A unique interview with Tooba Gondal, the woman who groomed and lured scores of Western women to join ISIS. Using social media, she became a deadly matchmaker, recruiting a number of high-profile “jihadi brides” for ISIS militants in Syria: she allegedly helped organise the transporting of three British schoolgirls, including Shamima Begum, to Syria.
Turkey's history has been shaped by two major political figures: Mustafa Kemal (1881-1934), known as Atatürk, the Father of the Turks, founder of the modern state, and the current president Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, who apparently wants Turkey to regain the political and military pre-eminence it had as an empire under the Ottoman dynasty.
An intimate portrait, in his own words, of the Indian writer Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses (1988), thirty years after the fatwa uttered by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini: his youth in multicultural Bombay, his life in England, his many years of forced hiding, his thoughts on President Trump's United States of America.
After the impressive Gulistan, Land of Roses (VdR 2016), the Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol returns with these conversations with imprisoned members of the Islamic State, alternating their words with aerial views of the countryside. An unexpected look at a far-reaching current political issue and a film whose subject matter and rhythm create an impressive cinematic object.
An exploration into the motives and histories of individuals, including herself, who have exited the world of violent extremism.
O Refúgio
In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a woman walks into a chadari store in Kabul to buy her first full-body veil and face an uncertain future.
HELD FOR RANSOM tells the true story of Danish photojournalist Daniel Rye who was held hostage for 398 days in Syria by the terror organization ISIS along with several other foreign nationals including the American journalist, James Foley. The film follows Daniel’s struggle to survive in captivity, his friendship with James, and the nightmare of the Rye family back home in Denmark as they try to do everything in their power to save their son. At the center of this crisis, we find hostage negotiator, Arthur, who plays a pivotal role in securing Daniel’s release.
Just outside of the Malian city of Timbuktu, now occupied by militant Islamic rebels who impose the Sharia on civilians and inconvenience their daily life, a cattleman kills a fisherman.
At the turn of 1990 in Algeria, in an end-of-era atmosphere marked by the victory of the Islamists in the municipal elections, then in the interrupted legislative elections of 1991, a prelude to a decade of particularly barbaric violence, the Algerians will experience the radical Islamism, its desire to rule public and private life and a daily life of attacks, assassinations, then collective massacres, which left 200,000 dead. Literature and cinema have strived to question and bear witness to the enormous trauma of this period called the “black decade”.
Join the BBC cameras as they go behind the glitter of Buckingham Palace and the pomp of Windsor Castle for a close-up look at the minutia of the monarchy. Culled from a year of unprecedented access to Queen Elizabeth II, the documentary trails the queen as she interacts one-on-one with her family, her staff, her public, and international heads of state. Go behind closed doors for Christmas with the royal family, eavesdrop on cocktail chatter with Ron and Nancy Reagan, and catch unguarded moments when the queen pilots her own jeep or romps with her dogs. Elizabeth R. is a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse into the everyday life of a queen.
A film that chronicles the life of Ric Weiland. The unsung hero of Microsoft and trailblazer for the LGBTQ community, Ric's bequeathed $65 million dollars to the Pride Foundation to support gay rights and HIV research. It is a dive deep into Ric's life and diaries to discover why Ric was the biggest benefactor for the gay community, why his friends loved him so much, and how he helped start an empire.
VH1's Behind the Music Special for Weird Al Yankovic
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
A feature length documentary film about one man's journey to find the perfect set of feet
Santiago, 1996. A renowned drag queen, a sex worker, a bisexual man, a homophobic and various characters gives their honest and stark opinions regarding homosexuality, facing us with the repressive situation in Chile during the nineties.