Unesco is currently evaluating Asmara’s bid to be made a World Heritage site. The Eritrean capital’s argument is strong. It lays claim to some of the finest Futurist architecture on earth, built during the period of Italian colonial rule. Many of these buildings – and Asmara’s infrastructure more generally – are threatened by neglect, a resource-poor economy, and the effects of time.

In the words of Irina Bokova, the director-general of Unesco, the fate of World Heritage Sites – from the bridge at Mostar to the temples of Palmyra – ‘is not about just bricks and stones’ but ‘the way we see human civilisation developing’. Tim Slade’s new documentary film The Destruction of Memory, based on Robert Bevan’s book of the same name, is a measured indictment of the failure of international bodies to find the words for the crime of cultural vandalism, and so offer legal protection to important buildings in war zones.