The Other Side (2015) – Roberto Minervini.

I've always admired stark documentaries that intimately explore the darker interstices of human existence. Main protagonist Mark is a rather exhausted-looking junkie/drug pedlar, selling methamphetamine amongst the lower echelon's of Louisiana's disenfranchised working class poor, and those broken, actively downward-spiralling souls. A curiously engaging figure, articulate, often kindly, surprisingly self-aware, and his exchanges with many of those closet to him prove genuinely compelling. While the darker content is far from edifying, the director credibly maintains objectivity. As a subjective viewer I'm never down with alcoholics being around younger children, and I don't believe Hilary Clinton cares for them as much as they drunkenly suggest she does. The Other Side is so beautifully constructed, it quite often feels indivisible from an exceptionally naturalistic drama. This is, sadly, not an optimistic view of America, but it is an honest one, taking a humane, seemingly unfiltered look at those all too often blithely written off as poor white trash. Guns, and the abuses of drugs and alcohol loom large in The Other Side, yet, even if the world were to become miraculously more evenly balanced, I truly wonder, just how radically different would it genuinely be?