1. Head to a hostile environment to report on an important political issue
2. Brutally collide camera lens with your topic head on
3. Realise your subject is a victim sprawled open for examination, like a bug in a petri dish, divorced from the context of its being and devoid of individual detail
4. Become depressed and think you’re losing your way with no human narrative to grasp onto, as you drink and talk your frustrations through at night with a bar fixture
5. Leave, and almost give up on the facade of making a film, until you understand the one who propped you up with their near-immunity to the surrounding scenario is the one you must return to
6. Stake down your claim on this surviving social misfit whose eyes dance above a slouching spine, and attach yourself fast for the next 6 months
7. Question the basics until they laugh and reveal their seams
8. Spot the potential drama of their destiny, and divine it

Again, Sean McAllister has cast the most charismatic of characters, in another free-spirited hero, at odds with his society and expected role. Welcome to Naoki and the class of working poor in Japan.

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate was difficult to make, as the confessional and controversial jogging journey dialogue at the start lays testimony to. Misunderstood, misdirected and mistreating his own health, Sean saw the unrealistic expectations for social face, warped work ethics and high suicide statistics, yet was locked out of the society and could not access any emotional theme; he was running in circles with no viable entry to the core for years. The breakthrough was Naoki, an ex-bar owner, an ex-home owner, an ex-brand-new-BMW-paid-in-cash-in-full owner, with ex-wives, and no conceivable assets or family of his own any more. Naoki was living in a capitalist Japanese hell, and provided Sean with a golden ticket into the madness demonstrated so aptly and absurdly with the show of communal exercises done at Naoki’s place of work every morning. The insurance collection officers gather on command to raise their arms in an uninspired union of circles. “It was like watching communism parade as capitalism,” a poignant point in Sean’s stylistic commentary.

The limitation of most films about Japan is their tendency to exoticise, as they paint beautiful portraits of individuals and isolation. In contrast, Sean does not merely show social anomie, but manages to slip inside, sit on the marital bed and split open the shadow hiding the man. This is quite a feat, and part of a poetic quote from near the end of the film that demonstrates Sean’s special skill at building a rapport, and pulling out the essence in people who willingly hold up their arms in delight to be got, at last. Ignored and scorned by society, but legal never the less, they stamp down their foot and maintain their right to be themselves, yet tragically have no one around who wants to see them truly. Like Samir and Kevin in previous films, Naoki marches to his own tune, and once he recognises and accepts that Sean can sense his capacity for living emotionally not rationally, he willing hands over his personality and future.

Naoki lives in a pill-popping, feeling-suppressing society, sharing a partnership and connection only with Yoshie, who is too tired to talk because she’s paid to hear the surface woes of customers rejected by their own wives through convention. Collective customs and rituals over bear individual desires. And here is where a lesser documentary maker would be pulled up and out for intervening and meddling in the development of life playing out. For Sean helps implement change. But not in a manipulative way, and not in an excessive-access-to-unrealistic-resources way. He operates like a friend, offering an ear to hear talk of how it is, and press for how it may be. He dissects relationships, to prompt his protagonists to locate the veins, and ensure their survival, if that is wanted and needed. Which is admirable, and also makes for a proper narrative arc in the film. We get a dramatically satisfying ending that extends the scope of the story, which is great and rare for a documentary that also offers subtle access to a closed and complex political context.

A quick glance at the Storyville home page shows that tonight on BBC4 at 10pm is Prodigal Sons, which follows an old football hero who is now a post-operative transgendered lesbian woman, home for a school reunion, and was the film my festival comrade James Newton recommended most. In next Monday’s slot is Elizabeth Stopford’s touching film I’m not Dead Yet about an inheritance battle within her family, and apparently there is a twist in the middle that changes your perspective on everything. Strangely the film that played in last Monday’s slot, Operation Iraqi Filmmaker, played at Sheffield a whole year ago, and was picked up as an acquisition there, to be aired much later than its festival outing.

The slick opening night film Thriller in Manila is playing on True Stories tomorrow at 10pm, and already played at BritDoc earlier this year. It goes behind the scenes of the famous Muhammad Ali fight with Joe Frazier, from Frazier’s rarely heard perspective of who Ali was and how he operated through intimidation tactics. There is some amazingly strange archive footage unearthed which shows Ali joking with the Klu Klux Klan affectionately. The film really informs how the myth of celebrity can be created and how we can buy into an idea of a sports hero and happily ignore some ugly and brutal truths about their behaviour and attitudes. James Toback’s Tyson documentary, which I saw recently at the London Film Festival not Sheffield, similarly delves behind the headlines propping up a later heavyweight champion. Toback has been close friends with Tyson for over 20 years, but rather than use that relationship as the basis of the film, he decided to go in the opposite direction, and have Tyson’s perspective on himself singularly. There is no denying the charges laid against him, and so the film operates in almost the exact opposite way to Thriller in Manila by reinforcing Tyson’s strength and skill in the ring, despite the activities outside of it.

Next Sunday night sees the screening of Morgan Matthews’ new film The Fallen. It’s an epic tribute to, and about, the people who serve in the British Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Morgan Matthews and the exec Steve Hewitt (who also chairs the Sheffield board of directors) questioned the proposed length, but Richard Klein insisted it should be an expansive three hours, and so it stands proud as the most ambitious single documentary commissioned by the BBC. The film works wonderfully, attention never swaying, and I heard reports that the entire cinema was crying throughout the screening – just to warn you. Touching tales, told compassionately. Lastly, although not screened at Sheffield, I was chatting to Zac Beattie who’s Cutting Edge film Rich Kid, Poor Kid plays this Thursday. It’s about two girls who live on the same street, but lead lives a world apart from each other’s existence etc, and is meant to be very good.

Should films that already have a secured broadcast home dominate film festival schedules? Obviously ones that push boundaries, such as length, form and access, have a deserved place, but it was interesting to note the difference compared to last year. For example, Mum, Herion and Me, Jane Treays recently broadcast Cutting Edge, played. It is an entirely excellent film about how to love a daughter who you can’t force help on, who sleeps homeless down the road from the family home to ensure a better routine for all, and who is unable to enjoy birthday pampering without slipping off for a hit, paid for by mum for a bit of peace. The quality of the film is not under question, but previously a television screening would have voided a festival screening because of premiering status issues, and an opening night film would have been a national, if not worldwide premier. What do people think about this – are strict rules relating to where the film has already played becoming outdated in a bid to play the best films?

Much like Carrie Bradshaw, Jennifer wants to discover what it means to be a woman today, working and living ‘without man and children’. She has affairs and talks freely about sex, like a man, but she isn’t man, cue existential crisis that takes her around the world to ‘pass the camera’ with woman and chat about rape and marriage and masturbation and even FGM in a bid discover why women (but not her) defer to men, and how men stake their claim through cultural rearing practices. This of course give Jennifer ample opportunity to reflect on her own childhood (the only girl with 4 boys), and lifestyle choices. She concludes that only men can be truly free. Except her, presumably.

Jennifer is annoyingly self-involved, and you may want to slap her frequently. She is very rich and spoilt and her flaunting of her coloured married lover in bed is such strange showing off it’s almost untrue. Also her voice is very annoying. However, her extreme self confidence grates so much she prompts you to ask questions and deconstruct her own assumptions. I would term this provocative anthropology and dare you to watch.