Long-listed for the 2010 Best Documentary Oscar, this exposé of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is nerve-shattering, tremendously moving cinema. Shot covertly due to a blanket media ban, it tells the story of Mike Campbell, a white farmer trying to hold on to his land in the face of Mugabe’s Land Reform Act, a nexus of intimidation and violence.
Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey’s film never forgets the people within the politics as Campbell’s plight becomes part thriller, part courtroom drama, part agonising weepie. Even if the end is too neat, this shows the tenacity of the human spirit better than 99.9 per cent of Oscar-baiting dramas.