This week's film releases

Out today in France, The Black Power Mixtape, a prize-winning documentary produced by Danny Glover which mobilises a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish journalists between 1967-1975 who came to the US drawn by stories of urban unrest and revolution. Gaining access to many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver among them, the filmmakers captured them in intimate moments and remarkably unguarded interviews. Thirty years later, this lush collection was found languishing in the basement of Swedish Television.

Also worth noting, the surprise hit at Cannes this year Sleeping Beauty, a haunting and provocative Australian film début by Julie Leigh, produced by Jane Campion: ‘You will go to sleep: You will wake up. It will be as if those hours never existed.’ Death-haunted, quietly reckless, Lucy (Emily Browning) is a young university student who takes a job as a Sleeping Beauty. In the Sleeping Beauty Chamber old men seek an erotic experience that requires Lucy’s absolute submission. This unsettling task starts to bleed into Lucy’s daily life and she develops an increasing need to know what happens to her when she is asleep….

For Hollywood releases, don’t miss the ‘based on a true story’ drama Moneyball (Le stratège) starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and described as ‘one of the best movies of the year’ by Rolling Stone magazine. Pitt plays the the Oakland A’s general manager who defies conventional wisdom & outsmarts his competition when forced to reinvent his baseball team with bargain players.