Four short films are woven together to make an unconventional portrait of an unconventional man: the theorist and writer John Berger. There’s an eloquent moment in which, with one beautifully phrased observation, Berger reduces a room full of intellectuals to appreciative silence. This is a film that celebrates the exchange of ideas, creating a microcosm for independent thought that is every bit as fertile as the fecund mountain farmlands where Berger made his home. But for all the radical political treatises, there is a sense of peace here also – nowhere better shown than in a lovely scene in which Berger and Tilda Swinton sit, perfectly at ease, making a pie and chatting about dads.
