SINCE the 1980s, the rich have become ever richer and they are giving a lot of money to right-wing political parties to ensure the system continues.

Greed has been made into a virtue and if a bank fails the state will bail it out — with our money.

That’s the context of Katharine Round’s The Divide, which gives a glimpse into the lives of women on zero-hours contracts in the US.

Inspired by the book The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, it depicts people living under guard in gated communities to avoid crime but who have to work every hour God sends and who are unable to be ill even for one day if they’re to meet their mortgage repayments.

A brilliant film and of particular interest to anyone concerned with inequality.

Drone by Norwegian film-maker Tonje Hessen Schei shines a light on the little-known human impact of US killer drones over Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Reprieve’s Clive Stafford Smith had the idea of putting enlarged photos of child drone-strike victims on the flat roofs of Waziristan’s village huts to try to make US drone operators, sitting in darkened booths 7,500 miles away, think about who they are killing when they “point and click” the button to release the drone’s missile.

Brandon Bryant, a young drone operator now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, chillingly tells how his superior shouted: “Splash!” after Bryant had pressed the button killing a group of villagers. The others in the booth all laughed.

The film shows how video games are being used as recruiting tools for those who are “murderers for the state,” as one former operator puts it.

But US Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson questions the so-called war on terrorism when he asks: “How are we winning, if every time we kill four terrorists, we create 10?”

It’s a chilling but hugely important film and one’s faith in humanity is only restored by the courage of people like the young Bryant, organisations such as Reprieve and the Pakistani lawyer who is bringing victims’ cases to the High Court in an effort to get drone strikes stopped.

Sunu is a masterpiece by Mexico’s Sofia Marquez. Beautifully filmed, with huge empathy for the small and medium farmers she shows working their maize fields, it reveals the strong resistance to US transnational giant Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) seed programme being foisted on them.

Mexico’s indigenous farmers produce 65 different kinds of maize and they are scornful of the poor-quality GM yellow corn the US produces.

“We want them to respect our maize!” one farmer says, pointing out that their problem is not seeds but the Mexican government’s lack of support for small farmers.