This World

At 15, Shamima Begum left London to join the terror group Islamic State. It made global headlines. She and her two friends became known as the Bethnal Green Girls.

Mobeen Azhar explores the suffocating reality of being a J-pop idol, the influence that Johnny Kitagawa had on the media and exposes the brutal consequences of turning a blind eye.

Taiwan is at the heart of a struggle between two nuclear powers – China and the United States - and there are fears it will become the next global conflict. President Xi Jinping insists Taiwan is part of China and must re-unify with the motherland. But Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen, says the island is already independent and must maintain its freedom and democracy.

In 2008, student Martine Vik Magnussen was killed after a night out. The only suspect, the son of a billionaire, fled the UK to Yemen. Reporter Nawal Al-Maghafi is determined to speak to him.

Erdogan becomes mayor of Istanbul, is imprisoned and banned from politics, but fights back and wins the election. Ten years of Erdogan's rule lead to mass protests in Istanbul.

Erdogan faces a military coup and responds with a brutal crackdown on dissent, taking control of the military and judiciary to become the most powerful president of modern Turkey.

In September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian girl, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody. She had been arrested by Iran’s religious police, accused of not wearing her hijab properly. The authorities said she had died of a heart attack, but rumours spread that she had been beaten on arrest. Citizens took to the streets in their thousands in fury. This is an extraordinary and shocking insight into what has been happening across Iran, revealing a regime under huge pressure and resorting to extreme cruelty to control its citizens.

After three recent fatal shark attacks in Egypt, this film investigates whether pressure from human activity and climate change is altering the behaviour of sharks.

The war in Ukraine has had a huge impact on the eastern European countries that share a border with Russia. On a road trip from Poland, north through the Baltic States, Katya explores the consequences of Putin’s war on the west. She discovers a region still reeling from the legacy of the Soviet Union, where the war in Ukraine has reopened old wounds. But she also meets the people fighting back against the new threat in any way they can – from those travelling to Ukraine to fight on the front line, to the people making armoured ambulances in their garages.

Continuing her journey north along Russia’s border, Katya travels from Estonia into snowy Scandinavia. In Finland, a country scarred by past war with Russia, she discovers a state of hyper-preparedness as she travels deep into the bunkers beneath Helsinki. In Norway, she finds a more relaxed attitude, but one where personal relationships are breaking down in all sorts of ways – between reindeer herders, families and nuclear scientists.