A documentary about Brazilian Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna, who won the F1 world championship three times before his death at age 34. Vividly realised by Asif Kapadia, all those who hail Hamilton and Vettel as their heroes should see this film and witness the champions of yesteryear.

The hair is piled high, the fake tan abounds and the rhinestones have been polished to within an inch of their lives; it’s time to melt into the ridiculously enjoyable world of Irish dance with Jig.

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? is a film about architecture. And while architecture’s great, and we all love to walk the Man On Wire tightrope between being entertained and fully engaged like unbearable brainiacs, we have to ask: where are the action sequences? Where’s the exposed flesh? Sure, without architecture, we’d probably all be living in rickety bamboo shacks, looking a bit like Tom Hanks during the later stages of his stay in Castaway, and attempting to eat raw chicken. However, spending 72 minutes of our lives forcing ourselves to be impressed with a film about it is another matter entirely.

Fancy a nice little documentary about the biggest trash dump in the world? Get ready for a Cinderella story with true grit, a wonderful cast and an improbably big heart…

A sweet, gentle and slightly morally ambiguous documentary about life as an Irish woman-sort, His And Hers presents its fair subjects as well-meaning, inherently good-hearted eccentrics. Which is all fine. Though it means you can’t quite shake the feeling they’d all be a lot more comfortable in the studio of Creature Comforts.

Client Nine is ostensibly a factual documentary about the fall of New York governor Elliot Spitzer, a married democrat who was found in 2008 to have seen prostitutes over a two year period. However, director and producer Alex Gibney expands his feature beyond the sex scandal, investigating the Republican enemies that Spitzer made in his tireless persecution of the money men on Wall Street, and whether a man that stood for so much should be brought down over something so (relatively) little.

Following hard on the heels of sensational exposés including An Inconvenient Truth and End of the Line, GasLand seeks to turn a harsh spotlight on yet more outrageous behaviour by arrogant US energy corporations. Whether it quite manages to be the call to arms it aspires towards is another matter.

Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem Howl is celebrated with style and verve by film-makers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman in this experimental concoction of animation, historical re-enactment and faux interviews.

Marketed during its Edinburgh Film Festival run as “the Afghanistan war film that renders all others unnecessary”, Restrepo is the work of two war correspondents who’ve seen more action than most. An artfully documented account of 15 months embedded in Afghanistan’s deadly Korangal valley, this film captures the highs and lows of warfare from the viewpoint of the men who were there. An intimate account of friendship and firefights in one of the world’s most dangerous environments.

Pat Tillman was an archetypal all-American – a handsome and successful athlete who gave up a multi-million dollar football career to enlist after 9/11. His death in Afghanistan saw him become a national hero, but when it emerged that he had died as a result of friendly fire the government mobilised to block the truth of his death. This spectacular documentary tunnels to the very heart of the American establishment and will shock you with what it finds there.