Anglican priest Mina Smallman’s documentary, about the devastating loss she suffered when two of her daughters were murdered, makes for searing viewing. By Madoc Cairns

I could give Job a run for his money, Mina Smallman jokes; though grief hangs on those words, not laughter. If there’s humour in what she says, it’s the humour you find in Job, night-black, acid, born from bone-deep pain. Because Smallman’s seen a lot of that. Her two daughters – Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry – were both ­murdered on 7 June 2020. 

A few weeks later it emerged that two Metropolitan Police officers guarding the place they were found distributed photos of their bodies to dozens of other officers. Already living with chronic disability, in the months that followed Mina Smallman felt she was falling apart. To tell you the truth, she says, I wanted to be with them. I wanted to go.

Three things saved her: Christopher, her husband; her Christian faith (she is a retired Anglican priest); and her passion for justice.  She sees Nicole and Bibaa’s deaths, and what followed, as tangled up with prejudice and hate: hatred of women, hatred of people of colour, hatred of those who live in the wrong area, come from the wrong background. She was there in court when her daughter’s killer was convicted, and she was there when the two officers who took pictures were sent to jail. She went on television and radio across the country to sound alarm after alarm; on male violence, on racism, on the paucity of mental health services, on the ­corruption that festers in parts of the Met.