THE Sunday Special screening at City Screen, York, at 2.30pm will be Iara Lee’s documentary The Suffering Grasses: When Elephants Fight It Is The Grass That Suffers.

Lee investigates the plight of contemporary Syrians, caught up in a war seemingly with no peaceful end in sight. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring and the complicated politics of the region, this 2012 film explores the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused and displaced.

• THE Monday Special show at 8.30pm, West Of Memphis (15), comes from documentary maker Amy Berg, who last year joined producer Peter Jackson, of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit fame, to deliver a damning account of justice denied in Arkansas.

When three young men were hastily convicted of brutally murdering three eight-year-old boys in the rural township of West Memphis, local lawmakers presented it as an open-and-shut case, albeit one with disturbing cult overtones.

On the back of two television documentaries and an unrelenting internet campaign to free the West Memphis Three, Berg combined trial videos, news footage, hidden DNA evidence and interviews to present a compelling case for the defence, which ultimately the Supreme Court could not ignore.

• THE Discover Tuesdays slot goes to Pablo Larrain’s Chilean film No (15) at 6pm. Distinctively shot on old-fashioned three-strip video to evoke television reportage of the time, Larrain’s drama explores the final days of General Pinochet’s regime through the eyes of two competing TV companies canvassing for the Yes and No campaigns in the crucial referendum that toppled the dictator.

Mexican pin-up Gael Garcia Bernal plays the central role of a cynical ad man, Rene, caught up in a dangerous world of propaganda and political violence, while a dryly humorous script gives a satirical mood to the Chilean proceedings in a film that won the Director’s Fortnight prize at last year’s Cannes Festival.

Tuesday’s screening will be introduced by Amnesty UK and a survivor of the Pinochet regime.

• For tickets, phone 0871 902 5726 or book online at picturehouses.co.uk/york