“If we were in another state,” mutters one of Cyril Tuschi’s interviewees, “I could be a lot more open with you”. And therein lies the problem. A vital but ultimately frustrating documentary about one of Russia’s most controversial oligarchs, Khodorkovsky does its best to shed light on the mind-meltingly shady dealings between Vladimir Putin and the man who went from being one of the richest businessmen in the world to a Siberian prisoner. The constant political road-blocks can’t help but take their toll on the feature’s punch, but it’s fascinating stuff all the same.

A jaw-lockingly sinister look at the side of modelling never really explored by Tyra Banks Co, Girl Model is a sparse but affecting documentary about the under-age beauty business, its victims and its beneficiaries. Director David Redmon does well to keep quiet, leaving it to his subjects to sketch out an deeply worrying world of exploitation and sexualisation.

The British Guide to Showing Off offers a behind-the-scenes look at Miss Alternative World, a pageant that began 40 years ago as a drag contest and has since morphed into an extravaganza of living art. The film follows the show’s creator Andrew Logan as he creates his 2009 show. With guest spots from Ruby Wax, Zandra Rhodes and about three hundred men in drag, be warned: this is the documentary that will make you want to run away with the circus all over again.

We Were Here takes a reflective look at the AIDS virus during the eighties and nineties in the San Francisco gay community. Gracefully melding the devastation of the epidemic with the inspiring reaction from the community that struggled to accept its enormity, We Were Here is deeply moving, utterly inspiring and completely unmissable.

The Way of The Morris tells the story of Tim Plester, a country-turned-city mouse rediscovering his heritage via the power of Morris dancing. Expect bells, war stories and the occasional hilarious hat.

Since 1982 the state of Texas has executed 473 people, and is currently holding 334 people on death row. While California has the highest death row population in the US, it’s Texas that has the highest rate of execution – and it’s here that legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog travelled to make his mesmerising documentary, Into The Abyss.

The Interrupters is one gang violence film that manages to avoid showing much in the way of gang violence. Set in areas of Chicago run by prominent local gangs renowned for fatal conflicts, the film captures a year in the lives of three “violence interrupters”, Ameena, Cobe and Eddie. They work for CeaseFire, an organisation which claims to treat violence as infectious diseases are treated: that is, to interrupt it at the source. Relevant much?

After the astonishing success of 2008’s Man On Wire James Marsh turns his documentary lens to the remarkable story of Nim, a chimp who became the centre of an experiment into whether language can indeed be acquired by animals. Without probing too much into the moral issues of such an experiment, Marsh presents this story with an extremely even hand, allowing us to be the judges of the characters, human and animal.

If you have any interest in the history of the nuclear arms race and how it affects us today, go and see the new eye-opening documentary by Lucy Walker as it talks through the miscalculations and madness of nuclear bombs and politics in a film that educates, campaigns, and shocks.

“The writing’s on the wall for graffiti artists” – so reads the tired and predictable tabloid punch line. But despite years of media hysteria and clean-up operations, graffiti remains a part of urban life throughout the developed world. Jon Reiss’ documentary Bomb It proposes to explore not only the tremendous diversity of global wall writing but the wall itself – posing the question ‘who owns public space, anyway?’.