After decades of silence survivors and relatives of the victims of Iranian state terror establish a People’s Court investigating mass executions of political prisoners in Iran in the 1980s. A survivor follows the Tribunal. He dreams of confronting the perpetrators with their crimes.
Rafea is a Bedouin woman who lives with her four daughters in one of Jordan's poorest desert villages on the Iraqi border. She is given a chance to travel to India to attend the Barefoot College, where illiterate grandmothers from around the world are trained in 6 months to be solar engineers. If Rafea succeeds, she will be able to electrify her village, train more engineers, and provide for her daughters. Even when she returns as the first female solar engineer in the country, her real challenge will have just begun. Will she find support for her new venture? Will she be able to inspire the other women in the village to join her and change their lives? And most importantly, will she be able to re-wire the traditional minds of the Bedouin community that stand in her way?
With the rate of plastic pollution in oceans increasing at an alarming rate, our beaches are on route to be less peaceful and more polluted. By the Sea gives us a dystopian idea of what our beaches might look like in the future, if we continue at this rate.
Pressed by the masses who gave him a massive mandate, the first indigenous president, ex-coca leaf farmer Evo Morales has nationalised the oil industry and passed laws on agrarian reform. All the election speeches, which resulted in his landslide victory, sounded quite revolutionary, as did the iconography. But a closer look reveals that corruption, nepotism and old-fashioned populism are at the core of this movement. The landowners and the indigenous movement are still wrestling for power and neither has claimed victory yet. Ultimately, the search for the revolution that Che Guevara tried to start in Bolivia is now in Morales’ hands.
In the last few years the plastic pollution crisis has become an international scandal. Pictures of dead animals, littered rivers, and polluted oceans have shocked the world. The plastic packaging industry has declared it knows how to solve the problem: recycling. Increasingly, bottles, boxes and sachets are proudly stamped with the words ‘100% recyclable’ as brands compete to reassure consumers that their packaging purchases are guilt-free. But if recycling is really the solution, why is the world pumping out more virgin plastic than ever before? Could recycling really be the ultimate greenwash? We follow the money into an industry that’s designed to hide the problem rather than solve it. We track the black-market brokers who hunt for countries to dump our plastic, waste moguls getting rich by burning trash, and the organised criminals for whom waste smuggling is now as lucrative as human trafficking. And we show how some of the biggest consumer-goods brands on earth spin the recycling fairytale as a way to allow them to continue polluting without consequence. As we all pick up the bill for a world drowning in plastic, the film asks: who is getting rich? This film will be broadcast through ARD, DR, SVT, NRK, CBC, NHK and SRF/RTS/RSI. EBU, DANIDA and Rogovy Foundation supported the production. Dates to be confirmed.
What if? poses a series of hypothetical questions, which ask how the world would be different if women were treated equally to men in the world of work. The narrator speculates that closing the gendered gaps in labour participation and wages, would lead to a fairer, wealthier and more equal society.
Facts of Life uses stark comparison to illustrate health inequality between countries. Highlighting the bleakness of such startling disparity, the narrator compels the audience to be a part of changing these Facts.
Is poverty raising a generation of children for sale in India? In the world’s largest democracy, India, millions of vulnerable children are bought and sold, given only what they need to survive another day. Throughout Indian society the mechanisms of bonded slave labor are insidious, powerful and nearly impossible to escape for children who have become trapped in a system driven by profits. Indian director, Pankaj Johar, looks behind the overwhelming statistics - revealing how a lack of education and persistent poverty provides a breeding ground for modern slavery.
Can Freedom ever be more frightening than enslavement? A Woman Captured is a raw and intimate portrayal of the psychology behind enslavement. Award-winning Director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter offers an evocative study of a woman so debased and disregarded that even she has lost sight of her own life. As a close friendship develops between the captured woman (Marish) and the filmmaker, Marish’s confidence is slowly restored as she begins to imagine a different life for herself. With this new found sense of confidence, will A Woman Captured ever be able to escape the unbearable oppression to become a free woman?
What Ami Did Not Know is a thought-provoking look at the prevalence of maternal mortality in developing countries. From the perspective of the new-born Ami, the inequality of access to maternal care is laid bare.
Throughout Latin America, a girl's 15th birthday marks her coming of age and is celebrated in style. It's a celebration that many poor rural families can ill-afford - the cost of the girl's dress alone is often prohibitive. Meet Blanca, a seamstress in Uruguay, who took advantage of a micro-credit scheme to invest in a sewing machine. Today she runs a business that makes and rents out affordable dresses. Now all the girls in her village can enjoy their coming of age.
Could it be that we are all involuntary participants in a huge experiment, threatening humankind? According to the researchers in "We The Guinea Pigs", this might very well be the case. As plastic has gained ground in our lives over the years, there has been an inexplicable increase in a number of diseases and disorders. In the past, 1 in 20 women used to get breast cancer - today it is one in eight. Men's sperm quality has been halved in 50 years. And the number of children and adults who are diagnosed with attention deficit disorders has increased explosively. In the film, we meet leading researchers as well as follow case studies of ordinary people. The 40-year-old woman who has aggressive breast cancer, involuntarily childless couples and the young woman with ADHD. Are these people the victims of unfortunate coincidences - or is there an explanation? The researchers are in no doubt. They know that our natural hormones can be disturbed by chemicals from, among other things, plastic. Experiments on animals have shown that it is especially in fetal life that adverse health effects can occur. Before you were even born, it could be that you were pre-programmed to get various diseases and disorders later in life. This film will be broadcast through ARTE, DR, SVT, NRK, CBC, NHK and SRF/RTS/RSI. EBU and DFI supported the production. Dates to be confirmed.
Un Vestige is a French short film that depicts a little girl making an unusual discovery - a plastic bag on a beach. This film shows us what it might be like to have future without waste, where plastic is a distant memory.
The documentary compares the access to opportunities of residents of Park Avenue both on the Upper East Side and in the South Bronx. It draws upon Michael Gross's book "740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building", which showed that many billionaires live in that building. It goes on to explain that billionaire heir David Koch made significant donations to Paul Ryan in the same way that banker Steven Schwartzman lobbied Charles Schumer—for their own gain. The documentary includes interviews with a doorman at 740 Park Avenue, journalist Jane Mayer, Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, University of California, Berkeley Professor Paul Piff, and Republican advisor Bruce Bartlett
The Benefits of a Toilet uses clever animation to uncover the various benefits of something the Western World takes for granted; access to a toilet. The stark inequality of access to adequate sanitation is revealed to disproportionately affects girls and women; impeding their learning, ability to work and even their safety.
Rüschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large bounty tax revenue for the Zambians. Zambia has the 3rd largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80% are unemployed. Based on original research into public documents, the film describes the tax system employed by multinational companies in Africa.
Thirty years ago, rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono set out on a journey to fight poverty in Africa. They tried to convince some of the wiliest and mightiest politicians on earth to change the world. Give us the Money tracks their journey through famines and palaces, and world-wide TV-audiences. But how successful have they really been? Did they manage to make the world a better place? Bosse Lindquist's film tracks the history of this idea. "A band of musicians set out to change the world" he says "and now the time has come to ask: What did they achieve, and is celebrity politics is the right way of combating world poverty?"'
PlastiC is a stop motion film about the damaging effects of plastic pollution on ocean animals and their ecosystems. Plastic is a revolutionary material. It’s durable, it’s affordable, it’s multi-functional - and it has pushed our planet to the brink of one of the worst environmental crises in modern history.
Plastic Ecosystem is a stop motion film by Stefie Gan, that shows us what it might be like to have an eco system that consists entirely of plastic - a future that we may have to face, if the global consumption of plastic is not reduced.
Can there be justice after genocide, sexual violence and slavery? In August 2014, an Islamic State massacre of unimaginable proportions took place during the rapid invasion of the Yazidi people in Sinjar, northern Iraq. Young Yazidi women were separated from the old and taken to the Galaxy Cinema in Mosul. There they were paraded, selected, enslaved, tortured and systematically raped. Some were only 11 years old. I was a Yazidi slave follows the Yazidi women’s journey to recovery and ask how a survivor of unthinkable sexual violence can find justice and a path to rehabilitation.
The soft drinks industry has faced growing criticism of the use of single-use plastic. In 2018 Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft drinks producer, set ambitious targets to reduce the amount of its plastic packaging that ends up in the environment. It said that by 2030 it would collect one bottle or can for every one it sold and make them from 50% recycled material. Coke’s plan is to eliminate waste by turning old bottles into new ones. In this film, we investigate Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste strategy. Could it be a shining example for the whole beverage industry? Or is Coke’s plan to recycle its way out of the problem fundamentally flawed? And how well, after three years, is Coca-Cola doing around the world in meeting the commitments it has made? This film will be broadcast through BBC Panorama, ARTE/ZDF, DR, SVT, NRK, CBC and SRF/RTS/RSI. EBU and DANIDA supported the production. Dates to be confirmed.
One Bride, Seven Cows or a Box of Heroin weaves together stories of the forced marriage of young girls from Sudan, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The striking similarity of the girls’ experiences highlight the prevalence of this practice across the world.
130 million babies are born each year, and not one of them decides where they’ll be born or how they’ll live. In Cambodia, you’re likely to be born to a family living on less than $1/day. In Sierra Leone chances of surviving the first year are half those of the worldwide average. We go around the world to meet the newest generation.
Mikhail Morozov is a Russian patriot, good Christian and successful businessman. He owns Durakovo – the “Village of Fools” – 100 km southwest of Moscow. People come here from all over Russia to learn how to live and become true Russians. When they join the Village of Fools, the new residents abandon all their former rights and agree to obey Mikhail Morozov’s strict rules. he whole spectrum of state power – political, spiritual and administrative – gather in the village for semi-private meetings with Morozov. They discuss the future of Russia, their ambitions and their goals. For God, Tsar and Fatherland shows what drives Russian patriotism today and why they are against democracy.
The poor may always have been with us, but attitudes towards them have changed. Beginning in the Neolithic Age Ben Lewis’ film takes us through the changing world of poverty. You go to sleep, you dream, you become poor through the ages. And when you awake, what can you say about poverty now? There are still very poor people, to be sure, but the new poverty has more to do with inequality…
Can an employment system hide a reality of torture and humiliation? Maid in Hell offers a glimpse into the commonplace reality of harassment, abuse, rape and 18-hour work days which migrant domestic workers across the Middle East face. Trapped by the Kafala system, their passports are confiscated and they are bound to their employer. Unable to flee, they risk harsh punishments or imprisonments if they try. “Maid in Hell” gives unprecedented access to this frightening and brutal form of modern slavery. Following employment agents who vividly describe the trade, as well as maids who struggle to find a way home after harrowing, and sometimes, deadly experiences, we come to understand the grotesque reality faced by thousands of women each day.
In his 2005 State of the Union address President George W. Bush cites Egypt as the country that will pave the way for democracy in the Middle East. Three women, unable to sit by while their country is on the brink of drastic change, start a grassroots movement to educate and empower the public by raising awareness about the meaning of democracy. They name their campaign Shayfeen.com, which means to “we are watching you.” This film follows the highs and lows of the first year of the movement in Egypt. Insisting that only the people can make change happen, their goal is to educate the Egyptian public on what it takes to build the most basic pillars of democracy: demanding basic human rights, freedom of speech and the establishment of an independent judiciary. Egypt: We are Watching You shows the role ordinary citizens can play in shaping and securing their democracy.
In the form of an imagined letter to her Father, a woman details how systemic gender inequality excludes women from positions of power. The letter openly asks, how women can become a part of these spaces, calling on the listener to help make this possible.
The Pune Ploggers is an Indian group of trash collectors. Their concept is simple, combine jogging with picking up waste from the streets. A small deed that makes a difference.
Around 500 billion plastic bags are used every year. That's almost 1 million every minute. What happens to them?
Every single day 39.000 girls under the age of 18 are sold of to marriage. Every single day at least two women are acid-attacked in India. On the African continent more than three million girls and women are circumcised every year. The statistics are frightening, yet things are moving in the right direction, due to the efforts of many strong advocates around the globe. State of the Women follows inspiring women during one day of their lives, providing the audience with a unique insight to their everyday lives. In the film you will meet the young Afghan rapper Sonita, the Chinese feminist activist Li Ting Ting, CEO of Save the Children; Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and other inspiring and strong women.
End Effect is a creative take on our over consumption of plastic - an interpretation of the ramifications of our lives with plastic.
Mary Joy Dao-Ay is a Filipino maid who used to be a domestic worker in Lebanon. She left her 3 children in the Philippines, planning to pay for their education by earning a higher salary working in the Middle-East. Instead, she was forced to flee for her own safety, and got stuck in Lebanon seeking refuge at a shelter. The secret slaves of the Middle East is the story of Mary Joys’ desperate struggle for justice, in a country with no labour laws protecting foreign domestic workers, and where the special Arab Kefala-system renders it impossible for an unskilled worker to leave the country or change their employer. It is the story of how poverty leads unprivileged women from developing countries to be deceived and trafficked into slavery.
BBC World News is one of THE WHY Foundation's most important partners. Via their extensive broadcasting network, reaching more than 200 countries and territories, the WHY SLAVERY? films can be seen by people all over the world. CEO Mette Hoffmann Meyer was invited to "Impact" to talk about the campaign with Philippa Thomas.
One Extra Year uncovers the myriad of ways in staying one extra year in school benefits both the girls themselves and the wider society. Acknowledging the numerous barriers which inhibit girls continued learning, this film makes a powerful case for greater investment in girls education.
In this film we venture with HRH Crown Princess Mary, when she visits the poverty-stricken West-African nation of Burkina Faso. Here, she joins the efforts of local women to gain the right to self-determination over their own bodies. We also revisit HRH’s visit to Senegal last year, where she was involved in the campaign against Female genital mutilation – a painful practice causing harm to millions of women in Africa and some parts of Asia. She reveals the details of her work in the struggle for women’s rights and for empowering disenfranchised women across the globe.
In the fall of 2005, 40-year-old, self-employed Kazuhiko "Yama-san" Yamauchi's peaceful, humdrum life was turned upside-down. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had suddenly chosen him as its official candidate to run for a vacant seat on the Kawasaki city council. Yama-san had zero experience in politics, no charisma, no supporters, no constituency, and no time to prepare for the impending election. The election was critical for the LDP. Adhering to the campaign tactic of "bowing to everybody, even to telephone poles," Yama-san visits local festivals, kindergarten sports events, senior gatherings, commuter train stations, and even bus stops to offer his hand to every one he sees. Can Yama-san win this heated race? Through its candid, cinema-verite style camerawork, this rare, detailed documentary of a Japanese election reveals the true nature of "democracy."
In the early decades of the twentieth century Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy of non-violent revolution or Satyagraha inspired a mass movement of millions of Indians to rise up against the British colonial state and successfully agitate for the establishment of a democratic and free India. In 007, the country is preparing to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its existence as an independent nation. But what kind of a democracy does India have today? What does it actually mean to live in the world’s largest democracy? In road-movie style the film crew travels down the famous trail of Gandhi’s salt march, the remarkable mass campaign that galvanized ordinary Indians to join the non-violent struggle for democracy and freedom almost a century ago. Stopping at the same villages and cities, where Gandhi and his followers had raised their call for independence, the film documents the stories of ordinary citizens in India today. Although inspired by a historical event In Search of Gandhi is not a journey back in time. Instead, it is a search for the present and future of democracy in India.
This documentary explores the American military's use of torture by focusing on the unsolved murder of an Afghan taxi driver who, in 2002, was taken for questioning at Bagram Force Air Base. Five days later, the man was dead. The medical examiner claimed the driver died from excessive physical abuse. Taking this case as a jumping-off point, the film examines wider claims of torture that occurred at bases like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay during the Bush administration.
With unprecedented access, this intimate documentary goes behind the scenes with Africa's first freely elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia. The film explores the challenges facing the new president and the extraordinary women surrounding her as they develop and implement policy to rebuild their ravaged country and prevent a descent back into civil war.
The BBC World Debate is part of a global event hosted by the BBC and 50 other broadcasters around the world. The debate explores the causes of and cures for the enduring problem of severe poverty which still affects many people in the world. The panel is made up of: Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister; Oby Ezekwesili from the Open Society Foundation in Africa and a former Nigerian government minister; Moeltesi Mbeki, South African author and Chair of SA Institute of International Affairs; and Vandana Shiva, Indian activist, environmentalist and scientist. The debate was chaired by Zeinab Badawi.
It Started with a Duck, highlights how something as simple as a duck can advance women’s economic empowerment. Through a seemingly unlikely means, this film unpacks how women are able to play a key role in climate change adaptation and help build resilient communities.
Plastic is a topic surrounded by a lot of confusion and misleading information. This documentary series will bust the myths and misinformation surrounding plastic and take a close look at what is fact and what is fiction. Soon we will be ready to present three cutting-edge documentary films, unlike any plastic documentaries made before. WHY PLASTIC? consists of three one-hour investigative documentary films that will be broadcasted at BBC and our 70+ broadcasting partners all over the world. They will also be made available free of charge to schools, universities, libraries, museums, and community organizations. The films will complement each other and provide a holistic overview as well as in-depth stories of plastic pollution.
Striving for Utopias explains how over millennia, every society on earth has suppressed women’s sexual rights and bodily freedoms. Laying bare the insidious effects of sexist laws, this film calls for the creation of a Utopia in which women’s sexual liberation is finally realised.
“In China, the most lucrative Industry is Education.” Wang Zhenxiang, Tutor, Hongbo Education. There is a worldwide economic crisis, but everywhere parents are told that their children may escape the worst if they are educated, and everywhere children are pressured to climb the rungs of the ladder and acquire the totem of middle class life – a university education. But does education secure what it is supposed to? Can a degree really get you out of poverty? Weijun Chen’s film, set in Wuhan in central China, looks at the realities of Chinese education through the lives of Wang Zhenxiang, a tutor at the private Hongbo Education college, Wang Pan, high school graduate and would be student, and Wan Chao, graduate job seeker who goes from one unpromising interview to another.
It takes 5.3 liters of water to make a single-use plastic bottle. What if everyone had access to tap water instead?
What does it mean when the army appears to be the only force able to contain the opponents of democracy, the armed Islamists? The former President of Pakistan Musharraf agrees to explore this apparent contradiction over dinner at his official residence, the Army House. As the discussion moves in and out of the different worlds in Pakistan, a complex tapestry emerges, revealing a society unique yet universal. The filmmaker talks to diverse individuals, from labourers to intellectuals, from street vendors to religious right wing political party members, and from journalists to industrialists. What is their idea of democracy in Pakistan? What is their idea of President Musharraf’s vision of a modern Pakistan? Dinner With the President questions the role a military leader can play in guiding a state towards modern democracy.
Bloody Cartoons is a documentary about how and why drawings in a Danish provincial paper could whirl a small country into a confrontation with Muslims all over the world. He asks whether respect for Islam combined with the heated response to the cartoons is now leading us towards self-censorship. How tolerant should we be of the intolerant? And what limits should there be, if any, to freedom of speech in a democracy?
How much plastic is getting in to your body and affecting your health? THE WHY went to the Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam. There, scientists presented the first results from their research on the effects of micro and nano plastics on human health. The research is part of THE WHY new series WHY PLASTIC?, to be released in 2021. If you want to dig deeper, check out our article on plastic particles: https://www.thewhy.dk/news/the-many-dangers-of-micro-and-nano-plastic-particles-should-we-all-be-panicking
Wuhan is a city in central China about the size of London, and it is here that director Weijun Chen has conducted an experiment in democracy. A grade 3 class at Evergreen Primary School has their first encounter with democracy by holding an election to select a Class Monitor. Eight-year-olds compete against each other for the coveted position, abetted and egged on by teachers and doting parents. Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. The purpose of Weijun Chen’s experiment is to determine how, if democracy came to China, it would be received. Is democracy a universal value that fits human nature? Do elections inevitably lead to manipulation? Please Vote for Me is a portrait of a society and a town through a school, its children and its families
Shrouded in secrecy and notoriously cash-strapped the North Korean regime has resorted to running one of the world’s largest slaving operations - exploiting the profits to fulfill their own agenda. These bonded labourers can be found in Russia, China and dozens of other countries around the world - including EU member states. Featuring undercover footage and powerful testimonials, Dollar Heroes reveals the scale and brutality of this modern slavery operation.
75% of Mali's population are farmers, but rich, land-hungry nations like China and Saudi Arabia are leasing Mali's land in order to turn large areas into agribusiness farms. Many Malian peasants do not welcome these efforts, seeing them as yet another manifestation of imperialism. As Mali experiences a military coup, the developers are scared off - but can Mali's farmers combat food shortages and escape poverty on their own terms?
Every Year, Every Hour, Every Minute makes the urgent case for widespread and safe access to contraceptive services. Access to these services is considered vital for reducing ¼ of all maternal deaths and for establishing women’s right to decide how they want to live their lives.
How do prisons make a profit from crime? In the last 30 years, America’s prison population has surged from 330,000 to 2.3 million inmates. In this deeply personal and provocative film, Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a mission to investigate the prison system that has helped drive this explosive web of political, social, and economic forces that have consumed so many of Roger’s friends and family.
