Do we expect filmmakers to risk their lives for us? Only madmen or idealists will say “yes”. But since one of those categories includes all of us (on our utopian days), and since every work of art must be a little mad to be great, perhaps we do want our movies made by artist-adventurers willing to hazard all.

Many, today, are putting themselves on the line, courting harassment, hostility and occasionally danger. The “you are there” Iraq movies Redacted and Battle for Haditha, powered by immediacy, were made in the Middle East using real soldiers and local people. Alex Gibney’s documentary feature about US torture policy, Taxi to the Darkside, trawled the world from Afghanistan to Guantánamo winning few friends and many enemies. Philippe Aractingi’s newly released Under the Bombs plies through war-shocked southern Lebanon, with actors mingling with the wounded, the harrowed, the bereaved.