Posts Tagged ‘arthouse doc’

Give it a Shot (2026)

Dir| Vishali Sinha | Doc 2026 92’

If documentaries are supposed to spark conversations, Give It a Shot is arriving armed with a megaphone, a wicked sense of humour, and perhaps the world’s most overdue question: why has contraception been almost entirely women’s business for so long?

Premiering at the London Indian Film Festival on 14 July, Give It a Shot dives into the fascinating, frustrating, and surprisingly funny world of male contraception. It’s a story packed with ambitious scientists, willing guinea pigs, sceptics, and enough awkward conversations to make any family WhatsApp group spontaneously combust.

The film’s focus is a group of characters and their bid to market and male contraception – linked back to RISUG the Indian-developed long-lasting, non-hormonal and reversible male contraceptive. What makes the documentary so engaging is its refusal to become a dry science lecture. So full marks for that if you’re fed up with being blinded by science! Instead, it treats its subject with warmth, wit, and genuine curiosity. The film understands that masculinity, medicine, politics, and relationships are hopelessly tangled together—and finds comedy in that very human mess without ever trivialising the stakes.

There’s something delightfully refreshing about watching men grapple with injections, hormones, side effects, and reproductive responsibility—the very issues women have been navigating for decades. The film never slips into finger-wagging territory; instead, it invites audiences to laugh, think, squirm a little, and perhaps reconsider long-held assumptions about who carries the contraceptive burden.

Visually energetic and driven by compelling personal stories, Give It a Shot balances scientific optimism with healthy scepticism. It celebrates innovation while acknowledging that changing biology may be easier than changing culture.

At a time when conversations around gender roles are evolving faster than pharmaceutical approvals, this documentary lands with impeccable timing. Whether the future of male contraception arrives next year or another decade from now, Give It a Shot makes a persuasive case that the conversation itself can no longer be postponed.

Smart, entertaining, and unexpectedly crowd-pleasing, Give It a Shot is what the doctor ordered – and exactly the sort of documentary that sends audiences out of the cinema arguing—in the best possible way. Expect laughter, lively debates, and perhaps a few men leaving the theatre quietly wondering whether equality might finally involve rolling up their own sleeves.

LONDON INDIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2026

Underland (2025)

Dir: Robert Petit | US Doc 79′

Space and the universe has long captured our imagination. Now a new documentary offers a journey down to the centre of the earth to explore its remote and most unreachable corners.

Rather like those lifts that took miners to the frightening claustrophobia of the coalface, there’s certainly something unnerving about travelling much further down into the void. But not for a group of scientists and explorers keen to find out more about life in the underworld.

Best described as ‘science-fact’ Underland, based on the internationally best-selling book by Robert Macfarlane, is directed by Robert Petit and accompanied by Sandra Huller’s calm narration. With its eerie soundscape and pristine visuals Underland proves to be an unusual experience that plays out in three chapters, rather than a cohesive whole.

The Canadian-set segment is the most unreachable for those who struggle with astro-physics. But not American scientist Mariangela Lisanti whose work involves an uncertain quest to isolate dark matter in an eerie clinical laboratory forty metres underground.

Perhaps easier to relate to is the segment that follows subterranean geographer Bradley Garrett, a guide to underground Las Vegas. There’s a morbid curiosity to his trip down to the city’s storm-drains where homeless people face certain death in the event of flash floods. Meanwhile In Mexico an archaeologist explores Mayan culture in the caves of Yucatán.

If none of this grabs you then the photography is certainly startling along with a ghostly original soundtrack by Hannah Peel.

IN UK CINEMAS FROM 27 March 2026

The Marbles (2025)

Dir: David Wilkinson | UK Doc 114′

In his latest documentary pioneering filmmaker David Wilkinson puts forward a valid case for the return of the famous Elgin Marbles to their original home in the Parthenon Temple in Athens.

Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin (1766-1841) was a Scottish diplomat, collector and Ambassador to the Ottoman Turkish Empire when he removed the storied Marbles in the hope of cultivating an interest in artefacts of the classical era in Britain, and raising his own profile into the bargain.

Now, at a time when Western nations are apologising for the misdemeanours of their forebears, the removal of The Marbles, which have given rise to endless controversy over the past two hundred years, is now being re-considered as an ‘art theft’. Wilkinson builds a convincing argument for the return of The Marbles so redressing the injustices of the past. 

All over the World, war, conflict and casual looting in the name of tourism has caused mass destruction of valuable sites, ruins and buildings of architectural importance. Back in 1801 Elgin hoped to gain recognition by ‘discovering’ the Marbles, comprising a collection of plaques, friezes, pediments, columns and caryatids and, with the help of the British government, have them brought over to Britain.

When this assistance was refused Elgin went ahead and financed the venture himself to the tune of about £75,000. The British Museum then acquired the works for £35,000. This was an investment that clearly cost Elgin money but saved his name for posterity. Now his gesture has backfired: He stands accused of posthumously plundering the artworks, and is being associated with war crimes in much the same way as the Nazis, who stole priceless artworks from the Jewish owners during the Second World War.

In this follow-up to his documentary debut Getting Away with Murder(s) David Wilkinson’s approach is even-handed and makes use of engaging arguments for the return of The Marbles with a variety of convincing interviews. Amongst them is Patricia Allan, onetime Curator of World Cultures at Glasgow Museums; Tristram Besterman, former director of Manchester Museum, who developed ethical standards for cultural restitution; Neil Curtis whose work at the University of Aberdeen has involved the return of artworks to Canada and Mark Stephens, a lawyer specialising in The Marbles’ case along with that of Jewish art looted by the Nazis.

Janet Suzman, who chairs the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, has taken up the cause and her impassioned plea to have The Marbles sent back to their proper home is possibly the most heartfelt in this well-crafted documentary.

There is no shame attached to admitting responsibility in the case of art restitution: many other countries are quietly acknowledging that returning artefacts collected over the years to their original owners is clearly the right thing to do. @MeredithTaylor 

Opening Night Film (World Premiere) Central Scotland Documentary Festival 30th October 2025

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Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)

Dir: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola | With Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, George Lucas, Eleanor & Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius

Apocalypse Now was a film about madness that made the people making it mad. In fact, Francis Ford Coppola likened his 1979 thriller to the Vietnam war itself: ‘It was crazy… we had access to too much money and too much equipment, and little by little we went insane’.

All is this is captured in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991) the behind the scenes feature doc shot during the making of the original film, and now restored to glorious 4k.

The doc exposes, through interviews and around sixty hours of footage, the clash of egos, the riveting rollercoaster of drug-fuelled emotional meltdowns that went on between cast and crew, on a day to day basis, along with the trials and tribulations connected to the film’s financing and a catalogue of other disasters involving the local government. We even hear about Martin Sheen’s putative heart attack and witness a cool but intransigent Marlon Brando refusing to play an obese character.

All this took place in the toxic confines of the sweltering Filipino jungle. A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is cinematic catnip for fans of the film. Even if you haven’t seen the original thriller the doc provides fascinating insight into the human mind under extreme pressure, and the crazy world of ‘on location’ filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor

RETURNING TO UK CINEMAS ON JULY 4 | 4K UHD COLLECTOR’S EDITION ON JULY 28 2025

 

Dawn of Impressionism: Paris 1874 (2025)

Dir/Wri: Ali Ray | UK Doc

The Impressionists are the most popular artists in the world today. On the whole their paintings are relatable, unchallenging and easy on the eye with their agreeable images. Yet when Impressionism first became a style it was ridiculed and rejected.

This new arthouse documentary not only recounts the riveting story of passion and rebellion which gave birth of the world’s favourite art movement, it is told from the perspective of the painters themselves, through their shared letters and diaries, offering unparalleled and intimate access to their thought processes and methods.

In this way we are able to better understand these avant-garde creatives, how their minds worked and how they broke down the barriers in the pivotal years that led up to the opening of the doors of Nadar’s Studio with their own radical exhibition back in Paris on April 15, 1874. And why they eventually became the all time favourites amongst aficionados and collectors alike.

Ali Ray, best known for her art films Klimt and the Kiss  My National Gallery, and Frida Kahlo takes her camera and a selection of well known critics and curators to Paris’ Musée d’Orsay and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC to look at this fascinating trans-Atlantic exhibition and bring it to a global audience in cinemas and eventually at home. @MeredithTaylor

IN UK CINEMAS from 18 March 2025

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