Detroit

Real-life racially motivated violence during the Detroit riots of 1967 is dramatised in a film exploring the riots' continuing relevance in the era of "Black Lives Matter". No strangers to controversy in previous collaborations The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal here take an unconventional approach to storytelling, which starts as a fresco-like overview of a city in turmoil (replete with much vivid archive footage), then homes in on horrifying events at a local motel, where police investigating gunfire leave a trail of broken and bloodied African-American casualties. So brutal, claustrophobic and upsetting is this extended sequence that it pretty much overwhelms the rest of the movie, with Will Poulter's racist white cop wresting centre stage from the key black characters, John Boyega's conciliatory security guard and ambitious soul singer Algee Smith. What does emerge from the expansive, angry, somewhat ragged result is a vital, provocative statement on the oppressive power structures embedded deeply in American society and the long road towards a shared recognition of the need to change.