
Narrator

When the revolution in Nicaragua won its victory nearly 40 years ago, the world began to dream. A young generation was taking the reins in a country of grand utopias. From West Germany alone, 15,000 “brigadists” travelled to help rebuild the war-torn country: liberals, greens, unionists, social democrats, leftists and church representatives harvested coffee and cotton, built schools, kindergartens and hospital wards. No movement has mobilised so many people. What became of the hopes and dreams of the revolutionaries and their supporters?

Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.

Over half a century of public service, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing embodied the dream of a united and strong Europe. From the youthful enthusiasm of the 1950s to the disillusionment of the 2005 referendum, his career chronicles an ideal confronted with the realities of power, national resistance, and populist winds. He tirelessly attempted to realize his youthful dream: a United States of Europe.

History is Marching is a feature length documentary analysing the rise in tensions between major powers across the globe over the course of 2018. The film follows western history from 1945 to the present day, before looking at how capitalist society is today breaking down into the largest crisis in its history. Socialism or extinction?

The eight-year Iran-Iraq War was one of the most brutal conflicts to devastate the region in the 20th century. Zahed was 13 years old when he enrolled in the Iranian army. Najah was 18 when he was conscripted into the Iraqi army, and he fought against Zahed in the Battle of Khorramshahr. Fast forward 25 years, a chance encounter in Vancouver between these two former enemies turns into a deep and mutually supportive friendship. Expanded from the 2015 short film by the same name.

Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.