For Sama (97′) is an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. Told as a love letter from a young Syrian mother to her daughter, it tells the story of filmmaker Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to her daughter Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.
Waad’s camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as she wrestles with an impossible choice – whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
A favourite of critics, audiences and film festivals, For Sama has already won 23 awards, including the Golden Eye at Cannes Film Festival 2019, the Audience Award at Sheffield Doc Fest 2019 and the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW.
The film will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmakers Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts, and Executive Producer Nevine Mabro.
SPEAKERS:
Waad al-Kateab (Director). In January 2016, Waad al-Kateab started documenting the horrors of Aleppo for Channel 4 News in a series of devastating films titled Inside Aleppo. These reports and others became the most watched pieces on the UK news programme and received almost half a billion views online and 24 awards including the 2016 International Emmy for breaking news coverage. Waad was a marketing student in Aleppo when protests against the Assad regime swept the country in 2011. She taught herself how to film and started recording the human suffering around her as Assad forces battled rebels for control of Aleppo. She stayed through the siege documenting the loss of life and producing some of the most memorable images of the six-year conflict. When she and her family were evacuated from Aleppo in December 2016 she managed to get all her footage out. Waad lives in London with her husband Hamza and two daughters.
Edward Watts (Director) is an Emmy award-winning, BAFTA nominated filmmaker who has directed over twenty narrative and documentary films that tell true stories of courage, heroism and humour from across the world, covering everything from war crimes in the Congo to the colourful lives of residents in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. His 2015 film Escape from ISIS exposed the brutal treatment of the estimated 4 million women living under the rule of the Islamic State and, for the first time on television, told the extraordinary story of an underground network trying to save those it can. His first narrative short film Oksijan told the incredible true story of a 7- year-old Afghan boy’s fight to survive as he is smuggled to the UK in a refrigerated lorry and the air inside begins to run out. It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2017 and has since played at prestigious film festivals around the world.
Nevine Mabro (Executive Producer) is Deputy Editor of Channel 4 News. She has led the programme’s agenda- setting foreign output, enhancing its ability to get extraordinary coverage out of some of the world’s most dangerous places. She finds and nurtures new talent both on screen and off, and works with many independent filmmakers. She executive-produced Waad al-Kateab’s award- winning Inside Aleppo coverage for Channel 4 News in 2016 as well as Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Agony in Aleppo short film that won the 2013 Emmy and was developed into the Oscar- nominated film Watani.
]]>This BBC News Arabic investigation filmed undercover in Baghdad and Karbala – some of Iraq’s holiest shrines – exposes a secret world of sexual exploitation of children and young women by a religious elite. Muslim clerics are grooming vulnerable girls and pimping them out, using a controversial religious practice, illegal under Iraq law, called ‘pleasure marriage’. This allows a man to pay for a temporary wife, but is being used by some clerics to exploit women and children for money. A young mother widowed by an ISIS bomb alleges she became the victim of a prostitution ring run by a senior cleric. Some clerics are captured on camera offering girls for sale in pleasure marriages and giving religious advice on sexual acts with children that are supposedly permitted during pleasure marriages.
The 60 minute film screening will be followed by a discussion/Q&A with reporter Nawal Al-Maghafi and the film’s production team.
Speakers/Production Team:
Reporter, Producer Nawal Al-Maghafi is an Award-Winning BBC Special Correspondent who specialises on the Middle East.
Producer, Director Patrick Wells is a BAFTA-winning documentary producer/director specialising in foreign affairs.
Producer Mais Albayaa is an investigative journalist with more than 16 years of experience. She started working in Iraq after the invasion in 2003 and has covered Iraq, Syria and other countries in the Middle East for the Guardian, C4 and the BBC.
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As the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev is one of the 20th Century’s most defining politicians, a figure equally defined by the vision of transparency that led his efforts to expand and restructure his nation, and the lost potential left in the wake of the USSR’s disintegration. Nearly three decades since his removal from power, the 87-year-old Gorbachev sits down with Herzog for a series of exclusive one-on-one conversations on his remarkable life and legacy, at a time when the former President finds himself more removed than ever from the defining ideologies of Russian leadership.
The film is both a riveting documentary and deeply humanising portrait filled with unforgettable archive plus interviews with key political players from the last thirty years. As Herzog explores the conditions of Gorbachev’s unlikely rise to power and subsequent achievements through a surprisingly candid and friendly rapport, his ever-present themes soon emerge to shape a timely study of the unstable and temporal nature of those in the world’s most powerful positions.
“With Mikhail Gorbachev… Werner Herzog has finally met his match.” – Indiewire
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-director André Singer and producer Svetlana Palmer chaired by journalist and producer Carol Nahra.
Speakers:
André Singer is a filmmaker and anthropologist. He worked for Granada Television in the 1970s on World in Action and A Disappearing World. In the 1980s for the BBC he founded the documentary series Fine Cut (which later became Storyville) where he worked as either a Commissioner, Executive or Producer with many leading filmmakers including Jean Rouch, Fred Wiseman, D A A Pennebaker, Bob Drew, Mike Grigsby and Vikram Jayanti, and where he first linked up with Werner Herzog by commissioning Lessons of Darkness. He has played a role subsequently on fourteen of Werner’s films including being Producer on Into the Inferno, The Wild Blue Yonder and Fireball. More recently as an Executive Producer and through his company Spring Films in London, Singer worked on Josh Oppenheimer’s Oscar nominated films The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. As a director he was awarded the RTS, Peabody and an Emmy for his 2015 Holocaust film Night Will Fall and in 2017 completed the anti-nuclear film Where the Wind Blew which won the Raven Award for best feature documentary at DocUtah. His current film as co-director with Herzog is Meeting Gorbachev which will be launched in the UK in November to coincide with commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As an anthropologist he was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland between 2014 and 2018 and is currently a Professorial Associate of SOAS.
Moderator: Carole
]]>August Bank Holiday Weekend
Pippingford Park, East Sussex, UK
Join us at Byline – the world’s first festival for independent journalism and freedom of speech – to debate, discuss, dance, laugh, and change the world.
Throughout the festival Frontline will be running a curated series of talks and documentary screenings exploring two of this year’s festival themes: Defending Democracy and The Power of Journalism.
Frontline Events include:
DEBATE: The Extradition of Julian Assange – Friday 23 August, 3pm
We’ll be hearing from journalist Nick Davies, politician and activist Birgitta Jonsdottir and Frontline’s Vaughan Smith as they debate the legacy and the future for Assange, as the likelihood of his extradition to the USA looms.
TALK: The Parallel state: Truth, Lies & Political Fiction in Contemporary Turkey – Friday 23 August, 4.30pm
What began as a project about Turkish soap operas for award-winning photographer Guy Martin soon turned into a photographic exploration of the fault lines of truth, power and politics in Turkey. Chaired by journalist Jo Glanville.
FILM: Under the Wire – Saturday 26 August, 3pm
On 13 February 2012, war-correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy entered war-ravaged Syria to cover the plight of civilians trapped in the besieged Homs, under attack by the Syrian army. Only one of them returned. This is their story.
FILM: White Right: Meeting the Enemy – Sunday 25 August, 10.30am
Filmmaker Deeyah Khan meets U.S. neo-Nazis and white nationalists face to face and attends the now-infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as she seeks to understand the personal and political motivations behind the resurgence of far-right extremism in the U.S. Won 2018 Emmy for best international current affairs documentary.
FILM: Unquiet Graves – Sunday 25 August, 3pm
Sean Murray‘s powerful film tells the story of how members of the RUC and UDR (a British Army Regiment) were involved in the murder of 120 innocent civilians in the targeted terrorising of the most vulnerable members of society during “the Troubles” conflict in Northern Ireland.
FILM: When Lambs Become Lions – Sunday 25 August, 6.20pm
In the Kenyan bush, a small-time ivory dealer fights to stay on top while forces mobilize to destroy his trade. When he turns to his younger cousin, a conflicted wildlife ranger who hasn’t been paid in months, they both see a possible lifeline.
TALK: The Price of Paradise – Monday 26 August, 1.10pm
Investigative journalist and author Iain Overton will be in conversation about his latest book, which looks at the influence of the suicide bomber on modern society from pre-revolutionary Russia to the present day.
The Frontline Cub Tent can be your base between events: take refreshment from our bar, try our delicious Norfolk mezze of food, and enjoy some laid-back entertainment including music, poetry and games.
Travel is just over an hour from London by train so bring your friends, colleagues and family. The festival is family friendly with lots of activities for children of all ages.
Tickets: Day and weekend tickets are available with a specially-discounted weekend rate for Frontline Club friends and members.
Links:
- For more information about the festival, visit the Byline website.
- To keep up to date with news about Frontline events at Byline, sign up to our newsletter.
In 2016 a sociological survey on the war revealed a number of problems: Ukrainian legislation didn’t allow women to be assigned to combat positions, so they were enlisted as cooks, seamstresses, cleaners, accountants etc. while taking part in military combat operations as snipers, grenade launcher operators, reconnaissance soldiers, artillerists etc. This was done on semi-legal grounds. Thus, the majority of women who were at Donbas war were not enlisted officially and subsequently had no access to social or military benefits, military awards, social status, or career opportunities in the Armed Forces. The contribution of women to the defence of the country was and still is invisible to society. A powerful advocacy campaign for gender equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine was initiated and thus the film was born.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsGnbaLQ82Y&t=3s
Run Time: 1 hr 29 mins
Chair
Lucy Ash is an awarding-winning broadcast journalist with more than 20 years’ experience as a BBC correspondent, presenter and senior producer. Her most recent work includes Ukraine’s Frontline Bakery, a radio documentary and film about a new bakery in the town of Marinka, in Eastern Ukraine which is bringing some comfort and sustenance to local people amidst the trauma of war. (Radio 4 , World Service and BBC World TV) and The Red and the White, a three part radio series on the Allied Intervention in North Russia at the end of WW1 and a half hour film (BBC World Service and BBC Russian)
Speakers
Maria Berlinska (producer) is a founder of the Ukrainian Centre for Aerial Reconnaissance in Kyiv and has been volunteering for the Ukrainian Army since the start of the conflict (both by flying drones at the frontline and training others to operate drones in Kyiv). In addition, Maria set up an Institute for Gender Programmes and initiated a sociological study about women who serve in the ongoing war (you can find their report here: http://www.uwf.org.ua/
Olesya Khromeychuk teaches Modern European History at King’s College London and researches the participation and representation of women in military formations during the Second World War and in the ongoing conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine. She is the author of ‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013)
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From acclaimed director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, Life Itself), Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the incredible saga of the Chinese immigrant Sung family, owners of Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York. Accused of mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Abacus becomes the only U.S. bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The indictment and subsequent trial forces the Sung family to defend themselves and their bank’s legacy in the Chinatown community – over the course of a five-year legal battle.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiboO7bLg0&t=86s
Run Time: 1 hr 30 mins
]]>When Deeyah Khan was six, her father took her to her first anti-racism rally. A Pakistani immigrant to Norway, he promised her that things would get better and that the skinhead gangs that terrorised their family and families like them would soon find themselves relics of past prejudices, that bigotry belonged in history, that tomorrow would be a more tolerant time.
Three decades on, and we’re still waiting for tomorrow.
With a US president propagating anti-Muslim propaganda, the far-right gaining ground in German elections, hate crime rising in the UK, and divisive populist rhetoric infecting political and public discourse across western democracies, Deeyah Khan’s White Right: Meeting The Enemy asks why.
Following the lauded JIHAD – in which she spoke to radicalised British Muslims who had fought in the name of jihad on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Chechnya and now found themselves full of regret – Deeyah joins the frontline of the race wars in America. She sits face-to-face with fascists, racists and the proponents of the “alt-right” ideologies that have propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. From Breitbart’s darling, Richard Spencer to Jeff Schoep, leader of American’s largest neo-Nazi organisation, Deeyah’s need to find the deeper human causes of horrific social forces opens a different possibility for connection and solutions. Rather than dismiss these men as monsters, she’s determined to discover the men behind the masks.
Urgent and resonant, White Right is Deeyah Khan’s most personal film yet. Nominated for 2018 BAFTA Award in the Current Affairs category.
Run Time: 60 mins
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpWUZ3NG_Do
Deeyah Khan
Deeyah Khan is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning and two times BAFTA nominated documentary film director, and founder of Fuuse, a media and arts company that puts women, people from minorities, and third-culture kids at the heart of telling their own stories. In 2016, she became the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity. Born in Norway to immigrant parents of Pashtun and Punjabi ancestry, Deeyah’s experience of living between different cultures, both the beauty and the challenges, shapes her artistic vision. Her 2012 multi-award winning documentary Banaz: A Love Story chronicles the life and death of Banaz Mahmod, a young British Kurdish woman murdered by her family in a so-called honour killing. Deeyah’s second film, the Grierson and Bafta award-nominated Jihad, involved two years of interviews and filming with Islamic extremists, convicted terrorists and former jihadis. Deeyah released her third film in 2016, Islam’s Non-Believers which investigated the lives of ex-Muslims who face extreme discrimination, ostracism, psychological abuse and violence as a result of leaving Islam. One of Fuuse’s recent initiatives, born of Deeyah’s own experiences, is sister-hood, a digital magazine and a series of live events spotlighting the voices of women of Muslim heritage.
Catrin Nye
Catrin Nye is an investigative journalist, documentary maker and presenter for the BBC. She currently hosts the monthly national debate show The Hour on BBC One Wales as well as reporting for the BBC’s BAFTA award-winning Victoria Derbyshire programme, BBC Panorama, BBC World and Radio 4. Catrin previously spent many years reporting for Newsnight and BBC Asian Network developing a specialism in Britain’s minority communities, an area she continues to work on today. She has also written and reported for the Guardian, Prospect, BBC Radio 1, BBC World Service, 1Xtra, 5Live, BBC Breakfast and local radio across the UK. Catrin has won the Mind Journalist of the Year award, two Sandford Saint Martin awards for excellence in religious broadcasting and was one of the Radio Academy’s 30 Under 30. She has also been shortlisted for RTS Young Journalist of the Year and an Amnesty Award among others.
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A story by Carlo Bonini and Giuliano Foschini. Written by Diana Ligorio and Emilio Fabio Torsello.
Trailer: http://www.h24.it/video/DAPHNE_TRAILER90_HD.mp4
Run Time: 49 mins
Chair
Rebecca Vincent is the UK Bureau Director for Reporters Without Borders, known internationally as Reporters sans frontières (RSF), which works to promote and defend press freedom around the world. She is a human rights activist, writer, and former US diplomat. She has worked with a wide range of human rights and freedom of expression NGOs, and has published widely on human rights issues. Rebecca has campaigned consistently for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia, and on the broader issue of safety of journalists.
Speakers
Caroline Muscat is co-founder and editor of Shift News She exposed the Gaffarena scandal in 2015, which led to the resignation of then Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon and resulted in an investigation by the Auditor General. Caroline is the former News Editor of The Times and The Sunday Times, while maintaining her focus on investigative journalism exposing scandals such as the one on the ITS site in St George’s Bay involving the Seabank Group in 2016.
Carlo Bonini is a senior investigative reporter and special correspondent for the Italian daily “la Repubblica”. His career in journalism started in Rome, the city where he was born, when he was in his early twenties, in 1990 as city reporter for the daily “il manifesto”. Since then, he was in New York, at “Newsweek international”, and in Milan, where he worked for “il Corriere della Sera” daily between 1997 and 2000, when he finally joined “la Repubblica” in Rome. In a 30 year long career, he won several Journalistic prizes and published 8 non fiction books. From one of them, “Suburra”, on the Roman Mafia, was the successful Netflix tv series and the homonym movie directed by acclaimed director Stefano Sollima. Carlo Bonini is part for “la Repubblica” of the “Daphne Project”, the investigative consortium of 18 international media outlets led by the French “Forbidden Stories” that had been investigating the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
]]>Even When I Fall, a film by Sky Neal and Kate Mclarnon is the shocking story behind Nepal’s first circus.
Sheetal and Saraswoti met as teenagers in a Kathmandu refuge, both survivors of child trafficking to Indian circuses. They had been rescued and brought back across the border to Nepal, but what does the future hold for these young women returning to a home they barely remember? Even When I Fall traces their journey over 6 years, as they reclaim their breath-taking skills as circus artists and begin to build a future against all the odds. Along with 11 other young trafficking survivors, they form Circus Kathmandu – Nepal’s first and only circus – creating a livelihood for themselves and simultaneously working to educate and challenge the deep-seated stigma against trafficked women. This intimate, beautiful film harnesses the visual power of circus to give a unique perspective into the complex world of human trafficking.
Run Time: 95 minutes
Produced by: Elhum Shakerifar
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/257666482
Nominated for the Discovery Award, British Independent Film Awards 2017
]]>masterclass 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
drinks and Q&A with Sean 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Ticket: £40 (incl. a drink)
BAFTA Nominee documentary filmmaker Sean Langan is joining us for an evening’s masterclass. He will be discussing his documentary filmmaking process while sharing invaluable insights on how to best navigate between getting access, storytelling and getting your film out there. The masterclass is followed by a practical and informal Q&A and drinks (one drink is on the house) – Sean likes to call this session: ‘No compromise till Brooklyn’!
Langan made his name by travelling to many of the world’s trouble-spots – dangerous and volatile environments noted for war, conflict and civil unrest armed with nothing more than a camera.His personal style of filmmaking has been hugely successful with films such as Langan Behind The lines, Fighting The Taliban, Meeting The Taliban and Afghan Ladies’ Driving School being fine examples of his work. Born in 1964 Sean has been making documentaries since 1997; His first film Video Diaries: Nightmare In Paradise saw him investigate the kidnapping of two British tourists in Kashmir. He joined the relatives of these missing men, who didn’t know if their sons were alive or dead, following them as they took to the streets looking for information and recording their every move with his camera. He recorded his own thoughts and investigation into the pair’s disappearance in a diary format.
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