The Square

Noujaim's film attests to how quickly joyous weeping in the streets gave way to sectarian arguments over the army's role and fissures in promising alliances.

If the resulting film is unwieldy - five editors, five "additional editors," and six assistant editors are credited - it also brims with angry urgency.

The camera becomes a revolutionary: running, chasing, breathlessly jittery, up in the face of interrogators.

Epitomizes nonfiction film not just as a way to deepen knowledge and understanding, but also as an art form.

What does a revolution feel like from the inside? I'm not sure we'll ever get closer than "The Square," an electrifying, at times heartbreaking documentary from the Egypt-born, Harvard-educated documentarian Jehane Noujaim.

If, like me, you watched all this on TV, the ongoing turmoil began to feel like a distant, abstract blur. Noujaim takes us inside this history by centering on three protesters, each from a different background.

Nothing short of literature

While it's significant as a historical document, The Square, simply by existing, also reminds us of how new media has begun to transform the way the world witnesses war and oppression.

Jehane Noujaim's ground-level account of the Arab Spring from 2011 to mid-2013 in Cairo's Tahrir Square has heart, wit, poetry and fire.

Unflinching, violent but excellent docu on Arab Spring.

What does a revolution really feel like? You learn the answer in The Square, an extraordinary documentary that puts its cameras on the ground to take us in the heart of the troubled, betrayed, idealistic and sad movement for democracy in Egypt.

One of the very best documentaries of 2013.