Tag: documentary

The Last Shark | Climate Crisis

A look at the challenges for those fighting to save the vital ecosystems of the oceans off Costa Rica.

Rising ocean temperatures have become a worrying trend over the past few decades and pose a threat to sea life. The waters off Costa Rica are host to some of the most diverse corals in the Pacific, and they attract numerous sharks and rays throughout the year. Marine conservation is a priority for this small Central American country. Those trying to protect the oceans, however, are being challenged by a determined fishing industry that wants to exploit this diversity at the expense of disappearing species.

The film The Last Shark is a captivating look at how local marine conservationists are creating initiatives to understand and protect Costa Rica’s vibrant offshore ecosystems.

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Return to Palestine | Al-Nakba

Some Palestinians embark on a journey to discover the fate of the houses taken from their families in the 1948 Nakba.

Meet some of the Palestinians who have returned to the homes of their parents and grandparents, now in present-day Israel.

Halima Khaddash is an old woman living in a refugee camp in Ramallah whose family is from Ramla. She travels to the place, which brings back memories of being forced from the family home during the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe.

Zeina Abu Meita’s family was originally from the Mediterranean port city of Acre. She makes a bittersweet visit to Acre with her father who was forced from the family home when he was six. Zeina and her father have Canadian passports. So, as foreigners, they are allowed to visit Israel. But they don’t have any rights of residency or permanent return.

The film Return to Palestine explores the idea of The Right of Return on the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, which refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total erasure of Palestinian society.

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Children of the Darien Gap | Migration

A family flees violence in Ecuador for the United States, but first they must enter the Darien Gap, a perilous jungle.

Swanny Flores fled Ecuador with her two young daughters and 12-year-old brother after her boyfriend, a local gang leader, murdered her mother and threatened to kill the rest of her family.

She wants to apply for asylum in the United States, but the only way to get there is through the Darien Gap, a 106km (66-mile) stretch of remote and perilous jungle in Colombia and Panama that is the only land route for migrants heading north from South America.

Amid historic regional migration and new travel restrictions from countries in Central America for migrants, the Darien Gap has become one of the most travelled migration routes in the world and a burgeoning humanitarian crisis. Last year, more than half a million people went through the jungle. A quarter of them were children. This is the story of one family’s journey through the Darien Gap.

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Rebel Writers: Palestine & Syria | Politics

The story of a Palestinian poet and a Christian Syrian professor who championed the Palestinian cause.

Meet two Arab writers from different parts of the Middle East who shared a common cause – Muin Bseiso and Constantin Zurayk.

Bseiso, a Palestinian poet who wrote about life in Gaza at a time when it was controlled by Egypt, was twice jailed for his left-wing political views.

Zurayk, a Christian, Syrian revolutionary Arab nationalist who became a history professor at the American University of Beirut, also secretly supported armed resistance groups across the region. Several sources say he was among the first to use the term “Nakba” to refer to the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians when Israel was founded in 1948.

The film Rebel Writers: Palestine & Syria tells the stories of two men who championed Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause in different ways.

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Beyond the Oil Age | Mining

The dark side of ‘green energy’ : The real cost of cobalt mining in the DRC and how it impacts the nation’s environment.

From smartphones to aircraft engines to the batteries of electric cars, cobalt is a critical component of modern life since the metal protects batteries from overheating and catching fire, extending their lifespans. As demand for cobalt has skyrocketed over the last few decades, it is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to most of Earth’s cobalt reserves, which has borne the brunt. The central African country has seen an expansion of industrial-scale mines that extract this metal. But this has led to forced evictions and human rights abuses as well as devastating climate implications. Mines – both legal and illegal – have been appearing all over the nation, and threatening the pristine tropical rainforest.

The film Beyond the Oil Age delves into a modern world trying to move to greener cleaner energy at the expense of countries like the DRC. The miracle metal cobalt, a superalloy, is now turning into a deadly chemical as toxic dumping has devastated landscapes, polluted water and contaminated crops. The quest for DRC’s cobalt has demonstrated how the clean energy revolution, meant to save the planet from perilously warming temperatures, is caught in a familiar cycle of environmental degradation, exploitation and greed.

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Dystopia of Seoul | Climate Crisis

Vivaldi’s, Four Seasons, re-composed by AI using 2050 climate data to create a disturbing musical performance in Seoul.

Antonio Vivaldi published, The Four Seasons, in 1723, celebrating the natural world and the four distinct seasons. But what would this music sound like today in our age of climate crisis? The “Uncertain Four Seasons” global project uses climate modelling data to generate a 2050 version of, The Four Seasons, for orchestras around the world according to their climate projections.

Dystopia of Seoul is the story of this piece of AI music in the South Korean capital which suffered devastating floods in 2022. The melodies, energy and tempo are twisted by the sophisticated algorithm to reflect Seoul’s climate predictions. The result makes for disturbing listening and is another stark warning to humanity about climate change.

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Holding Up the Sky: Saving the Indigenous Yanomami tribe in Brazil’s Amazon | Indigenous Rights

A Brazilian tribal leader warns that illegal mining in forests will have dire consequences for the rest of the world.

Davi Kopenawa is a tribal chief and spokesman for the cause of the Indigenous Yanomami people of the Brazilian Amazon. Their territory has been officially protected since the 1990s, but during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, there was a huge increase in illegal gold mining – and it now threatens to destroy everything. Davi seeks support to stop illegal mining from wiping out his people. He appeals to lawmakers in Europe to put pressure on the Brazilian government. His message is that the world needs to heed the warnings of Indigenous people, the true protectors of the Earth, before it is too late. Holding Up the Sky is a documentary film by Pieter Van Eecke.

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After the Hurricane | Climate Crisis

The effect the carbon footprint of rich countries is having on developing nations who enjoy very few of the benefits.

There can be no denying that wealthier countries, particularly the United States and Western European nations, have emitted the lion’s share of greenhouse gases that have led to our planet’s climate crisis.

In fact, just 23 countries are responsible for half of all the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. However, it is the world’s poorer nations that are being hit hardest by the effects of climate change.

After the Hurricane explores how vulnerable populations in the developing world are suffering damaging outcomes in terms of health, food, water, education and much more. It also sheds light on how, within wealthy countries like the US, it is still the most deprived who suffer the most severe consequences of their government’s inaction on climate, while those causing the biggest damage seem to simply get richer.

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Slapped: Speaking Up In Thailand | Al Jazeera

101 East investigates if defamation laws are being used to strangle scrutiny in Thailand amid growing calls for reform.

When tens of millions of baht disappeared from funds supposed to help lift Thai farmers out of poverty, Chutima Sidasathian began investigating.

The acclaimed journalist and human rights defender soon uncovered a banking scandal that has devastated her local community.

But a public figure implicated in the alleged fraud has filed criminal defamation complaints against her and now she’s facing up to 18 years in prison.

She’s just one of tens of thousands who have been slapped with these charges in the past decade.

101 East investigates how lawsuits are allegedly being used to intimidate whistleblowers and conceal corruption in Thailand.

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Praying for Armageddon: Evangelicals, the US and the Middle East | Israel War on Gaza

Episode 1 of a doomsday political thriller about evangelical Christian influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

The first episode of Praying for Armageddon goes inside the evangelical Christian movement to explore its influence on US democracy and foreign policy.

Preparing for the “end times”, a grassroots pastor gathers an army of veterans in the heartland of the United States, and megachurch ministers provide spiritual advice to politicians in the nation’s capital.

They call for the “final battle” which they believe will trigger the second coming of Christ. Central to their apocalyptic prophecy is Israel. It is with their blessing that the Trump administration controversially recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moves the US embassy there in 2018.

“It feels like everyone has a say about the destiny and the future of Jerusalem except for the Palestinians living in it,” says Palestinian activist Fayrouz Sharqawi.

Praying for Armageddon is a documentary film by Tonje Hessen Schei. 

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