The organisation of the civil-rights march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 represents Dr Martin Luther King Jr at the peak of his powers. He had articulated his dream in the famous speech of 1963; he would be assassinated in 1968; in between, he would tussle with the Lyndon Johnson administration to improve the circumstances and freedoms of poor and disenfranchised black people. For what is the first full feature representation of Dr King, the film-makers (director Ava DuVernay, writer Paul Webb and producers including Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt) chose to focus on this particular pivotal campaign. The advantage of this approach is that it allows character to emerge from situation without the hindsight-prism of a conventional biopic.Appropriately, the film is dominated by the