Will the teacher show the prot√©g√© the love she’s never known? Will the student bring the damaged older soul back to life? Watch a million other movies from Dangerous Minds and Dead Poet’s Society to Freedom Writers to find out.

It doesn’t feel like a Michael Moore movie, with little of his cult-of-personality showboating. There are several ultimately pointless musical acts and it gets a little repetitive, but the editing manages to generate a sense of slowly building hope which history reminds us wasn’t enough to spare us from Bush’s second term.

It’s been called everything from the savage continent to the New World. Spread over 30 million square kilometres, it has virtually every landscape and climate, life form and geopolitical society known to humankind. Is there any wonder our fascination with Africa never runs out?