There's a lot you can say about Michael Moore. He's sentimental. He massages the truth to fit the points he's making. His reliance on comedy when making serious points sometimes defeats his objectives (more suited to his excellent TV Nation series). He is a propagandist. But in a world dominated by right-wing media conglomerates, neo-conservative thinktanks and war profiteers thirsty for new conflicts, you can easily forgive his mawkish foibles. Fahrenheit 9/11 is an excellent feature in it's co find out more...

Goodnight And Good Luck takes place during the early days of broadcast journalism in 1950s America, chronicling the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy, head of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Murrow, his news team and, indeed, CBS itself made a defiant and impassioned stand against McCarthy's increasingly delusional, corrupt and fear-fueled rants and this, George Clooney's second turn in the director's chair, is a beautifully suc find out more...

I Am Cuba is an epic poem to Communist kitsch - a dramatic journey though the decadence of Batista Havana set against the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. find out more...

Set during the 1920s in West Virginia, Matewan is a small mining town whose workers have responded with a strike to the coal company's announcement of a wage cut. The bosses reply to this act of defiance but bringing black and Italian workers to take over their jobs. A lone stranger (a Union organiser) arrives in town to unite the locals against the tooled-up heavies and, as the tension escalates, a violent end to the standoff seems inevitable. Sayles' powerful gripping movie never compromises i find out more...

Rossellini's masterpiece of neo-realist cinema. Based on the life of a priest who serves in the Resistance movement, it's triumph is to show the Resistance against a backdrop of everyday wartime life in Rome. The realism is enhanced by the camerawork and locations. A truly remarkable film. find out more...

A highly acclaimed and influential account of Algeria's turbulent past made in psuedo-documentary style. The tense plot surrounds the rise of nationalist organisations in '54 and the French government's attempts to quell them. This film was the prototype for most political thrillers of the 1970s. find out more...