Parky At the Pictures (2/10/2026)

(Reviews of Extra Geography; Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie; Derek vs Derek; Kikuyu Land; and Cotton Queen)

EXTRA GEOGRAPHY.

Since making her first short, Here Boy (2016), Molly Manners has worked on such BBC3 series as In My Skin (2021) and Lazy Susan (2022), and won a BAFTA for Netflix's One Day (2024). Moving swiftly on from The Perfect Gift, her 2025 Waitrose commercial with Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson, she has now made her feature bow with Extra Geography, which has been adapted by playwright Miriam Battye from a short story by Rose Tremain.

It's 2003 and Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear) are 15 year-old boarders at Upton Hall. They are inseparable and, when not playing lacrosse or defiantly muddying their bruised knees, they are forever having meaningful conversations with an earnest conviction that sets them apart from classmates like Phoebe (Aoife Riddell), an Irish girl who would desperately like to be their friend. Such is their life-and-death focus on Oxbridge and fulfilling their potential that Minna and Flic have no time for frivolous types like the safety-goggled Chloe (Iyla Sundarsingh McKaig) and Callie (Aarti Panesar), who keep asking them questions for their puerile surveys during chemistry lab lessons. They aren't mean girls, but they're not exactly charmers, either.

When Miss Hill (Shvorne Marks) announces that Upton will join forces with a nearby boys' school for a production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, there is euphoria in the assembly hall. However, Flic and Minna are sceptical and a reading of the play makes them no more enthusiastic. They are, however, intrigued by the idea of falling in love and annoy the librarian (Allison Saxton) by borrowing every book they can find on the subject, including D.H.Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Overcoming her dismay at Minna's simpering response the volume she's reading, Flic goes along with her friend's proposal that they embark upon a project to lose their heart to the first person they see in the dining hall.

This turns out to be Miss Delavigne (Alice Englert), a geography teacher with a New Zealand accent who fails to notice when Flic and Minna start competing for her good graces in class. They even pick roses from the school garden and shower the doorstep of her cabin in the grounds before running away and kissing before lolling around laughing on the lawn. Miss Delavigne is aware that they are close and are regarded as a little eccentric by their classmates, so she humours them, even when Flic follows her after the bell to ask questions about her homeland and ascertain that her first name is Rosalind.

Much to Flic's surprise, Minna decides to audition for the play and agrees to play a scene with her. When Minna fluffs her lines and has to read the speech from her folder, Flic hopes that they can settle back into their usual routine. However, Minna is cast a Queen Titania and Flic is appalled to discover that she has been chosen to play a tree or a mound alongside Phoebe, who is thrilled at being noticed. Flic also feels let down when Minna starts chatting with the boys playing Lysander (Jairaj Varsani), Demetrius (Cody Mitchell), Bottom (Zac Hurren), and Oberon (Gabriel Nagy).

Feeling left out and inferior to the prettier Minna, Flic causes Bottom to drop out of the play and takes his place in the in-group. They visit the smoking hideout in the garden to consult older girl, Clare Deacon (Ellie McCloskey), about how to make a boy like you. She is fretting about how far to go with her new boyfriend, who is part of a succession of beaux, each one of whom has been a mate of the supplanted. But while Minna puts what she has learned into flirting with the boys during a trip to the weir near the school, Flic applies it to pursuing Miss Delavigne, who also stays on the premises over half-term because it's too far to return to New Zealand and she has few other friends in Yorkshire.

On a school trip to a museum, Miss Delavigne becomes emotional while looking at exhibits with a Kiwi connection and both Minna and Flic insist on holding her hand to reassure her. Back at Upton, however, Minna declares that she thinks the love project is stupid and mocks Flic for taking it so seriously and doing research into New Zealand to impress Miss Delavigne. She criticises the thirtysomething's dress sense and reveals that not only does she not love her, she doesn't even like her.

Peering through the rehearsal room window with a growing sense of resentment, Flic fobs off Phoebe's offer to become her new friend. She is loving being involved in the play and is starting to blossom. But not even Clare can help Flic repair her friendship with Minna, who barely chats in the dormitory before lights out any longer. Telling Miss Delavigne that she's in the play, Flic asks if she has any photographs of home that she could see. She invites herself to the cabin and, despite being taken aback, the teacher concurs because she can't see any harm. However, Minna spots Flic going to the cabin and insists on coming along. Expecting Flic alone, Miss Delavigne hesitates on the doorstep, but invites the girls inside. Sitting between them on the sofa, she shows them her photograph albums and tries to include each in turn in her remarks. When she turns to face Flic, the teenager hesitates about attempting to kiss her to prove to Minna that she loves her more. But she misses her chance, as, when Miss Delavigne turns her head, Minna kisses her on the mouth. Nervously asking the pair why they are doing this, Miss Delavigne throws them out and Flic and Minna leave with animosity crackling between them. There's no sign of the geographer when the play goes ahead. Flic plays Bottom with little enthusiam, but allows Demetrius to kiss her after the performance, to get her first kiss over with. She refuses to go out with him, though, even though she realises there is going to be no prising Minna away from Oberon.

When they next meet on the lacrosse field, Flic asks Minna what she did over the holidays. She has summered on the continent with her parents, dumped Oberon, and transferred to another school. Having had a much quieter time thanks to her detached mother, Flic calmly informs Minna that they can no longer be friends. She shrugs, but still tells Flic that she'll be fine on her own, as she's bright and focussed. When Phoebe enquires, Flic lets her know in no uncertain terms that there's no vacancy. However, she reassures her that she's alright and they get on with their lives.

Several factors coalesce to make Extra Geography fascinating and fun. Doing full justice to its source, Miriam Battye's screenplay is a gem, with the banter between Minna and Flic managing to feel both true to life and something from a French and Saunders sketch. Although Minna considers herself superior in looks and status, she never lets on (in spite of the occasional loaded compliment), as she needs to coasts on Flic's scholarship intellect. The intensity of their belief in their bond and their shared destiny is as hilarious as it's touching and Battye studs the conversations with nuggets of innocence and nonsense. It's just a shame that the ending feels a little rushed, even though it confirms that adolescence is so nasty, brutish, and short that it takes a lifetime to get over it.

Viewing her heroines with unpatronising affection, Molly Manners paces these sequences to perfection. She also deftly changes their tone when the girls are confronted with Clare, Phoebe, and Miss Delavigne, who is played with sporting frumpiness by the excellent Alice Englert, who gets the Kiwi's sandal-slouching walk down to a tee. Englert (who is Jane Campion's daughter) also nails that blankness that teachers employ when dealing with kids they don't quite understand, but don't want to discourage. But it seems unlikely that even someone relatively inexperienced in the classroom would allow themselves to get into the situation that Miss Delavigne does.

Good though these contributions are - along with Aoife Riddell's charmingly gauche, but grounded Phoebe - the picture belongs to drama club debutants Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear (kudos to casting director Lucy Pardee), with the former delivering a magnificent display of wounded indignation when the two-hander turns into a solo. Of course, there are echoes of Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001) and Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2018), but Duggan and Clear most recall Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein in Olivia Wilde's Booksmart (2019) both in the terse timbre of their rapport and in the canted logic they utilise when analysis matters trivial and grave.

For all the wit and vinegar of their conversations, however, the pair are most impressive in capturing the excruciating vulnerability they experience when it becomes clear that their gradual estrangement can never be reversed. Saddest of all, however, is the likelihood that Clear and Duggan will never be cast together like this again.

KNIFE: THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF SALMAN RUSHDIE.

Prolific documentarist Alex Gibney has touched upon all sorts of topics, personalities, and controversies during his long career. In Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, he draws on the Indian-born author's memoir and the recovery footage filmed by his wife to consider a brutal attack by Hadi Matar that took place on 12 August 2022 during a literary festival event in Chautauqua, New York. In a curious way, this intimate profile contains echoes of two films that Gibney made back to back over a decade ago, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr Hunter S. Thompson (2008), which respectively centred on an Afghan cabby who had been subjected to pitiless torture and a provocative writer who had no qualms about expressing himself in his own distinctive manner.

Following a blurry-jerky reconstruction of the attack, Salman Rushdie narrates from Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, as he wonders why he didn't resist or run away. `When death comes very close to you,' he says, `the rest of the world goes far away and you can feel a great loneliness.' He describes the letters that had floated through his mind as he was presumably undergoing emergency surgery and how he had dreamt about the chess game in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). Around Day 6, wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths started making a record of his recovery to help them both process the trauma. The images of his injuries are stark, particularly the close-up of the damaged right eye, through which he had half-noticed his assailant mount the stage to launch at him in a frenzied, 15 stab assault.

As he wakes one morning, he muses on the fallout from the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988) and a segment follows chronicling Rushdie's purpose for the book, the fatwa issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, and the furious protests by Muslims in Britain, Pakistan, and India. We see vox pops of young and old proclaiming it their duty to carry out the death sentence issued over a book neither the Supreme Leader nor many (if any) of the speakers would have read. As Rushdie was protected by Special Branch officers, his Japanese translator, Hitoshi Agarashi, was murdered and his Italian translator was stabbed. Yet it took 33 years for someone to reach Rushdie himself.

Encouraged by the rally held on the steps of the New York Public Library, Rushdie recalls how even Boris Johnson had posted good wishes online after he had opposed his knighthood and buffoonishly mocked his writing on an edition of Question Time. Such antipathy was nothing, however, compared to the abuse he had suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father prior to leaving Mumbai for Rugby in 1961. He endured racial prejudice at the school before taking to student life at King's College, Cambridge. Over the next two decades, Rushdie would become less of an outsider, as marriages came and went and he managed to reconcile with his father before his death. As he avers in the voiceover, `We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.'

Griffiths had forbidden her husband to look into a mirror before Day 9 and he calls over a clip from Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962) how lucky he was that he had been attacked by a man who had no idea how to kill with a blade. He also recalls knife-related scenes from West Side Story (1961), 12 Angry Men (1957), and Psycho (1960), as well as references to weapons in Philip Pullman's The Sutble Knife (1997) and his own Shalimar the Clown (2005).

Thinking back to the fatwa period, Rushdie recalls being played by Afzaal Ahmad as a Jewish agent sent to kill Muslims in the Pakistani feature, International Guerrillas (1990), and how Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) had upheld the Ayotollah's verdict. He then ducks back a few years to recall being bored writing copy for Aero adverts and how he and wife Clarissa had embarked upon the year-long, subcontinental tour that had inspired Midnight's Children. But he ends this reflection by deciding to go on the freedom of speech offensive in order to ease his way back into the limelight and take the risks that came with public appearances.

On the night before the attack, Rushdie had photographed the Moon over the lake abutting his guest house. He had thought about his 2023 novel, Victory City, in which characters came to Earth from the lunar surface, as well as the Tex Avery cartoon, Billy Boy (1954), about a goat that ate the Moon, and Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902), although he had no idea what would happen to his own right eye the next morning.

Having survived the pain of having his eye sewn shut, Rushdie began accepting the fact he would lost half his field of vision. Friend Wes Anderson calls to promise him a film festival when they next get together and Rushdie thanks him for the love and support that is keeping him going. But he could also recall his parents telling him, `What cannot be cured must be endured.' Soon, he is able to stand and walk a few steps and he expresses gratitude to the staff of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre Hamot in Erie, Pennsylvania for their expert care. He knows it's going to take a while getting used to his limitations, but he is determined to not let his assailant (`The A') win.

Reflecting on how he had tries to live a normal life after relocating to New York, Rushdie wonders whether he had not prioritised his security enough in putting on a brave face everywhere he went in order to help persuade others that his presence posed no threat. Had he, in fact, brought the attack upon himself?

After 18 days, he left hospital and drove to New York to begin rehab. Alone at night for the first time, he could listen to the street music and draw comfort from it, while also accepting that his life would have to change. He looked at himself in the mirror, with Paul McCartney's vocal being isolated from `I'm Looking Through You' on the soundtrack, to convey the ethereality of going through the looking glass, as he had done before on leaving India and having gone into hiding.

On Day 40, Rushdie returned home in the wee small hours and he enjoyed the feel of his own bed. Physio went well on his left hand and it was decided to leave his eye as it was, which was a relief after imagining the notorious eye-slicing scene from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un chien andalou (1928). He wrote about the attack, while getting into his new routine. But he needed to return to the scene of the crime to demonstrate that he had come out the other side and he did so on Day 401.

Having called at the prison in which The A is incarcerated, Rushdie taunts him that his life will continue after his violence and he felt happy enough to dance. As Griffiths hadn't been with him, Rushdie takes her to his lodgings with the lake view before we enter the auditorium, where he had been due to speak on keeping writers safe from harm. Shockingly, we now get to see real footage of the stabbing in all its frenzied fury, as Rushdie calmly talks through what he had experienced. Looking into the lens, he says, `I'm standing up in the place where I fell down.'

A closing caption reveals that Matar (who hadn't been born when the fatwa was issued) was sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder before we see inset footage of Rushdie on holiday in Jamaica, feeling lighter and restored. He's presented with a birthday cake and asks for a knife, as the film closes. It's a corny way to end a rather conventional portrait of the artist as a resilient man, but Gibney seems comfortable with the amount of sentiment that characterises Griffith's hospital record. Given the shock she and her husband had gone through, this is entirely understandable. But it often feels as though we are viewing footage that should have remained private, even though Rushdie clearly wanted everything he went through to be seen. His voiceover takes off some of the curse, as the dry wit affirms that he is back on something approaching an even keel and is able to give the hideous nightmare its rightful place in the sea of troubles that has often threatened to engulf him.

That it hasn't speaks volumes for Rushdie's character, which has mellowed since he first appeared on the scene with an assurance that could sometimes feel conceited. Even Boris Johnson might warm to him after watching this. It's been deftly put together by editor Andy Grieve, who excels at finding suitable archive snippets to illustrate Rushdie's recollections. But the words are more impactful than the images and Gibney overplays his hand with some of the movie clips (especially the ones relating to knives), although the scene from Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) makes sense, while the bit from Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) shows imagination.

However, Gibney rightly shows Griffiths's harrowing close-ups of Rushdie's wounds and judges the timing of the 12 August footage to perfection, as the audience has come to terms with the outrage and been reassured that Rushdie is going to pull through physically and psychologically. Yet being in the room doesn't disconcert the author. Instead, it allows him to square the circle, become `a confident person again', and move on with the admirable attitude, `I'm 76 and I'm still going.' Long may he continue to do so

DEREK VS DEREK.

James Dawson has come a long way since winning the Rose d'or for a 2006 episode of The Secret Millionaire. He has since claimed a BAFTA for Channel 4's Wife Swap (2017) and his Reality TV experience makes him the ideal director to chronicle the clash of farming personalities on show in Derek vs Derek, a sophomore feature following on from Organ Stops: Saving the King of Instruments (2021).

There's a bigger age gap than a geographical one between neighbouring Devon farmers Derek Banbury and Derek Gow. But it's the ideological chasm that sets them furthest apart. At 72, third-generation dairy farmer Banbury keeps 200 cows on 400 acres near Lifton on the Cornish border. He also rents another 100 acres, giving him an equal spread to 61 year-old Gow, a Dundonian who has been in the West Country for decades and who abandoned rearing sheep to breed boars on land he is actively

seeking to rewild. Naturally, this puts him at loggerheads with the conservative Banbury, as well as some of their other neighbours, especially when the odd rogue boar goes on the rootle.

Banbury takes pleasure in producing food and accepts intensive methods in order to grow the crops to feed his herd. But Gow is determined to pursue an alternative approach, even if Banbury despairs of his unkempt hedgerows and northerly neighbour Tony Bricknell-Webb gets frustrated by free-ranging boars, especially when (he claims on circumstantial evidence) that they kill and eat his lambs. Banbury once shot an intruding boar and used it to make sausages (which he didn't like). But Gow remains unrepentant and continues to listen politely to the complaints and then do nothing about them. He sees Tony's video footage of a boar eating a lamb, but insists there's nothing to prove his animal killed anything.

As Banbury fulminates about the ponds that Gow has dug to attract wildlife, the latter thumbs through The Ladybird Book of British Wild Animals, which he won as a school prize and laments that just about every creature depicted in it is much rarer today, as the countryside has changed beyond recognition within the span of a single lifetime. Vintage colour footage shows how land was repurposed to produce food after the Second World War and Gow laments the loss of the insects that are key to sustaining a multitude of species.

Gow invites Banbury over to see the storks he is planning to loose on the land. Having joked in the car on the way over that the Scot had given up on basic agriculture because he wasn't much good at it, Banbury mimes shooting at the birds, which confirms Gow's earlier statement that Banbury blasts the face off anything he doesn't understand. They are cordial enough in their dealings, but they are so entrenched in their views that it's hard to see how they will ever reach an amicable compromise. Banbury discusses the storks with his wife, Linda, who sounds positive, while admitting to being worried about her fish pond. But he insists he's got too much going on to broaden his mind. Life is certainly tough, as margins are tight and bills have to be paid. However, he's assisted by son James who is ready to continue to family tradition, even though supermarkets keep dropping the price they're willing to pay for milk.

At a cattle auction, Banbury grumbles about Gow buying new land and Linda confides that he's unpopular because he's still viewed as an outsider after so many years. He's also seen as being unconscionably blunt and farmhand Baz jokes that his boss doesn't give a monkeys about any of the criticism he receives, even when it comes in the form of insults daubed on his property. Linda reckons he's a Scottish softie at heart, but Gow isn't interested in winning friends; he just wants to influence people.

Despite bemoaning the lack of butterflies, Banbury shows off the maize crop on his dry soil and claims the use of weed killers is like magic. Meanwhile, Gow reveals that he's breeding 11 endangered species to release on to his rewilded land, including water voles, which is the most endangered British mammal. Inspired by Gerald Durrell as a boy, Gow has bred 25,000 water vole and we see him releasing one into a pond. Assistant Katie is also hand-rearing a stork chick named Sidney, while Baz shows us the wildcats, snakes, tree frogs, and field mice that Gow has added to his breeding programme. A talented artist, the Scot speaks about species with a gruff affection that makes him sound like a man on a mission, who is too busy getting his hands dirty to waste time trying to convert doubters. But he can see why those scrabbling to make ends meet would see Nature as a secondary consideration to survival.

Gow's pet project is to see laws passed to release beavers into the wild, as they can only be kept in enclosures at present. He is fascinated by the way they build dams to change their environment and appears on BBC News to defend the fact the beavers have escaped into the River Tamar (he blames colluding badgers for liberating them). But Banbury sees them as tree-eating pests who leave a mess behind them. His yen for neatness runs to trimming his hedges and it irks him that Banbury allows his to sprawl. Linda is less bothered, however, as she rents five cottages and Gow always sends people studying his methods or attending the conferences he hosts to stay with her.

As his work is expensive, Gow needs angels to provide financial support and he admits that he worries about the future every bit as much as Banbury, albeit for different reasons. When Gow invites his neighbour to see the dams the beavers have built, he's impressed by their industry and ingenuity. But he's less chuffed that they will soon be creating wetlands on his patch. He's even more aeriated by the boar roaming where they will and neighbour Vicky asks Gow to set a cage trap to remove the animals that have strayed on to her farm.

When Gow hosts a conference on wolves, Linda has her hands full with guests. Sheep farmer Crispin Sobey isn't impressed by the argument that wolves are good custodians of Nature and Banbury tells some of his guests over breakfast that farmers don't want to see carcasses in their fields, especially when they can't legally shoot the predators. One delegate notes that he could have applied for subsidies to reinforce fencing if Britain had remained inside the European Union. But he also points out that Britain has lost more insects in last 70 years than in the previous 11,000 and that positive steps have to be taken to protect ecosystems or they will be lost forever. These theories about losing bees and butterflies make Banbury think, although he protests that there's not much he can do about it when he's got a living to earn.

His neighbours feel the same way. But, when Gow talks to them about doomsday scenarios over a pub lunch, they stop and listen. He highlights how much food is wasted in this country because supermarket demands has set a delicately balanced system out of skew. Banbury admits to missing seeing curlews on his land, but they didn't pay him to instal drainage pipes to he could increase crops and milk yields. Storm Henk had threatened the harvest in 2024, as crops were sown late. Yet, everything turns out okay and Banbury exclaims that hardship is easily forgotten when the good times come.

Gow counters that the system is living on borrowed time, as there are only so many chemicals the soil can tolerate before it's exhausted. He believes that letting Nature reclaim lands in order to replenish them is the only way to go. Even Banbury is impressed when he sees the sheep pasture that has been rewilding over the past two years. The bees and butterflies move him and he admits Gow might be right about some things. When asked whether he might experiment on the fringes of his farm, Banbury asks how much he'd be paid for repurposing grazing or crop land, as he has to keep bringing in revenue to feed his cows - and therein lies the crux of the matter.

As the film ends, Banbury reveals that he is going to fence off the perimeters of his land to let them grow wild, as they aren't otherwise productive. He's still wedded to his old methods and Linda teases him about the beauty of the storks and the benefits brought by the beavers. But, while he's more open to Gow's ideas than he was, he will always farm for profit rather than proliferation because that's his livelihood in the here and now and he intends to pass it on to James, as his father had done to him. Custom and cultivation are ingrained and will be as long as cash is the primary concern. But Gow has given his neighbours enough to think about to make them pause when making plans for the future.

At the end of his three-year shoot, Dawson must have been delighted by the shift in Banbury's stance. Although he sympathises with the dairy farmer, he clearly empathises with the rewilder and, although he maintains an admirable balance in depicting each side of this Devonian coin, it's always evident that he supports the ecological viewpoint, if only from the glorious close-ups of the insects and animals that he requests from cinematographer Jon Sayers. Editor James Gold and composer Alexander Parsons make equally adroit contributions.

Gow has the marked advantage, as he is much more articulate and passionate than Banbury, who relies on quips and a commitment to doing his job to the best of his ability with the resources at his command. But there's no real animosity between the pair, despite their diametric positions. Proud of his family connection to the area, Banbury feels protective of his father's way of life and of the legacy he is going to pass on to his son. As Gow appears not to have any family, one has to wonder what provision he has made for the future of his experiment and it's one of the film's few failings in that is leaves this thread untugged.

On the basis of Dawson's account, Gow's achievement has been remarkable, especially as he eschews confrontation and tries to keep his neighbours abreast of what's going on. But due credit is also given to Banbury, who is 11 years older and gets up considerably earlier each morning (as he reveals while commenting on Gow's drawn curtains while on a post-milking hedge inspection). He also cares deeply about his animals and is adamant that he has to put their welfare above any riskier ventures, no matter how worthy they might be.

By maintaining his distance, Dawson is able to conclude that there are no easy answers in the Derek debate. But he also underlines that there will always be new questions to be asked as the situation changes and choices become starker. And that's where governments need to come in, if Britain is to avoid the proud tradition of small farms being crushed by soulless Big Ag.

KIKUYU LAND.

In 2020, UN special rapporteurs raised concerns about the British government's reluctance to address the issue of the forced eviction from Kenya's Rift Valley of the Kipsigis and Talai communities. Now, Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu's Kikuyu Land turns the focus on to the peoples who were removed by imperial forces from the ancestral and spiritual homelands that were converted into tea plantations.

Following archive footage of Sir Evelyn Baring, the colonial governor of Kenya in the 1950s, promising a bright future for the Kikuyu peope, Nairobi-based journalist Bea Wangondu opines that when it comes to her community, there are usually two sides to every story, `one that the world sees and one that they keep to themselves'. She explains that land is identity among the Kikuyu, while reporting on the efforts of Mungai to get justice and action for his displaced people from the National Land Commission. He accuses the British of raping his homeland and stealing it to grow tea, while also claiming that the Kikuyu were cheated when land was redistributed following independence in 1963 and Wangondu is determined to find out who benefited from such an unfair process, especially as she is rebuffed when she approaches the various plantations still dominating the territory.

She meets with Mungai's son, Njenga, who runs `Better Tomorrow Today' to provide food for the families of the impoverished Kikuyu who are trying to eke out a living on their land because they want to be buried with their ancestors rather than move away and find better-paid jobs elsewhere. One of the kids is Stephen, who has a lively mind and reminds Wangondu of herself at his age. His mother is a tea picker and she works long hours under the scrutiny of field managers who not only drive them hard, but who also use intimidation and make sexual demands of the female workers. Speaking anonymously, several others back these claims in stating that field managers exploit their positions by threatening to have people fired or evicted if they don't co-operate.

Wangondu's family was able to acquire a larger plot than many of her neighbours in 1963 and she returns home to ask how this came about. She hears that her grandfather, Joseph Murage Nguriba, was a noble fellow who was respected by everyone. Intercut with her chats with her relatives is footage of William Ruto's bid for the Kenyan presidency in 2022, which includes him saying `enough is enough' when asked during a TV debate about his acquisition of land.

On meeting Jecinta, Wangondu learns about the abuse meted out by the field managers at the Mabroukie plantation, where she started work in 1968 after running away because her father had refused to let her go to school. This was owned by Brooke Bond before it became part of Unilever and Jecinta pulls no punches in describing the rapacious cruelty of the field managers, who were given carte blanche by their bosses. Revealing that she had three children, Jecinta avers that Unilever's empire was built on her back and she now feels free to speak out because they can no longer take her job to silence her.

Flying to London, Wangondu gets nowhere in seeking an interview with Unilever. But the National Archive yields documents disclosing that her grandfather had worked for the coloniser and she determines to discover what had motivated him to amass cheap plots to create his own fiefdom.

As King Charles visits Kenya to mark the 60th anniversary of independence, Wangondu meets Melanie Jacques of the Leigh Day law firm to discuss seeking justice for the women who were raped while working for British companies. She also laments her grandfather's willingness to profit from the cracks in the system.

Stephen doesn't tell his classmates that he walks to school from a farm and they never know whether he has eaten or not because it is easier to keep a secret if you are overlooked. Meanwhile, Wangondu continues her investigation as other journalists are being abducted for speaking out against the government. Shortly afterwards (as she is watching a Unilever promo saying how Lipton benefits its workers), she is ordered by the family to stop digging into her grandfather's activities and is asked to stay away for a while as she won't be welcome. Meanwhile, Mungai's case is delayed because the landowner claims not to have been kept abreast of developments. However, Ruto's determination to cover up his land acquisition jeopardises Commission hearings and he worries that he won't get justice.

Around this time, Wangondu has a clandestine meeting with an agent from the National Intelligence Service, who warns her that prying into land deals puts her at risk. He confesses to having made inconvenient critics disappear and confirms that the multinational corporations who control Kenyan agriculture put puppets into power so they can continue to exploit the country for their own ends. With Mungai still trying to press his case, Wangondu is granted an audience with her uncles, who tell her that their father was trying to do his best for the family and that's where his dealings must stay. She concludes that `white lies make better stories than black truths', over footage of police suppression of street protests against Ruto. In October 2025, he transferred the National Land Commission's valuation powers to the Ministry of Lands and Mungai is seen strumming his guitar, as he realises that the chance of his claim ever being heard and dealt with fairly have gone. A caption confirms that his claim was denied just two weeks later. Further notes state that the world's 50 biggest companies rely on 100 million `hidden workers', who are exploited for their labour and that Unilever sold its global tea interests for $5.1 billion in 2021. But the saddest part of the coda sees Stephen follow his mother into the fields rather than going to school, as he declares in voiceover that dreams only belong to small boys and that any chance of them coming true disappears when they come of age.

This sobering statement sums up the sense of injustice that permeates this worthwhile, if occasionally frustrating documentary. Co-directing with Brown (who is also credited for his camerawork and editing), Wangondu certainly raises a number of compelling issues, whether it's the legacy of colonial exploitation; the corrupt nature of Kenyan administration from the grassroots to the upper echelons; the sexual abuse of female field workers; the plight of those on the poverty line; or the callousness of corporate capitalism. Each topic would be worthy of an extended study in itself and therein lies the problem with a film that sometimes seems to dwell more on lauding Wangondu's crusading reporting style than it does on delving into the murkier depths of her family's part in the Kukuyu tragedy that was dictated by the Crown and has since been compounded by compatriots more intent on feathering their own nests by keeping onside with powerful multinational corporations than in alleviating suffering by rewarding honest labour with decent terms and conditions and a degree of hope for future generations.

More background insight into the Kikuyus's relationship with the land might have given the investigation sturdier roots, as Wangondu and Brown take for granted a general audience's knowledge of Kenyan history before, during, and after British rule. We learn nothing about the customs and rituals that have been violated by avaricious intruders and how this impacts upon the decisions taken by so many to remain in penury. It's noticeable that the tea pickers are mostly women, so what happened to the fathers of children like Stephen, as presumably not all of them would be field managers or security guards in the pay of the conglomerates? It's also not clear whose machines Mungai repairs and whether they belong to independent workers or corporate employees, as this would suggest an alternative to working in the fields (albeit a limited one).

Wangondu also steers clear of explaining how her uncles earn their money and how they treat their workers. Obviously, she finds herself in a tricky situation here, but she is rather coy about the source of her family's wealth and status and how it is being maintained. This isn't to overlook the courage and persistence she shows in pursuing such a contentious and potentially dangerous story. Nevertheless, the blur created by the laudable intention of covering as many bases as possible does tend to obscure the fact that the film-makers don't get very far in either uncovering unknown truths or in making their accusations stick against those who have betrayed the Kikuyu and other Kenyan communities over the last 130 years.

COTTON QUEEN.

The winner of the Best Film award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Suzannah Mirghani's debut feature, Cotton Queen, arrives in UK cinemas in the same week as Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu's documentary, Kikuyu Land, with which it shares several themes. However, this expansion of the Cannes prize-winning short, AI-Sit (2022), is perhaps the more significant film, as it sees Mirghani become the first Sudanese woman to write and direct a fictional feature.

Fifteen year-old Nafisa (Mihai Murtada) lives with mother Aisha (Haram Bisheer), father Bilal (Mohamed Musa), and grandmother, Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud), in a Sudanese village. She works in the fields picking cotton and goes bathing in the cooling Nile after a long day. Al-Sit disapproves of such rebellious behaviout and gives Nafia a bitter herb to drink to protect her from a coming plague.

Aisha has high hopes that her daughter will become betrothed to Nadir Tijani (Hassan Kassala), a wealthy businessman who has been educated abroad. But she is sweet on onion farmer, Babiker (Talaat Fareed), who fails to impress Al-Sit, who reminds her granddaughter that she had once saved the village from the British colonisers. And she wants better things for Nafisa, who she considers flighty.

Next day, while Nafisa is resting under a tree, when she looks up and sees Cupid sitting on a branch. She asks about her fate, only to be woken by her friends telling her that the newcomer has arrived. He is billeted in the old British overseer's house, which has remained empty since Al-Sit confounded the colonisers, with the result that dust has settled on such ornate furnishings as a four-poster bed. Everyone giggles because he has a suit and chats to his father on his mobile phone, as his chauffeur informs him that Al-Sit's cotton is the best around. Nadir has come to introduce the villagers to a new genetically modified seed that he hopes will become the future and Nadir is keen to collaborate with him. But his mother insists on things being done the old way.

When Bilal sneaks out to meet Nadir at the big house, Al-Sit tells the village children how she earned the title `Cotton Queen' by defeating the leader of the British, who had the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. Aisha is keen to matchmake Nafisa and gets her to breathe on a broth she has prepared for Nadir, but Nafisa delivers it to a sleeping Babiker instead. She is then put out when best friend Khadija (Aya Yassin Altageel) stops braiding her hair in order to serve tea to Nadir, who has come to her father's house to show off his genetically modified cotton seeds and announce that he is going to get married and move into the mansion.

Ai-Sit is concerned about Nafisa, as she believes virgin cotton should be picked by virgins. She also fears that Nadir has come to take over the cotton market and put her out of business. Nafisa writes poems for Babiker (even though he can't read) and wishes she could make her own choices. At school, she sees the younger children watching a puppet show, in which a girl resists her mother's attempt to subject her to genital mutilation and the kids all applaud when the mother dies and the girl escapes. Khadija tells her she's wasting her time writing poems for Babiker and he admits he found them boring. In order to cool off, Nafisa swims in the Nile, only for Nadir to find her and she tells him off for coming to a women only bathing spot. He replies that the local girls are in for a surprise, as they think they own everything, but this will change after he moves in.

Next day, when Aisha cooks another dish for Nadir, she tricks Nafisa into blowing on it. In order to give him a surprise, Al-Sit blows on the pot herself, so that it would be her spirit that inhabits it. Nabil escorts her to the mansion and Nadir teases her about being a river sprite. As they walk in the garden, he tells her that he's less interested in agriculture than in giving the village and its environs some infrastructure to bring it into the modern world. He pulls on a tree branch and a bird's nest falls out and Nafisa is shocked to see the eggs smash on the ground.

Al-Sit gets Babiker to repair the boat he built so he can carry a cargo of cotton to sell for her. Nafisa asks him to take her with him, but he says girls are not allowed on boats. When she gets home late, Al-Sit says she will punish her by forbidding her to leave the house. She tells her that her grandmother had discovered she had also mooned over a young man and she had married her off to an old fellow to teach her a lesson. But this turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, as she was widowed and became free to do what she wanted.

Nafisa isn't touched by the story and shows Al-Sit an old newspaper she found, which reveals that her grandmother earned her Cotton Queen name from winning a beauty contest. A monochrome flashback shows her being forced to pose with a uniformed Englishman in her crown. No longer awed by the old woman, Nafisa sulks in her room. Aisha tries to cheer her up by reading some of her poems, but she mocks one and is outraged by another. She brushes Nafisa's hair and tells her to be nice to Nadir when he calls, as her marriage to him could solve all the family's problems.

However, she walks past him and her grandmother and goes in search of Babiker. On finding no sign of him, she lies down in his boat and it floats down the Nile. As she drifts in the darkness, she has a vision of herself at a small fair called `Nafisa's Playground'. She reaches the shore and sets fire to the GM seeds and the mansion and, as the villagers gather to watch the blaze, Nafisa whispers that she has made her choice.

Suzannah Mirghani can only be credited for attempting to tackle so many hot-button issues in her debut feature. The Sudanese-Russian film-maker had previously directed several shorts, including Hamour (2011), Hind's Dream (2014), Caravan (2016), and Virtual Voice (2021), as well as Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness (2022), which was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery in London. But it was the multi-award-winning Al-Sit - which won the ArteKino Award at L'Atelier de la Cinefondation at Cannes - that provides the basis for this thoughtful expansion, which deftly blends realism and fantasy in examining the status of women in Sudanese society, the legacy of the colonial era, the safety of GM crops, and the extent to which the older generation seeks to impose traditions (such as female genital mutilation) that have no place in the modern world, while also peddling less harmful superstitions about spirits, portents, and the protective power of potions.

The performances of Mihai Murtada (Nafisa), Haram Bisheer (Aisha), and Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud (Al-Sit) are impressive for non-professionals, with the latter being particularly notable as the matriarch whose determination to maintain control over her family is rooted in a deception that is almost as damaging as the proposals that Nadir has for the village and its crop.

Shot in Egypt, Frida Marzouk's imagery stands out, as do Pierre Glemet's production design and Amine Bouhafa's score. There are also several songs sung by Nafisa and her friends, as they work in the fields or bathe in the Nile. Herself a poet, Mirghani pokes gentle fun at the verses Nafisa writes by having Aisha laugh out loud as she reads their naive yearnings. But they also reveal the teenager's independence of thought and readiness to challenge long-standing conventions and her determination to follow her heart not the dictates of those keen to marry her off to a rich outsider with his own designs on shaking up the status quo. In a way, there's an Austenesque feel to the story, although setting fire to oppressive edifices is more in the Brontë line of country. This may not be as striking as Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch (2017). But it represents a steady start and it's to be hoped this isn't the last that British audiences hear of Mirghani or Sudanese cinema.