James Bertrand Longley is an American filmmaker.
In This World is a 2002 British docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom. The film follows two young Afghan refugees, Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayatullah, as they leave a refugee camp in Pakistan for a better life in London. Since their journey is illegal, it is fraught with danger, and they must use back-channels, bribes, and smugglers to achieve their goal.
Afghan refugees are citizens of Afghanistan who were forced to flee from their country as a result of wars, persecution, torture or genocide. The 1978 Saur Revolution, followed by the 1979 Soviet invasion, marked the first major wave of internal displacement and international migration to neighboring Iran and Pakistan; smaller numbers also went to India or to countries of the former Soviet Union. Between 1979 and 1992, more than 20% of Afghanistan's population fled the country as refugees. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, many returned to Afghanistan, however many Afghans were again forced to flee during the civil war in the 90s. Over 6 million Afghan refugees were residing in Iran and Pakistan by 2000. Most refugees returned to Afghanistan following the 2001 United States invasion and overthrow of the Taliban regime. Between 2002 and 2012, 5.7 million refugees returned to Afghanistan, increasing the country's population by 25%.
Doha Debates produces and distributes solutions-focused debate and interview programs, video reports and interactive content. The franchise's products include flagship debates, interview series, podcasts, the #SolvingIt series, digital video reports, Deep Dive education curriculum, and the interactive Doha Portal. Doha Debates is funded by Qatar Foundation.
Afghan Star is a 2009 British documentary film following four contestants in the Afghan music competition Afghan Star. Afghan Star was directed by Havana Marking and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films. The film was acclaimed by critics.
Restrepo is a 2010 American documentary film about the War in Afghanistan directed by British photojournalist Tim Hetherington and American journalist Sebastian Junger. It explores the year that Junger and Hetherington spent, on assignment for Vanity Fair, in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, embedded with the Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the U.S. Army. The Second Platoon is depicted defending the outpost (OP) named after a platoon medic who was killed earlier in the campaign, PFC Juan Sebastián Restrepo, who was a Colombian-born naturalized U.S. citizen. The directors stated that the film is not a war advocacy documentary, they simply "wanted to capture the reality of the soldiers."
Kirsten Johnson is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. She is mostly known for her camera work on several well-known feature-length documentaries such as Citizenfour and The Oath. In 2016, she released Cameraperson, a film which consists of various pieces of footage from her decades of work all over the world as a documentary cinematographer. Directed by Johnson herself, Cameraperson went on to be praised for its handling of themes about documentary ethics interwoven with Johnson's personal reflection on her experiences.
Well-Founded Fear is a 2000 documentary film from directors Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini. The film takes its title from the formal definition of a refugee under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, as a person who deserves protection, "owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The film analyzes the US asylum process by following several asylum applicants and asylum officers through actual INS interviews.
Sonita Alizadeh is an Afghan rapper and activist who has been vocal against forced marriages. Alizadeh first gained attention when she released "Brides for Sale," a video in which she raps about daughters being sold into marriage by their families. With the help of Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami, an Iranian documentary filmmaker who over three years documented her story in the film Sonita, Alizadeh filmed the video to escape a marriage her parents were planning for her, even though it is illegal for women to sing solo in Iran, where she was living at the time. After releasing the video on YouTube, Alizadeh was contacted by the Strongheart Group, which offered her a student visa and financial help to come and study in the United States of America, where she then relocated and has resided since. In 2015, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
Sonita is a 2015 documentary film about Sonita Alizadeh, a 15-year-old Afghan rapper and refugee living in Tehran. The film was directed by Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami and premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the festival's World Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.
Lana Wilson is an American filmmaker. She directed the feature documentaries After Tiller, The Departure, and Miss Americana, as well as the two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. The first two films were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.
Andrew "Andy" Cohen is a three-time Emmy nominated independent filmmaker and journalist whose recent film,To Kill a Tiger, is nominated for a 2024 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.
Minding the Gap is a 2018 documentary film directed by Bing Liu. It was produced by Liu and Diane Moy Quon through Kartemquin Films. It chronicles the lives and friendships of three young men growing up in Rockford, Illinois, united by their love of skateboarding. The film received critical acclaim, winning the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
The 69th annual Berlin International Film Festival took place from 7 to 17 February 2019. French actress Juliette Binoche served as the Jury President.
Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists.
Laila Haidari is an Afghan activist and restaurateur. She runs Mother Camp, a drug rehabilitation centre she founded in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2010. She also owns Taj Begum, a Kabul cafe that funds Mother Camp. Taj Begum is frequently raided because it breaks taboos; the cafe is run by a woman and allows unmarried men and women to eat together. Haidari is the subject of the 2018 documentary film Laila at the Bridge. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.
Flee is a 2021 independent adult animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. An international co-production with Denmark, France, Norway, and Sweden, it follows the story of a man under the alias Amin Nawabi, who shares his hidden past of fleeing his home country of Afghanistan to Denmark for the first time. Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau serve as executive producers and narrators for the English-language dub version.
What We Left Unfinished is a 2019 Afghan documentary film by Mariam Ghani about five incomplete Afghan films, all started during the Communist regime of Afghanistan. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2019.
The UnRedacted, first released as Jihad Rehab, is a 2022 documentary film which follows a group of former jihadists who have been released from Guantanamo Bay detention camp to the Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef Center for Advice and Care, a rehabilitation center for Islamist jihadis in Saudi Arabia. The film was conceived and directed by Meg Smaker. It premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition on 22 January 2022 and earned generally "strong" reviews, described as "humanizing" and powerful.
Transition is a 2023 documentary film directed by journalists Jordan Bryon and Monica Villamizar. The film follows Bryon, who documents the lives of Taliban members in Afghanistan after their takeover of the country, while simultaneously undergoing gender transition as a trans man. The film garnered acclaim from critics, though some critics disliked its portrayal of Afghan society.
