During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, two African-American athletes mounted the winner's podium to collect their medals for the 200 metres. This was the year of student protests across Europe and racial and political unrest in the USA, and Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April. As the band played The American anthem, gold medalist Tommy Smith and bronze winner John Carlos both raised a gloved fist salute - a salute intended to protest the injustice visited upon their race. The third man in the winner's circle that day was silver medalist Peter Norman, a white Australian. He did not raise his fist in that moment, but on his chest he wore an Olympic Project For Human Rights badge in support of his American comrades. The OPHR had worried officials a great deal that year. Tensions between black and white, and rich and poor, had reached flashpoint only months earlier in Mexico City itself, and the government had put down civil rights protestors violently, killing many. As the three athletes walked from the Olympic stadium after the medal ceremony, the crowd booed violently.

Matt Norman, actor and filmmaker, and the nephew of Peter Norman, describes this story in rich detail in Salute, a moving documentary that explores both the complex motivations behind the protest and its sad aftermath. Using archival footage and interviews with Smith, Norman and Carlos, the film constructs a group biography around the three, effectively outlining their varied backgrounds and sensibilities. At the same time, it sketches the rise of black protest, and an Olympic committee that clearly used a non-partisan, apolitical posture to appease the latent racism of their supporters. It's an angry film expressing its own sense of protest in a gentle and loving way.