Another News Story takes a fresh view of the European refugee crisis. The film opens in 2015 Greece as refugees arrive on the idyllic island of Lesbos and follows refugees into Hungary and Croatia and across Europe to a hoped-for sanctuary. Since 2015 the current refugee crisis has flooded every news and media outlet across the globe. Another News Story takes a unique approach to capturing this narrative. While still giving a groundfloor perspective of migrants fleeing Syria and Turkey and their struggle to find a country where they are welcome, director Orban Wallace simultaneously turns the camera on the journalists and the role they play in representing the crisis to the world. Wallace’s gripping debut feature raises important questions about what happens behind the camera, and how the life cycle of a news story starts and grows.

Another News Story has had 17 international film festival selections including Karlovy Vary, IDFA, Zurich and Glasgow among others. The UK theatrical release for the film is at the end of April.

Run Time: 84 mins

Trailer: http://www.anothernewsstory.com/

Ethical Journalism Network

The Ethical Journalism Network is an alliance of reporters, editors and publishers aiming to strengthen journalism around the world, working to build trust in news media through training, education and research.

The EJN has developed migration-reporting guidelines, which are available as an infographic and as a video have been used for training around Europe and have been presented to the United Nations in New York and other international forums.

The migration and media studies that the EJN has published or contributed to are:

How do media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on migration – A 17-country study commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development to produce a study analysing how media cover migration in Europe, Middle East and North Africa.
Fatal Journeys – Improving Data on Missing Migrants – Published by the IOM in 2017.
Refugees Images: Ethics in the Picture – From the EJN’s 2017 Ethics in the News report.
Moving Stories – An international review of how media cover migration published by the EJN in 2015.
To find out how to support the EJN visit: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/support

The young Harvard-educated economist Miklós Németh didn’t dream he would play a decisive role in the fall of the Berlin Wall when he was appointed Prime Minister by Hungary’s Communist Party to fix the nation’s finances in late 1988. Only a year later he was at the centre of it all.

On Wednesday 5 November, the Frontline Club tuned in to the world premier of 1989, a new documentary by Anders Østergaard detailing the months and days of Németh’s tense political manoeuvring that precipitated demolition of the wall, as it was shown in 57 cities across Europe during the 2014 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CPH:DOX).

Stitching together archival footage seamlessly with reenactments of behind-the-scenes political moves, 1989 shows how Németh’s decision to dismantle one of the biggest drains on Hungary’s budget – a 240 kilometre-long electrical fence bordering Austria – reverberated through the former communist block. Just months later, tens of thousands of East Germans were scrambling across the divide.

Post-screening, Németh joined Danish Broadcast Corperation news anchor, Lene Johansen; professor and EU analyst, Lykke Friis; Senior Advisor to the European Policy Centre, Hans Martens; and former Prime Minister of Denmark, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, to reflect on 25 years of changes his decisions brought to Europe.

Continuing Conflict
The continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine was at the top of the agenda. “I am a great believer in dialogue and compromise. That is the way of finding your way out of a difficult situation,” Németh said of the fighting, adding that his good rapport with Mikhail Gorbachev helped guide him through difficult times.

“Putin is not stupid. I don’t like seeing a comment or an article in the paper that now we’re facing Cold War number two. This is not cold,” Németh said. “Last month Ukraine, Russia, and the EU signed a very important contract on the gas supply. So dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.”

What we’re seeing in Russia is a generation of people who never really accepted what happened in 1989, added Hans Martens. “I think they’re striking back now,” he said. “It’s not just about Ukraine and Crimea, it’s also about trying to reestablish a kind of Soviet Union or at least an empire like that. So dialogue is very good.”

Find out more about 1989 on the film’s website, where director Anders Østergaard will answer questions submitted by audiences from audiences all over Europe participating in this simultaneous screening.

The creative documentary 1989 is a high-politics drama about the the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. When the young technocrat, Miklós Neméth, was appointed Hungary’s new prime minister, his main task was to save the country’s appalling economy. Neméth decided to remove the expensive border control apparatus from the state budget, a decision which set him up against communist hardliners, and soon after the Berlin Wall fell.

Director Anders Østergaard recreates the events of 1989 and invites the audience into the secret meeting rooms through a mixture of testimonials, archive material, recreation and reconstructed dialogues of the key political players.

Directed by Anders Østergaard
Duration: 96′
Year: 2014