasa Theatre rather than D-Boy and some enthusiastic pals who dance alongside him. Whatever the truth, the performance goes down well, with some recording it with their phones, while one girl stops doing her chores to watch and grin into the camera. 

Nearby, a couple of lads play golf with a tin can for a tee and run off into the distance to retrieve what appears to be their only ball. The preacher with the newspaper warns of the perils of selling one's soul and being punished on Judgement Day, while a man in voiceover frets about being mugged and murdered for his money because this is a lawless and dangerous place. He is saving for his passport and he will leave the moment he obtains it, as there is nothing to keep him in Africa. 

Once more, the camera peers through a form of smog to scour the bleak landscape. A truck is being loaded with jagged pieces of metal and men, women and children chip in. Even the smallest kids know what they are looking for, as they smash plastic casings on rocks and pull at the wires they contain. Every scrap is worth something and nothing gets left behind. Some items are repaired and a group sits around a screen watching wrestling, while a couple of friends go through the photographs they have found on an old phone. 

A Jewish Zambian, whose medical school studies were terminated after he was jailed for being gay, enjoys the anonymity of the dump, as the population is transitory and nobody asks too many questions. He considers it a kind of safe house, as he negotiates the birds and cattle to pick up water packets that he can clean, fill and sell to the tip workers. We meet the 44 year-old woman who sells pure water and she laments that she has aged rapidly since her husband died. Most of the people around her are young and she knows she won't find a new spouse and sighs that Agbogbloshie uses up life at a frightening rate. She has a network of children who take the water bags to the men burning wires because they need to refresh themselves and cool the metal so they can take it away with them, because anything that gets left behind will be stolen. As a mother, she has no intention of letting her son come to the dump, but she has to stay because makes money to pay for his education. 

Meanwhile, D-Boy the rapper has been into a recording studio and people around the camp are seen dancing as `Welcome to Sodom' booms on the soundtrack. A space is cleared for a game of football, with the two teams in red and blue kits to suggest this rivalry is well established. The magnet girl boasts she can change into red or blue, as she is a chameleon who has to hide her gender so she can continue to collect and sell iron, as girls are forbidden to do such work. Having always wanted to be a boy, she shaves her head and puts on a macho act to allay suspicions. 

As the fellow with the computer cart dreams of the clean air of his grassy childhood home in the north, he admits that the money is too good for him to consider leaving. A stone's throw away, a gang strips a single-decker bus to the sound of the preacher ranting on about Jonah sending a boat to fetch the just from this purgatory. The man saving for his passport sits at the wheel of a van being ripped apart and yearns to reach Europe `and be somebody'. Similarly, the Zambian longs to find his own haven, where he can be himself without feeling afraid. He likes finding books amongst the debris and can always find something to raise his spirits in Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw. At the end of his shift, he takes off his shoes to enter his roofless refuge made of tyres and tries to relax.

The magnet girl worries about sinking into the lagoon mud and we see the ground shifting beneath people's feet as they trudge along. She knows the stories about ghosts are untrue. But, sometimes, she gets scared and wishes she could find a working computer to learn things from the Internet. Her ambition is to become an astronaut, so she can see if the world is round (as she has been told, but doesn't believe) and can look down on people to see what they are doing at all times. As she walks home at the end of her day, she is jostled on the bridge by some older youths and is glad to return to her mother and younger siblings for a yam supper. 

A family gives thanks for the birth of a baby daughter named Amina and the father prays she will grow up with the intelligence to support them all. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a man sells coffins and lounges on the top of the casket, as we hear the man from the north lament that he will probably die in this godforsaken place. But he still has hopes that his body will be returned home because he is an African and they keep believing things will get better, even though they never seem to do. 

According to the closing captions, 250,000 tons of electronic goods are illegally shipped to Ghana each year and the likelihood is strong that the device on which you read this review will end up there. It's a situation that should make us all feel ashamed. Yet, experience shows that no matter how many documentaries of this sort get made, they rarely get seen and, while they might prick the odd individual conscience, they never sway the big corporations that churn out products whose `planned obsolescence' ensures that customers have to keep replacing machines as they go out of fashion or simply grind to a halt. Maybe if a few CEOs could be herded out to places like Agbogbloshie, they might have a change of heart. But we all know this won't happen and we are all part of the reason why. 

Working with cinematographer-cum-editor Christian Kermer and sound designers and composers Jürgen Kloihofer and Felix Sturmberger, Krönes and Weigensamer obviously have their hearts in the right place. Yet, they have a tendency to go for the strikingly apocalyptic image in a manner that sometimes comes close to the kind of exploitation that has been dubbed `poverty porn'. The climactic slow-motion bonfire sequence is a case in point, as strapping black figures wield burning tyres above their heads and roar directly into the lens. Moreover, we hear a lot more about dreams than we do grim realities.

It's also deeply frustrating that the co-directors choose to list the main participants in the closing crawl without doing them the courtesy of identifying them during the film itself. This refusal to name them, dehumanises Kwasi Yefter, Awal Mohammed, Mohammed Abubakar. Sulemana Junah, Fauzia Mohammed, Musa Abukari (aka D-Boy), Columbus John Osei and David Berihun Cohen (who is evidently the Jewish Zambian) and reduces them to Bressonian figures to be moved around an obscene mise-en-scène. Clearly, this was not the intention, but it echoes the white man's burden accusation levelled above at Sharkwater Extinction.