Chi-Raq (DVD)

Spike Lee directs this satirical musical drama based on the classical Greek comedy 'Lysistrata' by Aristophanes, in which women deny their husbands sex in order to punish them for fighting in the Peloponnesian War. In the present day, the same measure is taken by a group of women, organised by Lysistrata, after a gang shooting in Chicago's Southside leads to the death of a child. So the women decide to withhold sex from their men until they agree to lay down their arms.

As Lysistrata's movement takes aim at the conceptions of sex and race and the nature of violence in America and beyond, the gang war waged between Demetrius and Cyclops intensifies and raises tensions in the already violent neighbourhood.

Chi-Raq is an incendiary film about gang culture and gun control in the US, directed with a sure and steady hand by Spike Lee.