This cutting edge collection brings together essays by leading film scholars and covers diverse topics such as propaganda, third cinema, 9/11 cinema, manifestos, festivals, documentary, human rights, eco-activism and animal rights.

It foregrounds the key debates, concepts, approaches and case studies that critique and explain the complex relationship between politics and film, covering cinema from around the world and including examples from film history as well as contemporary cinema.

It also explores the wider relationship between politics and entertainment, examines cinema's response to political and social transformations and the extent to which filmmaking, itself, is a political act.