Brilliant biopics, daring documentaries and a host of chillers and thrillers – our critics pick the best from another sensational year of cinema
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While country’s return to global stage has filled many Syrians with pride, domestically old grievances threaten efforts to rebuild the state

• Anniversary of the fall of house of Assad in Syria – in pictures

Lying in bed recovering after his latest surgery, Ayman Ali retells the story of Syria’s revolution through his wounds. His right eye, lost in an attack on a rebel observation post he was manning in 2012, is covered by yellow medical tape. Propped against the wall is a cane he uses to walk, after a rocket attack in 2014 left him with a limp.

For 14 years, Ali dreamed of freedom and of justice. A year after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad, he has his freedom but not his justice. The man he was dreaming of holding accountable – a member of his extended family who was a part of an Assad militia – had already fled the country by the time Ali returned to his home in Damascus.

Experiences raise questions about how telecoms firm treated small business owners, whose commission it cut

When Adrian Howe drowned in August 2018, his family found some solace in the support of his longtime employer.

The bond between the 58-year-old and Vodafone – the multinational mobile phone group for which Howe had worked for 20 years – was so tight that his funeral featured a wreath shaped like the company’s speech mark brand.

Until she reached her 50s, the actor was a constant presence on stage and screen. Then the offers disappeared. Now, as her renaissance continues, she is taking on Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals

After six decades as an actor, Patricia Hodge says she still gets nervous before a play opens. “I think nerves are always the fear of the unknown,” she says. “Particularly with comedy, where there is no knowing how the audience will react: you’ve got to surf that.”

We meet on a sunny winter morning at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, south-west London, where Hodge is about to appear in The Rivals, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Richard B Sheridan play, in which she plays the ironic – sorry, iconic – Mrs Malaprop. “You’re sort of in a tunnel, your entire being is focused on this,” she says. She was here in rehearsals until 11pm the night before. Today, she is sitting at a table with a large coffee. Does she enjoy this bit, the putting together of a play? “I think it’s love-hate actually. The process is really why I do theatre.” She says she finds it energising, “but it’s also very trying, and you just don’t want to be left with your own limitations”.

There is a bread and circuses feel to this scandal. A wise public would see red flags; instead it sees entertainment

One upside of adversity is art, inspiring cultural output that seeks to process and channel suffering. “I’ll say one thing about Thatcher, some fantastic songs were written during her reign,” said the Irish singer Christy Moore once – before belting out a goosebump-raising rendition of Ordinary Man by Peter Hames, a song about the 1980s recession. That is, so far, the only upside of the publication of Olivia Nuzzi’s book American Canto, an affliction to journalism, politics and publishing: there has been some fantastic writing since it all kicked off.

Masterful reviews. Very funny commentary. Scathing analysis. But first, a summary of events for readers of this column, most of whom I assume are well-adjusted, offline people, with better things to do with their time than follow what can only be described as a niche beef. Nuzzi is (or perhaps was, keep reading) a celebrated US political journalist who had a “digital affair” with Robert F Kennedy Jr while he was running for president, broke all sorts of journalistic rules while doing so, and was fired from her job at New York magazine. RFK Jr went on to become Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary, Nuzzi has published a book about the whole affair, and her ex-fiance Ryan Lizza – another political journalist – has been dripfeeding revelations about how she cheated on him, and a litany of other personal and professional transgressions. There are no heroes here.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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A meticulously researched account of the controversial businessman’s rise and shocking demise

At least two terrible ironies surround the death of Mike Lynch. One lies in the name of his superyacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of 19 August 2024. He had named the boat Bayesian to honour Bayes’s theorem, a mathematical rule that helps you weigh up the probability of something given the available evidence, which served as Lynch’s guiding light over the course of a tempestuous career. The theorem was “a beautiful key to our minds”, Lynch believed. But it was entirely incapable of predicting the outcome that morning, when the yacht capsized during a storm, killing seven people, including Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and his US lawyer, Chris Morvillo.

A second irony lies in the fact that Lynch had just come through the trial of his life, one he felt was bound to end in jail, where he thought he could die. Somehow, to everyone’s astonishment, an American jury had acquitted him and his co-defendant on all 15 counts of fraud.

Party denies ex-councillor’s claim it falsely reported expenses during Farage’s run to become Clacton MP last year

• UK politics live – latest updates

Police are looking into allegations Reform UK breached electoral law during its campaign to win Nigel Farage’s Commons seat at last year’s general election.

Political opponents have urged the party’s leader to “come clean” over a former aide’s claims that Reform falsely reported election expenses in the Clacton constituency he represents after his 2024 electoral win.

Ukrainian president’s discussions with leaders of UK, France and Germany come after US-Ukraine talks in Florida failed to achieve breakthrough

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Meanwhile, we are starting to look towards 10 Downing Street as the leaders should start arriving in the next hour. Last preparations are under way, and we have a live stream for you at the top of the page.

In the last few minutes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just landed in the UK, Sky News has reported.

Ex-footballer targeted pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, and broadcaster Jeremy Vine, in ‘sustained campaign of online abuse’

The former footballer Joey Barton has been sentenced to six months in custody, suspended for 18 months, over a series of offensive social media posts between January and March 2024.

Barton, 43, was found guilty last month at Liverpool crown court of six counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety for posts he made targeting the football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, and the broadcaster Jeremy Vine.

Sandie Peggie wins harassment claim but tribunal dismisses allegations of discrimination and victimisation

A nurse who complained about sharing a women’s changing room with a transgender doctor has won part of her employment tribunal against NHS Fife but her claim against the doctor in question was dismissed.

Sandie Peggie was suspended by NHS Fife after complaining about having to share a changing room with Beth Upton at Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve 2023.