The Guardian: Documentaries

A letter from the British government classifying Paulette Wilson as an illegal immigrant shook her sense of identity and belonging. ‘Hostile environment’ policies years in the making meant that Wilson and other victims of the Windrush scandal had their right to residency in the UK called into question. She had been detained for a week pending imminent deportation though she had done nothing wrong. It was devastating, but luckily she was released before she was deported.

Scars are not just skin deep - emotional and psychological histories lie beneath the healed wounds. In this documentary, we meet 5 different people for whom their scars changed forever how they see the world, and how the world sees them. Their scars are the result of war, self harm, birth defect, cancer and domestic violence which are a collection of stories both extraordinary and every day. These scars bear witness to our lived experience of love, loss, strength and overcoming the odds.

As work in the UK gets more precarious and the gig economy booms, trade unionism is being reimagined and people from a wide range of backgrounds are joining new kinds of unions, often for the first time. Before coronavirus hit the UK and impacted the healthcare system, grassroots union United Voices of the World was already fighting for the rights of key workers.

A short diary of astronaut Jessica Meir during her seven-month mission on the International Space Station (September 2019 - April 2020). Her journey glides from the euphoria of the first days in zero gravity, to the deep pressure of the first all-female space walk in history, and finally to a completely unexpected event: seeing the global pandemic unfold from orbit. The worries slowly start to install in the astronaut's mind, concerned about returning to a 'completely different planet'.

With unique access to remote communities in the snow-capped landscape of Norway, this film follows characters on either side of a fierce debate on whether to cull the wolf population. For decades the topic has split political parties, families and communities across the country, with environmentalists world-wide criticising Norway for how it handles its tiny population of critically endangered wolves. .

At the end of his US presidency, Barack Obama said his worst mistake was failing to plan for the day after the intervention in Libya. What followed was chaos. Filmed over seven years, this is an observational mosaic, capturing the feeling of a country in the hands of warlords and a proxy war, while a divided political process and a fragile international peace deal loom.