Breaking the Cycle review – meet the charismatic Thai politician striving to change his country’s history

Gripping documentary examines the Future Forward Party’s unprecedented 2019 election result, and its leader’s aim to break Thailand’s repeated military coups With his disarming good looks, pro-democracy activist and businessman Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit resembles an actor rather than a typical Thai politician. Heir to the country’s largest car manufacturer, he is blessed not only with personable charisma but also inexhaustible funds. His stunning rise into public consciousness is the beating heart of Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn’s debut film, a thrilling documentary about an extraordinary political campaign that shook a nation. As founder of the progressive Future Forward Party (FFP), Juangroongruangkit’s central message cut through the noise of electoral politics: secure a brighter future by correcting the wrongs of the past. Since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand has undergone a never-ending cycle of military takeovers, including 12 coups. Dur...

Emergency viewing: 15 must-see films about the climate crisis

These unflinching documentaries, indie thrillers and anime fables can help us to understand the climate emergency, and how to respond

We are rapidly becoming the all-star cast of the biggest disaster movie of all time, and tragically it’s a global success. Towering infernos blaze over Canada, the Canaries and Rhodes, Bangladesh, China and even northern England have had their own devastating Poseidon adventures while the whole world continues to reel in the socioeconomic chaos of the Covid contagion and in fear of an H1N1 outbreak. Only the dramatic effects are no longer computer-generated, they are real, and people are really dying.

I went to the Odeon in the 1970s and was terrified and wowed by the disaster film genre. Since the late 1980s I’ve been watching the real world’s climate effects department ramp up its protests to our wholesale inactivity and disregard for the science that says, with increasing accuracy, that humanity is facing Armageddon. But there’s been another competing genre, the conspiracy/disinformation movie, the creepy corrupt B-movies released, not by Hollywood, but by big oil, not X-rated at the multiplex but woven insidiously into our lives as extras in this catastrophe… and the repeats, re-streams, re-runs orchestrated by those fuelling the flames.

Chris Packham’s five-part series Earth is available on BBC iPlayer. The accompanying book, Earth: Over 4 Billion Years in the Making, by Chris Packham and Andrew Cohen is published by William Collins (£25)

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