Docs Ireland — A–Z of films

As the surveys continue, different ideas of happiness emerge along with moments of shared humanity.

There’s a lot to keep track of in a narrative which keeps finding new sharks to jump and yet, somehow, keeps us believing.

If there is anybody who can provide insight into the lives of those long-vanished it must be Herzog.

The Flats gives voice to people who have lived most of their lives feeling silenced, but it’s all the little details it captures in passing that speak loudest.

This is a quiet and thoughtful film with slowly building power. It will leave you awed by the resilience of its subjects yet angry that they needed it.

It strives to create an atmosphere of discomfort and paranoia. It achieves the former.

There is a willful experimentalism at the core of the film, an invitation to look and look again until the familiar becomes strange, until one notices something different.

No Other Land brings humanity and particularity to a topic that is too often discussed in the abstract.

It’s a film which uses experimental techniques to explore its themes, delivering something more like poetry than linear storytelling.

If you see one dance film in your life, see this one with those 3D glasses.

The brutality of the abuse is never played down or shied away from, but nor is it considered insurmountable.