Sleep Furiously

A melancholy study of a small farming community in mid-Wales. With small-scale agriculture dying out, Gideon Koppel's nostalgic documentary depicts the life of the hamlet where his parents settled as refugees from Germany. It's a tale of sheep shearing, cake baking, ploughing and choral singing. 

David Jenkins, Time Out: There are scraps of dialogue here and there, but words are not important. It's more about rituals and process, a paean to old-fashioned methods like farming, baking and rope-making that are slowly being crushed by the wheels of progress. It never rests on tweeness or sarcasm and the sheer ingenuity of the filmmaking produces something altogether deeper, moodier, more compassionate and joyful. (Verdict: five stars out of six)

Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: Koppel has talked of his desire to rehabilitate the concept "documentary". Long ago, a non-fiction film could be a meditation, an audio-pictorial poem, a pastoral. Then television took over and "polemical themes and journalistic structures now prevail over visual observations and lyrical stories". Step back and reposition your brain. The camera and sound-mike here are not Quixotes tilting at real or opportunistic foes, but recording angels. Entranced yet detached, they are weightless witnesses to the villagers who natter as they prepare a vegetable show; to the mountain mists knitting mighty patterns over valleys; to the mobile librarian trundling his yellow van along corkscrew roads... (Verdict: five stars out of five) ·