Screenings
Screening: Iranian Girl Racer
Iranian Girl Racer follows the fortunes of Laleh Seddigh who has, improbably, become that country’s national motorsports champion. It also explores the wider realities for women in Iran, a country riven with contradictions. It shows how the popular image of a nation where half the citizens are subjugated and burka-clad is inaccurate.
Double Bill Screening – South Africa: The ANC after Mbeki
Unauthorised Thabo Mbeki
An uncut version of the biography of Thabo Mbeki, which sparked controversy in South Africa when it was canned by SABC in what was dubbed ‘political interference from the public broadcaster’s management.’ (City Press May 2006)
Through the Eye of a Needle
A glimpse behind the scenes of the recent leadership race in South Africa from the perspective of grassroots activities in the Eastern Cape.
Screening: Two Schools in Nablus – An education to die for
Trying to get an education in Nablus is a tough business for the children and teenagers of King Talal Boys School and Haji Rashda Girls School, especially when violence erupts between Israeli patrols and Palestinian youths right outside the school gates.
Preview Screening: Inside Hamas FULLY BOOKED
December 2007 marked 20 years since the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas. Inside Hamas seeks to clear away some of the myths and tackle the hard truths about Hamas as it tries to run its own proto-state in Gaza – excluded from the official Palestinian peace process and starved of political contact by the West.
Screening and discussion: Jihadi Rehab Saudi Style
This extended news feature, for the CBC and More 4 News gives us rare look inside a unique rehabilitation programme for ex-jihadis. The film shows the work being done at a halfway house near Riyadh run by the Saudi Ministry of the Interior where ex-jihadis are taught to channel their aggression into art, rather than holy war.
Screening: A Very British Gangster
A Very British Gangster is an all access film inside one of Britain’s most dangerous crime families. For the first time, a gang of contemporary criminals open their lives to reveal a brutal world and an underclass which relies upon gangsters for justice, rather than police.
Premiere Screening: Extraordinary Rendition – FULLY BOOKED
Extraordinary Rendition is a shocking investigation into the secret programme used by the US to seize terror suspects around the world and fly them for interrogation to third countries, such as Egypt, Morocco and Syria, where torture is routine. It also reveals how rendition has been used on children in East Africa.
Holocaust Memorial Day Screening: KZ
Director Rex Bloomstein’s multi-award winning documentary on the Mauthausen concentration camp strips away the usual dramatic devices, survivor testimonies and archive footage of conventional holocaust films in order to unlock the dark secrets of a small, picturesque Austrian mountain town.
UK PREMIERE Screening: Faith Without Fear – FULLY BOOKED
Irshad Manji is the best selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in her Faith and a prominent commentator on issues affecting Muslims – most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In Faith Without Fear she asks: how can Muslims change for the 21st century?
FULLY BOOKED.
Screening: Kosovo – The Valley
Kosovo 1999, The Valley shows us the face of civil war seen – uniquely – from both sides of the same front line. Filmed in the epicentre of the uprising, the Drenica Valley, over the bloodiest summer of the war, it achieves a level of intimacy with its subjects rarely seen in conflict documentaries.
Screening: Blog Wars
Blog Wars provides a sharp and funny look at the explosion of political blogs, which have become the loudspeakers for a new generation of activists speaking out and picking fights across the political spectrum. Some describe them as the self-indulgence of un-publishable nerds, others as the most vibrant and truly democratic political development of our times.
Screening: The Boys From Baghdad High FULLY BOOKED
The Boys From Baghdad High is the story of four Iraqi boys, all friends, coming of age in the most dangerous city on earth – Baghdad. It was filmed by the students themselves, offering an insight into ordinary Iraqi lives rarely seen. One boy is Kurdish, one Christian, one Shia and one mixed Sunni and Shia. As they enter their last year in school, can their friendship survive the sectarian violence tearing their city apart?
Screening: The Ministry of Truth – Uncensored
How do I prosecute an MP for lying?
The Ministry of Truth is a wry investigation into the politics of deception as director Richard Symons tries to persuade MPs to back his proposed Misrepresentation of the People Act, which would see any politician found guilty of lying to the public removed from office.
Screening: The Last Jews of Libya
A tale of war, cultural dislocation, and one family’s ultimate perseverance, this fifty-minute film traces the story of the Roumanis of Benghazi, Libya from Turkish Ottoman rule through the age of Mussolini and Hitler to the final destruction and dispersal of Libya’s Jews in the face of Arab nationalism.
EUROPEAN PREMIERE Screening: Iraq, My Home – Your War
Shot in Baghdad over three years and taking in the period before, during and after the coalition attack, Iraq, My Home – Your War is a remarkable account of the effect of the turmoil on one Iraqi family as it deals with the disruption and terror.
UK PREMIERE Screening: War Made Easy
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq.
Screening: How To Get Ahead In Africa
BAFTA award-winning journalist Sorious Samura shows how in Africa corruption has become normal and accepted, from the poorest slum dweller to the President and everyone in between, even though it’s tearing the continent to pieces.
Screening: Undercover Mosque
In this investigation Undercover Mosque reveals how a message of hatred and segregation is being spread throughout the UK, inspired by Saudi Arabia – a country our government calls its principal ally in the Middle East.
Screening: The Scorpions – A Home Movie
Produced by the Humanitarian Law Center, Scorpions – a Home Movie is an unrelenting portrait of the daily life of the Scorpions, a unit of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, and the crimes the unit committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Screening – Venezuela: “Puedo Hablar? May I Speak?”
"¿Puedo Hablar? May I Speak?" is a new documentary film which chronicles the 2006 presidential elections in Venezuela. The film offers its audience a portrait of a Venezuelan society at a crossroads; a re-elected president, challenged by a mounting opposition; a divided state, but one from which the Sol team manages to extract glimmers of hope for renewed dialogue and a bridging of the political gap.
UK PREMIERE Screening: Showdown With Iran
As the United States and Iran are locked in a battle for power and influence across the Middle East with the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon looming in the background producer/director Greg Barker gains unprecedented access to the Iranian hard-liners shaping government policy. In Showdown With Iran Barker examines how U.S. efforts to install democracy in Iraq have served to strengthen Iran’s position as an emerging power in the Middle East. The documentary was produced as part of the acclaimed PBS FRONTLINE series in America and this will be its first showing in the UK.
Screening: Above Enemy Lines
Olly Lambert’s critically acclaimed film follows the men of the RAF’s 27 Squadron for the duration of their tour in southern Afghanistan in the Spring of 2007. For two months they fly missions in and out of the frontline, delivering troops and supplies, and evacuating the injured on emergency medevac missions, often under enemy fire.
UK PREMIERE Screening: Paradise – Three Journeys In This World
”I thought that when I go to Europe, everything would be fine. When I came to Europe, I cried. When I came to Spain, I cried.”
Elina Hirvonen’s Paradise – Three Journeys In This World is a poetic documentary about immigration from Africa to Europe. In it we see how illegal immigration forces people to live their lives on the street and results in the separation and concern that it causes back in the home villages around Africa.
Screening: World in Action, End of a Revolution – 40th Anniversary
In the autumn of 1967 World in Action producer Brian Moser was in Bolivia hoping to make contact with Che Guevara, but unfortunately the CIA, US Special Forces and their Bolivian/Cuban exile surrogates got to him first…
WORLD PREMIERE Screening – Western Sahara: Building Oblivion
Building Oblivion is a new provocative political work that reveals how the Western Sahara cause has been neglected, and how UN efforts to resolve the crisis have been frustrated. Film-maker and writer Jean Lamore takes us deep into the Saharawi controlled regions of Western Sahara, highlighting the oppression faced by the Saharawi nationalists in the Moroccan occupied territory.
Screening: Escape From Luanda
In Luanda, one of the world’s poorest and most dangerous places, three students from Angola’s only music school work towards their end-of-year concert. The Music School is Angola’s first and only school of its kind.
Screening: Black Gold
As westerners enjoy designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee-growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. This eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar coffee industry traces one man’s fight for a fair price.
Double Bill Screening – Chile: ‘503’ and After Pinochet
503
On a dreary day in Autumn 1998 a picket formed in London to campaign for General Augusto Pinochet’s extradition to face trial in Spain and they remained there for 503 days. This tells the story of their quest for justice.
After Pinochet
After Pinochet is an investigation into the healing of Chile’s wounded heart, one year into the presidency of Michelle Bachelet, South America’s first female president, and six months after the death of Augusto Pinochet. It speaks to the survivors of the ex-dictator’s brutal regime and asks whether the country has yet recovered from its painful past.
Double-Bill Screening: Unreported World Jamaica and Cape Town
Jamaica
While tourist brochures show smiling locals living in paradise, Unreported World reveals a country where thirty per cent of the population are trapped in crime ridden slums, and uncovers allegations that political parties are arming and funding violent gangs in return for votes.
Cape Town
It’s seen as the darling of the jet set; the backdrop to fashion shoots and a tourist mecca. But as Unreported World reveals, behind Cape Town’s ultra-glamorous image, it’s now South Africa’s murder capital; gripped by the devastating effects of a highly addictive drug which is tearing the city’s fabric apart.
Screening: Talk Mogadishu: Media Under Fire
Mogadishu: Media Under Fire is the story of HornAfrik, the first independent TV and radio station in war-torn Mogadishu founded by three Somali Canadian refugee families who refused to believe that their country was a hopeless case.
