Ava DuVernay’s masterful film chronicles the three-month period in 1965 when the civil rights movement organised a campaign for nondiscriminatory voter registration law. Beginning with the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King’s acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize, the film details the struggle to complete the march from Selma, Alabama to the Capitol in Montgomery. Driven by a forceful and nuanced performance by David Oyelowo as Dr King, Selma captures the entirety of the scene at the battle for voting rights: from the grand speeches and momentous political bartering, to the grief of the innocently slain and the reality of life determined by a system of institutionalised racism. The film strikes a balance between the deeply emotional and the astutely strategic motivations of King, then-President Lyndon B Johnson, and all members of the civil rights movement, making it utterly engrossing. Rather than relying on gratuitous violent images, the raw emotion in this film is derived from the delicate character developments, most notably, in the compelling scene between Coretta Scott King and her husband when she confronts him with a taped recording of his infidelities. Never preachy or self-righteous, Selma is affirmed by the passionate clarity and blazing conviction of its story. The film is at times harrowing, the honest depiction of each blow, each scream, each death, culminating in the audience’s confrontation with the sheer police brutality and cowardice that is powerfully resonant in today’s global reality.