Ukrainian Sheriffs follows Viktor and Volodya, two men who have been appointed local sheriffs by the mayor in the isolated town of Stara Zburyevka, Ukraine. While dealing with petty crimes such as stolen ducks and drunken neighbours, the news about the war slowly creeps in on them through their televisions and pressure to join the army. Meanwhile, the tragicomic situations dealt with by the inexperienced ‘sheriffs’ have their roots in the prevalent unemployment, poverty and illiteracy in the region.

The filmmakers follow the adventures of Viktor and Volodya with a keen eye for the comical side of everyday situations. Driving in their yellow Lada flying its own little Ukrainian flag, they travel from incident to incident – calming an angry neighbour, investigating the discovery of a body, struggling to unfold a stroller and attempting to re-integrate the community’s freeloaders. The seasons pass until political developments reach the village by way of the TV screen, sowing separatist discord. Around the time of the celebrations for the country’s 70th Independence Day, the men of the village are drafted into the army.

Ukrainian Sheriffs offers a lighthearted yet telling look beyond the war and inside everyday life in small town Ukraine.

Ukrainian Sheriffs received the 2015 IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) Special Jury Award.

Directed by: Roman Bondarchuk
Country: Ukraine/Latvia/Germany
Year: 2015
Runtime: 85′

In the last year alone over 400 young Belgians have traveled to Syria. In My Jihad, directed by Mark De Visscher, reporter Rudi Vranckx visits the region of Vilvoorde to investigate why young Belgians from the area are becoming radicalised, and how the Muslim community is working to combat this trend.

“Everyone in Vilvoorde knows someone who’s left” explains Moad, a young Belgian Muslim. In the last year a number of Moad’s schoolmates have left Belgium for Syria to take up arms for ISIS. What is driving these young men to turn their backs on their families and their friends to sacrifice everything? Moad believes that “it’s a shared responsibility… there is nowhere else here for young Muslims to go.”

The film also introduces Imad, a youth counsellor. Like many other Muslims in Vilvoord, Imad has responded to cases of radicalisation by engaging with the local Muslim youth through charity; offering them guidance and support to create a sense of belonging within the community. One of Imad’s pupils explains, “ISIS is an ideology. You cannot bombard an ideology… an ideology has to be fought intellectually.”

Encouraging residents of Vilvoorde to voice their own perspectives, director Mark De Visscher creates a moving and revealing portrait of a small community confronting extremism. My Jihad offers a fascinating and topical insight into a growing issue, providing a valuable perspective on the impacts of extremism for Muslim communities in Europe.

Directed by: Mark De Visscher
Runtime: 52′
Country: Belgium
Distributor: Journeyman Pictures

With journalism as a profession undergoing an intense period of upheaval and self-reflection, Grapevine Events, in conjunction with the Frontline Club, brought together some of the industry’s most prominent editors on Thursday 11 September to discuss the major issues affecting journalism today.

Bringing out the big guns @amolrajan @AlexGAMiller @emmatimes2 #ftf Ian Hislop's looking for more @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/VHe638Cvgi

— Rebecca Choong Wilkins 钟碧琪 (@RChoongWilkins) September 11, 2014

Asking the panel what preoccupied them each morning, former deputy editor of The Times and chair George Brock remarked that what remained central to an editor seemed as true today as it was 30 years ago.

Emma Tucker, deputy editor of The Times, spoke of her desire to continually come up with the story that would “make a difference” whilst focusing on maintaining and expanding readership.

“In this noise, ultimately what makes people read you is good, original journalism that impacts people.”

For both Amol Rajan, editor of The Independent and Alex Miller, editor-in-chief of VICE, despite the emergence of new news formats, what drives any news organisation remains fundamentally “timeless”, as Brock put it, with the success of any story based primarily on the brilliance and commitment of the journalist who produces it.

With traditional news titles seen as occupying a difficult position inside–outside the establishment, Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, challenged that while journalists are often perceived as part of the old boys’ club, and by extension any way into the profession is one based on patronage, this proximity was ultimately the necessary price paid for access.

“What we try to do is say: we know how this works, we know the people who are there, let’s tell the truth . . . and the more people you know the more people who tell you things.”

“That being said,” commented Miller, “the only reason I am on this panel, is precisely because we [at VICE] have made the most of being entirely outside the establishment. Going and doing stuff that grey guys from BBC and ITV and Channel 4 have been doing for a very long time but changing it and presenting it on new media, in a slightly different tone. It’s made people pay attention – which really is the benefit of being an outsider.”

Elaborating on how the tone of emerging news outlets, such as VICE, had attracted and engaged a new demographic, Miller spoke of challenging “a collective decision that news was the preserve of a certain type of person, who wore certain type of clothes and who spoke in a certain type of way”.

“I think by just presenting news as you would have a conversation with a friend has actually managed to break down more barriers that we ever thought we would and at the same time disprove some bullshit that the establishment had all collectively agreed that young people didn’t give a crap about what happened outside their own lives.”

Moving from journalism as part of the establishment to establishing a community of readers, there was a general agreement amongst the panel that news was a product which should ultimately be paid for in some form (as it has always traditionally been).

While for Tucker and The Times paywall model, the concept of readers has now literally shifted to a point where “we don’t have readers anymore . . . we have members”. For Rajan, the “nostalgia around the history of Fleet Street” and specifically the role of local newspapers in the community belies the changing nature of the way people identify and define themselves as consumers of news.

“In the digital age there is a kind of unbundling. Now people are promiscuous buyers [whereas once you would have people loyal to one title]. The idea behind membership is to try to rebuild that attachment to a particular institution.

“Possibly the most viable future for most newspapers to go down is the model where you pay online, because actually one way of creating membership is to create customers and if you get people to pay for what you do, you create a sense of engagement and commitment.”

Until people restore the link between quality journalism and paying for it, Rajan continued, that sense of community is going to be fractured. If you are a company which is ultimately trying to hit the bottom line you need to establish a bond between customers and product.

Amol Rajan: 'There is no editorial solution to the commercial problems of papers' #ftf @frontlineclub

— Harriet Line (@HarriLine) September 11, 2014

For Hislop, the very act of buying a copy of Private Eye is like belonging to a club.

“Eye readers are a people with a particular attitude and a particular desire and I like the idea of them. I think they form their own club.”

However, while Miller agreed that creating a community was important, the debate within traditional news organisations into how best build this community is ultimately outmoded. “The internet does that on its own.”

Alex Hern of The Guardian commented that these technological advancements, which have so disrupted the practice and organisation of journalism, have also shifted the way in which we communicate.

“It is really important to remember that our generation is the first one ever where writing and the written word has been the primary way of communicating. We are more comfortable than ever before expressing ourselves, not just in considered journalism, but in every register of written language.”

Surely a development which can ultimately only benefit journalism and the industry.

On Monday 29 April, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of The Village at the End of the World, followed by a Q&A with director Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane, 2007). “They say in Greenland that they’re holding their breath about their future,” she explained as she introduced the film, which explores the challenges faced by the small community of Niaqornat.

Situated in Northern Greenland, in one of the remotest spots on earth and with less than 60 residents, the village of Niaqornat is literally teetering on the brink of extinction. As Gavron explained:

“The general trend [in Greenland] has been that villages are dying out and really, really they are. We came across abandoned villages and it’s extraordinary to see … one particular politician came up with this idea that if a village falls below 50 they should sort of starve it out; they should stop their subsidies and supply ship and their housing benefit or whatever and eventually that village would close.”

Sarah Gavron answering questions at the Frontline Club. Photo: Lizzie Maudsley

The film follows the story of how the community campaigned to become cooperative owners of the recently closed fish factory – a situation that was causing numbers to dwindle worryingly. Gavron described how she and her family became more involved with the community and its concerns throughout the several months they spent filming:

“We took our children so that was a challenge. . . . There is a sort of madness about taking the children but it also opened doors in a way and it became this family experience.”

She also saw first-hand many of the changes affecting the community through the influx of modernity, both good and bad. For example, recently there has been an increase in tourism to the region:

“I kind of oscillate between thinking it’s a really, really positive thing and thinking it is a really negative thing. From the villagers’ perspective . . . they see it as a way of helping them survive.”

Not surprisingly, the introduction of the internet has also had a big effect on communities like Niaqornat, for positive and negative reasons. This has been especially true for young people who are seeing lives very different from their own on the web. At the screening Gavron shared a bit more about Lars, the village’s only teenager:

“He really understood where we came from like nobody else did and that was entirely through the internet. Obviously it is a threat to [the community] but they are also quite pragmatic about it. It’s given them possibilities and it’s also provided a problem. . . . [In] every aspect of the village I saw two sides of the coin; that there were benefits and disadvantages to all in the collision [with] this modern world.”

Small and isolated though Niaqornat is, Gavron has provided an uplifting and fascinating window into concerns that resonate with other small communities across the world:

“I think that [for] any small community or any community trying to keep itself going there are parallels.”

The documentary Village at the End of The World will be released by dogwoof on 10 May. For more information click here.

WE-NATO also wants to livestream a series of talks and conduct video interviews in the run up to the NATO summit in Chicago in May.

Unfortunately it’s not really started off too well. First, we have the launch announcement from "Deputy Assistant Secretary of Pubic Diplomacy". (Yep, that’s NATO’s "pubic"…)

Which consists of a fairly dull YouTube video:

I’m sure Dr. Stefanie Babst has lots of interesting things to say about what NATO does but I’m afraid after she tells me I’m in the "right place" to follow global issues, I just feel like actually I’m in the wrong place. A shame.

Then on the About page we have an impassioned plea for YOUR contributions. (Yep, that’s NATO’s excitable capitals): 

"WE-NATO is an interactive platform, which will enable YOU to engage directly with other netizens around the world in an open and transparent dialogue on issues related to NATO’s current agenda.

"This site is not a one way communication talk-shop, but a forum where YOU contribute…

"WE also want to listen to YOUR views and comments and WE want to share with YOU our thinking on a range of security issues some of which you may not be familiar with.

"Join the discussion. Join the debate and WE look forward hearing from YOU!"

Brilliantly, we are then informed that "comments are closed".

To be fair, you can comment on the launch announcement page, other pages and a plethora of NATO’s other social media sites. No doubt somebody will reply to you there. 

There is more background on the WE-NATO project in a slightly more interesting YouTube video on WE-Magazine.net.

Here an unidentified woman informs us that "NATO itself, in its organisational structure, is not ready yet for what Web 2.0 is actually asking from the institution".

Hmm…that maybe says it all.

P.S. In a bonus irony, you can’t currently comment on this blog despite my occasional pestering of the good people at the Frontline Club…but YOU (sorry, couldn’t resist) can drop me a line on Twitter.