Forget the academic jargon that infests the new blockbuster exhibition on Panafricanism at the Barbican and enjoy the fighting spirit, creativity, bite, diversity, drama and humour on show.

I felt sure that A Useful Ghost  - a Thai love story about vacuum cleaners - was a shoo-in for the most unusual film of the year. Until I saw Hen.

Is anti-Zionism antisemitic? If you think so, or perhaps have been accused of being antisemitic for supporting Palestinian protesters. Kaddish is for you.

Instead of the grimacing Maori warrior or dancer you might expect at Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, you are confronted at the exhibition entrance by a pot-bellied figure of a Polynesian security guard.

One of the glories of London’s mega-galleries and museums is their willingness to put on exhibitions about important subjects that are of interest to only a few people.

A Useful Ghost is almost certainly the strangest film you will see this year.

The set-up is disarmingly simple: “Two young brothers explore Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian elections crisis, witnessing both the city’s magnitude and their father’s daily struggles as political unrest threatens their journey home.”

Museum of Edible Earth is, of course, a tasting exhibition.

Six stand-up comedians on a tour of Palestine? You must be joking.

They are. And (most) audiences are laughing.

Sweetmeats is an elderly Indian-Pakistani romcom set in London about past marriages, new love, food and diabetes. It’s a delight.

“If I invited you to come with me on a journey, a story, will you come with me?” asks Okumu at the outset of Far Gone. Of course, the audience says Yes. But what a journey, what a story.

Safe Haven brings to the stage a hold-your-breath moment in Kurdish and Iraqi history when Saddam Hussein, forced out of Kuwait by overwhelming US force in 1991, turned his helicopter gunships on the Kurdish minority.

A Grain of Sand is a short, anguished cry for help for Gazan children

US desire to take over Greenland casts an ominous shadow over the British Museum’s superb new exhibition, Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans.

“Cutesy and naive” or “beautifully shot and haunting”? Contrasting reviews in Letterboxd for The President’s Cake illustrate how critics and audiences vary so much in their reactions to films.

When Eghbal, driving at night, accidentally kills a dog, his young daughter is upset. It Was Just An Accident, says her mother dismissively in the front seat. But life is not always so simple.

You have to admire US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s ambition in taking on war and God as his main themes in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. And the title shows he has originality, too.

If you think you know as much as you need about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, The Six Billion Dollar Man will prove you wrong. If you know nothing, it will inform and entertain you.

You want something to laugh about? How about Palestine.

What have Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus got in common? They were all the scene of end-of-Empire independence struggles against Britain.