Inside Lens

The Duck Master is a story of Somnuek, a 74 years old rice farmer in Thailand who stands strong to his belief in farming without using chemical. He raises and trains ducks as his assistants in rice farming. He was deemed as weird and crazy by others when they see him trying to train 3,000 ducks using just a whistle sound. In The Duck Master, viewers will see how the master trains his ducks and learn about the benefits of using ducks as rice protectors at the same time.

ShareTwitterFacebookGoogle+ *You will leave the NHK website. Afshin a 12 year old boy from the hillside of Kabul is determined to go to school. His father who is an illiterate military man can not find job in Kabul due to some security issues and has to leave the country. This gives Afshin even more motivation to continue his study but studying in Kabul is not easy as schools get continuously bombed by the suicide bomber from extremist groups.

After an earthquake razed a Chinese city to the ground in 2008, more than 6000 families try to replace the children they lost in order to move on with their lives. “A Second Child” follows one of these families haunted by their painful past as they build towards a brighter tomorrow.

Eaindra, 16-year-old Buddhist nun from Naga Land considered among the most uneducated and backward in Myanmar, who currently studies in Yangon, has a desire to go to university of medicine and become the first ever Buddhist nun doctor in the country.

NOOR HUDA - helps returning and released extremists to reintegrate into society in Indonesia. Huda has an interesting past. As a teenager in school, he was radicalized and recruited by an extremist group. After graduation, his schoolmates went to Pakistan for military training. Huda, on the other hand, goes to work for the Washington Post. In 2002, he is sent to cover the Bali Bombings. There, he makes the shocking discovery – one of the Bali bombers was his roommate from school. This drives Huda on a lifelong quest to figure out, what turns ordinary people into extremists and how we can counter it.

ShareTwitterFacebook *You will leave the NHK website. This documentary follows a year in the lives of an entertaining principal who encourages students to discover their dreams and students who don’t have dreams yet.Seung-ho, calls himself a singer/entertainer, is the principal of a very specialized high school in Seoul, South Korea. This school has only 1- year students who come from Tuesday to Friday. On Mondays, they go to their original high schools. Students who do not want to go to university and don’t know what to do for their future, they come to this high school and try to learn a new thing for 1 year before they embark to the real world as an adult. As a singer Seung-ho released 7 albums. So, he uses music as the tool to connecting with students. For Seung-ho as a principal, playing together with the students is just another important subject alongside Maths, English, etc. Seung-ho often says that he has a secret know-how that can make his students dramatically changed in only 12 months. Would this be possible? We have been following Seungho and his students’ changes during a year.

Ephrem Haile is from Ethiopia and has applied for refugee status in Japan. He lives in Tokyo with his Ethiopian wife and six-year-old daughter and has a job. For now, his family is safe, but their newfound stability is fragile. Japan’s asylum policy recently got stricter, and seekers like Ephrem are growing uneasy about their future. To make matters worse, Japanese law has not recognized Ephrem as the legitimate husband of his wife and the legal father of his daughter for lack of documents from his home country. He feels threatened and Japanese bureaucracy is taking its toll on his health. Ephrem strives to prove his family ties with help from the local community.

An intimate look into the story of Armenia’s beloved, record holding weightlifter, who is the pride of the nation until his gender nonconformity became known. Mel faces incredible opposition and public outcry and his gender costs him his fame, his fortune, his family, and even his homeland.

Life as a herder is hard and solitary, but the 82-year-old Iranian, Firouzeh loves the ever-changing nature, the hard life, and her faithful cows. She hikes across the rugged landscape, lugs bundles of wood, and still nimbly climbs trees. This story follows this strong-minded woman in her work across the seasons as she tells the story of her life, with work and fate as the dominant themes. When she was a young girl, a marriage was arranged for her with an older man, with whom she had 11 children. But not one of them comes to visit her now. Spending the winter in the low-lying village, she makes fervent efforts to get closer to her kids. Nevertheless, she looks forward to the prospect of spending another summer in the mountains with her cows, ignoring well-meaning advice that she should simply retire.

While the internet and social networks have facilitated new encounters for men and women in Tibet, it has also increased the divorce rate for many nomadic families. Sadly, Tibetan customs encourage parents to leave their children behind in order to join a new family. After living in an orphanage for several years, 13-year-old Metok Karpo decides to embark on a journey to visit the father she never got the chance to know.

Zhang, Ke-Han is a 28 years old Taiwanese young man who loves acting very much. His full-time job is an extra actor for TV, movie or student production film. His daily working routine is hunting for any possibility to audition online, making his resume, and submit to different production offices. Just like other actors, sometimes he will get an audition call but sometimes not. He has a whole wardrobe of costume and props for auditions, but actually, he only earns 20 USD a day from this job and still living with his mother. If someone asks him how far he will go? He will answer, "I will keep doing this forever!"

As the biggest Muslim society in the world, Indonesia hosts over 25,000 Islamic boarding schools, housing more than 4 million students. This film is set in one of the largest traditional Islamic boarding schools in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia, called Pondok Kebon Jambu -- one of the very few which runs by a woman. Indonesia experiences changes in recent years -- more people would criticize others based on shallow understandings of the Islam. A young teacher, Diding, is determined to teach proper and profound understanding of Islam that values "harmony and co-existence." Dika, a senior student who is responsible for the well-being of his roommates, gives lessons on Islamic teachings to little kids as a part of his internship. Bibah is an art teacher who has lived in the school for 7 years. Her parents disapprove of her interest in music, but the school values her talents and supports her choice to improve her skills and to continue her education further. Through intimate moments with these captivating young people, the film cuts through cultural and religious barriers, and offers an opportunity for the audience to get acquainted with Islamic teachings and the world of Islam in changing society.

"THE PASSPORT" tells the story of a migrant worker's wife who got HIV positive by her husband, but struggles to fulfill her dream. Trying to empower herself against the existing patriarchal society, has been a symbolic protest to violence against women and children. "THE PASSPORT" is a real scenario of current Bangladesh with a lot of migrant workers and their victim wife and children having HIV positive transmitted by their spouses. Bangladesh is a major source of migrant workers. The villages of this country are the major suppliers of migrant workers to the world. Babupur, Chatkhil, Noakhali is such a remote village where most of the people are migrant workers in the Arab Gulf region; and the rest are mostly illiterate and orthodox Muslims.

"Dancesport" has been big in the island of Cebu, the Philippines since the year 2000, and especially for kids from unprivileged families, becoming dancesport athletes means opening doors to their future. This episode features 2 kids training to win at world-class dance competitions, sharing tears and laughter while learning about survival, defeat, and victory.

Mindanao, the southernmost island in the Philippines, has long faced armed conflicts from various rebel factions. Violent encounters between the government troops and rebels have recently intensified, and this led to the declaration of military rule in the region. Thousands of Lumads, the indigenous peoples in the region, have evacuated their ancestral lands. Soldiers have occupied schools and used them as camps, forcing students and children out of the area. To flee from the violence, some of them evacuated to Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

This film is about the psychological journey of a filmmaker and her mother in Bangladeshi Muslim society. The daughter tries to find out the reasons why her once joyful and outgoing mother has suddenly turned very conservative. At first, she thought Mom had changed because of the Hajj, the biggest Muslim pilgrimage. After the Hajj, Mom transformed into a very religious lady and cocooned herself within the 4 walls of the house. She no longer approves of her daughter's filmmaking profession. On the top of that, she wants to take her daughter on the Hajj along with her so that she can understand her mother's beliefs. Before going on the Hajj, the daughter starts filming her mom to better understand her. Slowly, through this filmmaking process, the daughter realizes that her mom was very lonely in her world. She's still writing poems in private, which she once did when she was young. She sought freedom through her poetry, but she never published it or shared it with anyone, not even with her husband. To fulfill the void in her life she finally submits herself to God.

Li Chunyuan is an idealistic, lower-level Chinese government official who is determined to get a grip on local air pollution. He is in charge of air pollution in the Langfang Environmental Protection Bureau. Langfang used to be one of the most polluted cities in China. Li uses quick methods to clean up the air and reduce smog, but, little by little, loses control. We follow his journey.