Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
As a young child, Gamal ‘G’ Turawa was brought up in a white foster family in Kent. He didn’t give much thought to being Black until he moved to London with his biological father, where a Metropolitan Police officer spewed a racist insult at him. Why then did he end up aspiring to become an officer with the same police force? Recounting his life’s story with riveting candour, Turawa explores how a deep-seeded desire ‘to be as white as possible’ led him to a career at the Metropolitan Police, the racism he experienced there and even perpetrated himself as an officer, and how coming out of the closet as a gay man ultimately led him down a path of self-acceptance and self-understanding. Intimately captured by the UK director Cherish Oteka, the documentary The Black Cop: A Villain, a Victim and a Hero is both a troubling account of institutional racism in the UK and, through Turawa, a deeply moving portrait of the complexities of identity.
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
video
Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes