Global Voices

Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls is an intimate portrait of a spirited young Australian band manager as she tries to empower Myanmar's first all-girl band to speak out in one of the world's most repressive regimes.

In the 1960s, the Sun Duck Orphanage in South Korea switched the identities of two orphans when an American family adopted one of them. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem goes on a quest to search for her “double” — a girl named Cha Jung Hee — in an attempt to resolve a case of mistaken identity and in the process explores the complexities of international transracial adoptions. This film premiered on September 14, 2010 on POV on PBS.

In May 2009, Rodrigo Rosenberg, a wealthy, charismatic lawyer went cycling near his home in Guatemala City and was murdered. Nothing unusual, as Guatemala’s murder rate is tragically four times higher than Mexico’s. What was extraordinary is that Rosenberg knew for certain that he was going to be murdered

Meet three young boxers — two men and one woman — from Bukom, Ghana, a unique town with a unique boxing culture. The Fighting Spirit follows their extraordinary journeys to triumph and defeat, in and out of the glittering prizefighting rings of Europe and America, and intimately portrays what home, culture, love, and loyalty mean to modern Africans. This film premiered on October 18, 2009 on AfroPop on PBS.

In 2008, a film crew began documenting a group of young heavy-metal musicians in Egypt. Oppressed by massive social forces beyond their control, the kids — sons of a jailed political dissident and the leader of the only female metal band in the Middle East — saw music as their outlet, their hopes trapped in the traffic-clogged streets of Cairo like a bull in a pen. Then one day, everything burst wide open.

The Oath is the story of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Prison and the first man to face the controversial military tribunals. Filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Oath is a family drama about two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a journey that would lead to Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The film begins as Salim Hamdan is set to face war crime charges at Guantanamo, and Abu Jandal is a free man and drives a taxi in Yemen. This film premiered on September 21, 2010 on POV on PBS.

Two spirited daughters from China's last remaining matrilineal ethnic minority are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn when they lose the only jobs they've ever known. Left with few options, Jua Ma and La Tsuo leave Beijing for home, a remote village in the foothills of the Himalayas. But home is no longer what it was, as growing exposure to the modern world irreparably changes the provocative traditions the Mosuo have built around their belief that marriage is an attack on the family.

My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times — from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Together, these childhood classmates paint a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionments of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. This film premiered on June 28, 2011 on POV on PBS.

My So-Called Enemy follows six Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls committed to justice and mutual understanding after participating in a women’s leadership program called Building Bridges for Peace. Emmy Award-winning director Lisa Gossels (The Children of Chabannes) documents how the young women’s transformative experience of knowing their “enemies” as human beings in the United States meets with the realities of their lives back home in the Middle East over the next seven years. Through the coming-of-age narratives of Adi, Gal, Hanin, Inas, Rawan, and Rezan, we see how creating relationships across personal, political and physical borders is a first step towards resolving conflict. My So-Called Enemy presents the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through a human lens, and the possibility and hope that come from listening to each other’s stories.

Past and present collide as award-winning filmmaker Natalia Almada brings to life audio recordings she inherited about her great-grandfather Plutarco Elias Calles, a revolutionary general who became Mexico’s president in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolshevique” and “El Jefe Maximo” (the foremost chief). Today, he is remembered as “el Quema-Curas” (priest-burner) and as a dictator who ruled through puppet presidents until he was exiled in 1936. Through Almada’s grandmother’s recordings, El General moves between memories of a daughter grappling with history’s portrait of her father and the weight of his legacy on the country today. This film premiered on July 20, 2010 on POV on PBS.

Diamond in the Dunes is the true story of hope and baseball in China’s Xinjiang Province — a region harshly divided between an indigenous Muslim minority and the ruling Han Chinese.

During the 1960’s and '70’s, thousands of Israelis lived in Tehran, Iran, enjoying a special relationship with the Shah and his dictatorial rule. Protected by large arms deals and complex financial ties, the Israeli community enjoyed a wealthy and luxurious lifestyle, while failing to note that the ruling power to which they were connected was collapsing. By the time they realized their “Iranian Paradise” was turning into hell, it was almost too late, and they found themselves in the middle of the Islamist revolution taking Iran by storm.

No one gets to Antarctica by accident. For the few scientific teams who brave this beautiful and silent landscape, it feels like another planet. Their discoveries yield secrets about the Earth’s past and future, and prompt questions about our place in the world. Ice People captures the experience of vastness and claustrophobia, of excitement and waiting, and of a life still set to nature’s rhythm. This film premiered on May 5, 2009 on Sundance Channel.

He is not their uncle, and his name is not Joe. But to the old ladies of An-dong, a rural community in South Korea, the deliveryman Uncle Joe is almost the only contact they have with the modern world. With young people leaving for school or higher paying jobs in the cities, the elderly are left behind. Sinae Ha and Wooyoung Choi’s film shows how Joe serves this community with love and attention.

Zarqa, Jordan’s second largest city, is a rundown, industrial metropolis and birthplace of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious mastermind of al Qaeda’s terror operations in Iraq who was killed by American forces in 2005. This film premiered on March 31, 2009 on Independent Lens on PBS.

In Morocco, women are being employed as religious leaders — called Morchidat — for the first time, offering advice and guidance in mosques, schools, prisons, and orphanages around the country. Casablanca Calling follows three of these exceptional women as they teach an Islam based on tolerance, compassion, and equality, and try to change people’s perceptions of its true teachings.

Shot over six years, Oil & Water is the true story of two boys coming of age in the middle of one of the world’s worst toxic disasters. Hugo fights for the survival of his Amazonian tribe, while David attempts to revolutionize the oil industry.

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos, all at once, as a tidal wave of humanity attempts to return home by train. It is the Chinese New Year. The wave is made up of millions of migrant factory workers. The homes they seek are in the rural villages where they left behind family to seek work in the booming coastal cities. It is an epic spectacle that tells us much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance. This film premiered on September 27, 2011 on POV on PBS.