For more than twenty years, eloquent Sampat, head of the Gulabi Gang, has been campaigning for women rights in northern India. Fearless and tireless, she is the sort of woman to scold at groups of men and give crisp advice to women. "Those who are shy, are bound to die", Sampat preaches. We follow her on her visit to ...
On a dusty road in the heart of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, UN soldiers are posted outside a building that locals refer to as the 'special court'. Inside, Issa Sesay stands trial. But who is Issa Sesay? According to the prosecutors, he is a war criminal, who committed horrendous crimes against humanity. His ...
Countless people have been subjected to forced disappearance since the early nineties, when Algeria waged war on radical Islam. According to official statistics published by the Algerian government 6,000 Algerians have ‘disappeared’ in the 1990s. Human rights organizations consider the actual number to be m...
To celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the Cuban revolution, the façades of downtown Santiago de Cuba are repainted. Moreover, freshly painted buildings will benefit tourism – the mainstay of the Cuban economy. But behind the beautiful façade of refurbished houses Cuba shows an entirely different face, according to Mari...
Negar and Ashkan, two young Iranian pop musicians end up in prison for playing western music. After their release they think up a plan to escape their chained existence. To realise their dream of performing in Europe, they roam Tehran’s underground rock scene trying to recruit other band members. Tehran as we have neve...
"There’s quite a lot of mess, but life is OK", says a Kenyan women when asked about the conditions in Nairobi’s backstreet district Kibera. She is worried about the UN and the Kenyan government’s plans to clean up the quarter in order to make way for new buildings. Kibera’s inhabitants, who have seen similar projects f...
"There’s quite a lot of mess, but life is OK", says a Kenyan women when asked about the conditions in Nairobi’s backstreet district Kibera. She is worried about the UN and the Kenyan government’s plans to clean up the quarter in order to make way for new buildings. Kibera’s inhabitants, who have seen similar projects f...
In 2003, 23-year-old American activist Rachel Corrie was killed when she tried to prevent the Israeli army from bulldozing Palestinian homes in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. She was run over by a bulldozer. According to research by the Israeli army, her death was an accident. According to Palestinians and foreign activists...
Some call it the Chernobyl disaster of the Amazone: the many years of dumping waste oil in one of the world’s largest wildlife areas. Between 1964 and 1990 Texaco dumped billions of litres of toxic waste in the Amazone, leading to water, air and soil pollution in the area. Public health is affected correspondingly: the...
In this short documentary film, the life of Anne Frank is told against the background of Nazi-Germany, the Holocaust and the Second World War. With quotes from the diary, historical photographs and archive film, and the only found film recording of Anne Frank in Amsterdam, 1941.
In Position Among the Stars, that triumphed at the IDFA 2010, director Leonard Retel Helmrich portrays the humorous and touching day-to-day worries of the Indonesian Sjamsuddin family. The brisk grandmother Rumidjah, her headstrong son Bakti and adolescent granddaughter Tari are faced with religious dilemmas and have t...