Content from Lansdowne Productions

On 22 December 1997, forty-five indigenous residents of the small Southern Mexican village of Acteal were attending a prayer meeting in their village church when they were slaughtered by unknown paramilitary forces. They were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas (The Bees), who were supporters of the revolutionary Zapatistas but renounced their violent methods. The investigation into their deaths quickly went suspiciously cold. Scottish documentary maker Nick Higgins, an expert on Mexican culture and politics and the author of Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion, attains unprecedented access to the place, the people, and the story behind a barely-reported atrocity.

It is estimated that 40% of the world’s population lack the opportunity to be educated in their own language. In Colours of the Alphabet we get an insight into the challenges this poses as we follow a group of first graders in Zambia – a country with 72 local languages where education is primarily offered in English.

Hidden Gifts is a creative documentary that explores the mystery of art and mental illness. It tells the story of Angus MacPhee, “the quiet big man” from South Uist, who wove clothes from grass. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946 Angus was taken from his island home on South Uist to Craig Dunain psychiatric hospital among the hills near Inverness in the Scottish highlands. For fifty years he spoke not a single word to any member of the hospital staff. His presence was also an absence; his secret grass weaving his only form of expression.

As Cooper Barrett struggles to survive each of life’s many challenges, he guides us through the often-messy, always-hilarious ordeal, so that our lives don’t have to be nearly the entertaining disaster that Cooper’s is turning out to be.