What is the impact on freedom of speech and the press when a big corporation attempts to suppress criticism and manipulate the media?. Documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten found out when he debuted his previous film, BANANAS!, which portrays the struggle of 12 Nicaraguan plantation workers who brought a lawsuit challenging fruit giant Dole Food’s use of a banned pesticide. Shortly after BANANAS! was selected to premiere at the Los Angeles Film...

The fourth episode in this series looks at John Wilkes, a comparatively little-known figure today, but in mid- to late-18th century he was at the epicentre of events which shook the British Establishment and helped prepare the ground for modern civil liberties.

Following the 1973 military coup in Santiago de Chile, a group of priests and laypeople working in the Vicariate of Solidarity began the dangerous task of trying to protect the persecuted and locate those who had been detained. Having realized that there was a concerted policy to eliminate dissidents, and in order to conceal their activities and those in charge, they adopted the tactics of a sophisticated intelligence team.

Shortly after his best friend, Dr. Andrew Bagby, was slain by jealous ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, filmmaker Kurt Kuenne was shocked to learn that Turner was pregnant with Bagby's unborn child. Hoping to create a film that would serve as both a memorial to Bagby and an introduction to the father the boy would never know, Kuenne quickly began production on a film celebrating the life of his late friend. Traveling across the entire continental...

This is the biggest leak in history: 11.5 million files exposing the most secret world of offshore finance.. Under the ICIJ, 378 investigative journalists around the world worked on the leaked files behind closed doors. On April 3rd 2016, representing 109 media organisations, they released the Panama Papers, exposing political leaders, businessmen, celebrities, sports stars and even criminals, using shell companies to hide their assets and depriving...

Simultaneously a murder-mystery and an exposè of endemic corruption today, GIVE UP TOMORROW looks intimately at the case of Paco Larrañaga, a student accused of killing two sisters on the provincial island of Cebu. In a way that is both specific to the country and disquietingly universal, the film exposes a Kafkaesque extravaganza populated by flamboyantly crooked public officials, cops on the take, and a frenzied legal and media circus.. GIVE UP...

This film destroys the myth that drug abuse affects just the user, as life and death unfolds in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. 'Tears for April: Beyond the Blue Lens' follows the short, tragic life of April Reoch as told by Al Arsenault, the beat cop who first warned the fresh-faced 17-year-old to leave the streets. Within six months, April was hooked on drugs and prostituting herself.. We follow April’s life-and-death struggle: from those...

Ecuador was shaken in 1981 by the suspicious death of President Jaime Roldós and his wife. The film examines the conspiracy generated by his human rights advocacy, and the drama of his three children, faced with the manipulated image of their parents by a populist party created by their own family.. Winner of Best Documentary at the Havana Film Festival.. “...integral to the success of Ecuadorian cinema on a local and international scale.” –...

Unlocking the Cagefollows animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. Arguing that cognitively complex animals such as chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and elephants have the capacity for limited personhood rights, Steve and his legal team are making history by filing the first lawsuits that seek to transform a chimpanzee from a "thing"with no rights to a "person"with...

On July 1, 2001, John Scott and his partner Greg Scrivener were killed in their home in Suva Fiji. John, from an old European-Fiji family and educated in New Zealand, was the Director-General of the Fiji Red Cross and worked as a go-between in the hostage crisis during the coup of 2000.. This feature documentary is based on the book “Deep Beyond the Reef” by John’s brother Owen, and traces the extraordinary and colorful story of the Scott family,...