True Stories

Tuesday, November 24 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, presents What’s Killing Darcus Howe? which follows an extraordinary six months in the life of this legendary and veteran firebrand as he attempts to raise awareness of prostate cancer, a disease which affects one in four black men. This is the first in a series of programmes through the week featuring Howe.

Tuesday, November 17 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, looks at illegal child immigration from Mexico into the USA. As the USA maintains a strict policy on immigration from Mexico, Which Way Home shows the personal side of immigration through the eyes of children who, with enormous courage and resourcefulness, face harrowing dangers as they endeavour to make it to America.

Tuesday, November 10 on M4

Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Jon Blair, Dancing with the Devil is a shockingly intimate and visually stunning portrait of the drug-related gang war that dominates the slums of Rio de Janeiro. With unprecedented access to one of the world’s most violent hotspots, Blair follows three very different men through the city’s perilous backstreets – places no foreigner, or even ordinary Brazilians, dare go – to provide an unflinching look at one of the bloodiest urban conflicts in the world.

Tuesday, November 3 on M4

Fascinating documentary that goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo. Bradley Beesley’s moving, compassionate film, fresh from the London Film Festival, follows the women from the Eddie Warriors Correctional Center as they compete in a closed-doors prison rodeo against inmates from nine all-male penitentiaries. Prisoners compete on wild broncs and bucking bulls, risking life-long injuries. Danny Liles, a 14-year veteran of the rodeo, mentors the women who include Jamie Brooks, serving 30 years for murder, and Brandy Witte, serving 20 years for firearm possession and drugs dealing. For them and their fellow inmates, the chance to battle livestock offers a brief respite from prison life as they become the heroes the public and guards applaud.

Tuesday, October 27 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, continues with Nahid Persson’s True Stories: Four Wives, One Man. This outrageous observational documentary, shot over three years, is a portrait of four wives, their husband, their incredibly free-speaking mother-in-law, and their many, many children – all of these characters living under the same roof in a rural Iranian village. From this house seething with sex, love and money scheming, Mr Heda departs each morning to go about the business of seeing to his sheep, wondering which wife he’ll spend the night with. Wife number four is a clear favourite at present. His choice made, he’ll make sure her door is unbolted tonight. Meanwhile his mother says her son really only has one thing going on in his head: ‘sex’. She continues, ‘My son is a good man…at sleeping with his wives!’ But she is never slow to leap to his defence whenever one of his four disgruntled wives gripes about the state of their marriage. In Iran, polygamy isn’t illegal, but it is certainly a cause of much frustration and consternation for Heda’s four wives, who feel both trapped and forsaken by their husband’s restlessness. Worse, Heda’s normal solution to any kind of marital discord is to bring home another bride, an even younger one ‘who won’t talk back’. Will he marry yet again?

Tuesday, October 20 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, presents Rupert Murray’s acclaimed film looking at the consequences of unchecked, unregulated sea fishing across the globe. It is not a film about what might happen, it is a film about what has happened.

Tuesday, October 13 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, presents Jeremy Simmons’ moving film about the plight of honeybees throughout the world but this time from a very human angle. Through the stories of three American beekeepers; Nicole Ulibarri from Montana, Eric Mills from Carolina and Matt Hutchens from Washington State, Simmons follows their efforts to make the epic journey with their hives to the biggest event on the beekeepers calendar – the pollination of the almond groves of California. But in common with many of the world’s apiarists, the three are suffering from unexplained colony collapse disorder (CCD) which results in devastating consequences not just for the bees but for the beekeepers whose livelihoods are at stake.

Tuesday, October 6 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, presents Hamid Rahmanian’s film, a unique insight into Iran through the prism of a day centre for troubled women run by Marjaneh Halatin, a psychologist now based in London.

Tuesday, September 29 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, uncovers the mystery behind a massive explosion that shook Siberia in 1908. The first scientist to eventually visit the site found 80 million uprooted trees lying in neat rows, and thought that a meteor may have been to blame – but failed to find any fragments or crater and so the mystery remained unsolved. One hundred years after the explosion, George Carey packed his camera and set off to Tunguska. He encountered a mixture of mystics, reindeer-herders, amateur sleuths and serious scientists and a range of theories.

Tuesday, September 22 on M4

The True Stories strand, which showcases the best international feature documentaries, presents Gini Reticker’s powerful and award-winning film which tells the story of a group of ‘ordinary’ women who succeeded in doing the unthinkable. In 2003, the African nation of Liberia was in turmoil; its president Charles Taylor was involved in a vicious civil war with war lords who wanted to take his place. One woman, Leymah Gbowee, had had enough and she and her fellow church members, soon to be joined by their female Muslim counterparts (the first time the two faiths had cooperated in the country) began their protests. From their actions came Taylor’s exile and the election in 2005 of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first woman head of state.