Storyville

Series showcasing the best in international documentaries.

1997 HD 104min NR United Kingdom English

Biography Documentary

current affairs

S23E13 - The PM, the Playboy and the Wolf of Wall Street 2019-10-21

A Malaysian wealth fund is robbed of US$3.5 billion. It is the world’s biggest white-collar heist involving government corruption at the highest level, an abuse of power and international money laundering. With little to go on, dogged investigative reporters from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Hollywood Reporter retrace the dirty money - via real estate deals and movie financing including ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ - back to the top echelons of the Malaysian government. Malaysia’s prime minister and his inner circle are implicated, assets are frozen, money is seized, but the Malaysian people fight back.

S23E18 - Murder in the Bush: Cold Case Hammarskjöld 2019-11-25

Mads Brügger and Göran Björkdahl investigate the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Secretary-General, killed in a plane crash in 1961.

S23E19 - Facing Franco's Crimes: The Silence of Others 2019-12-02

A Storyville documentary that reveals the struggle of the victims of Francos dictatorship in Spain, as they fight a government-sanctioned pact of forgetting the crimes that they suffered.

S24E1 - Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (1) 2020-01-07

Why did Jim Jones, a charismatic American preacher and leader of the Peoples Temple, compel his members in 1978 to commit revolutionary suicide in northern Guyana?

S24E2 - Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2) 2020-01-08

The Jonestown project quickly begins to implode. Joness excessive drug use, irrational behaviour and the isolation of his followers raises the alarm back home.

S24E3 - The Gene Revolution: Changing Human Nature 2020-01-27

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isnt digital, its biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere and designing our own children. This Storyville documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPRs far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting and the bio-engineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for human evolution? To begin to answer these questions, we must look back billions of years and peer into an uncertain future.

S24E4 - Advocate: A Lawyer without Borders 2020-02-10

Jewish lawyer Lea Tsemel is a controversial figure in Israel. For the last 50 years, she has fearlessly defended Palestinians prosecuted in Israeli courts for resisting the occupation both violently and non-violently. Taking on tough cases, including charges of terrorism, the odds are stacked sharply against her. To many Israelis, Lea defends the indefensible, but for Palestinians she is more than a lawyer, she is an advocate. This documentary follows Tsemel’s caseload, including the high-profile trial of 13-year-old Ahmed - her youngest client to date - charged with the attempted murder of two Israelis for his involvement in a stabbing attack. Ahmed, whose 15-year-old cousin led the attack but was killed by police on the scene, now depends on Lea to prove he had no intent to kill, in order to save him from a lengthy sentence in an adult prison.

S24E5 - Fishing for Love: How to Catch a Thai Bride 2020-02-17

A Storyville documentary that reveals the complex and surprising truth behind the relationships of four Thai-Danish married couples in a small fishing community in Denmark.

S24E6 - The Rise and Fall of a Porn Superstar 2020-02-24

When 23-year-old Israeli Jonathan Agassi arrived with a bang on the gay porn scene in the late 2000s, his rise to fame was stratospheric, revolutionising the industry. After a traumatic childhood growing up gay in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the man behind the performer claims that porn saved his life, but at a cost. The Rise and Fall of a Porn Superstar charts Agassi’s journey from prolific adult superstar to male escort, battling many demons. Filmed over seven years, this unflinching, emotional and at times funny and shocking film explores the deeper and more devastating reasons for Agassis self-destructive behaviour with sensitivity and compassion. The film also provides a rare and intimate insight into an industry that prioritises hedonism and fantasy above all, but at its core, this rollercoaster tale is a rare portrait of a damaged family and its lasting impact on those who are part of it.

S24E7 - The Accused: Damned or Devoted? 2020-03-02

In Pakistan, the blasphemy law prescribes a compulsory death sentence for disrespecting Prophet Muhammad and life imprisonment for desecrating the Qur’an. This Storyville documentary follows the stories and fates of four people accused of blasphemy. The most famous of them is Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who claims she was falsely accused by her Muslim co-workers after a disagreement. As the elections in Pakistan loom, the country is split between those who feel the law is being misused and want to change it, and those who believe it must be preserved at any cost. Its greatest advocate, cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, goes on a mission to do just this. As his campaign heats up, he gathers millions of supporters, sympathetic to his goal, and silences anyone attempting to change the law by condemning them to death.

S24E8 - College Behind Bars (1) 2020-06-15

A two-part Storyville documentary that tells the inspiring story of a group of men and women in the USA struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes. The Bard Prison Initiative is one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programmes in the United States. Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the films tackles a pressing issue - the failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for over two million Americans living behind bars. Through the stories of the students and their families, we discover many dropped out of high school before being incarcerated and never imagined they would go to college. During four years of study, however, they become accomplished scholars, beat the Harvard debating team, reckon with their pasts and discover how truly transformative education can be.

S24E9 - College Behind Bars (2) 2020-06-15

The debate team faces West Point and Harvard. Seniors complete their 100-paged thesis projects. Giovannie is sent to the Special Housing Unit and might not finish his project. Students at Taconic and Eastern receive their degrees at graduation.

S24E10 - Scandalous! The Tabloid that Changed America 2020-06-24

Documentary examining how the National Enquirer became the most infamous tabloid in America by churning out obscene stories that blur the lines between truth and fiction

S24E16 - The Mole: Infiltrating North Korea (2) 2020-10-13

A real-life undercover thriller about two ordinary men who embark on an outrageously dangerous ten-year mission to penetrate the worlds most secretive and brutal dictatorship: North Korea.

S24E17 - Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man 2020-10-26

Pepe the Frog started life in 2005 as a cute cartoon character in Boy’s Club, an American indie comic on Myspace. Today, he is known as an international hate symbol after being hijacked by the alt-right. Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man follows Pepe’s creator, artist Matt Furie, as he fights to bring back his lovable comic-book character from the dark forces who stole him. As the internet exploded, memes of the benign and chill frog-dude started sweeping the internet with lightning speed. Once his image found its way into controversial online community 4chan – the anonymous, anything-goes forum rife with misogyny and racism - there was no turning back. Pepe re-emerged from the darkest corner of the internet decorated with swastikas and spewing racist slurs. He was even caught up in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

S24E18 - The Night Notre-Dame Burned 2020-11-16

A Storyville documentary that tells the dramatic story of the devastating fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral on 15 April 2019. Blow by blow, it follows the team of brave firefighters - from the men and women on the frontline to the brigade chief - as they face the epic responsibility of saving one of the citys most emblematic and much–loved symbols from burning to the ground. As well as on-the-ground helmet cam and drone footage of the unfolding, dramatic events, the film-makers – the Naudet Brothers – who famously recorded the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 in New York – were themselves at the scene to record a moment in history in their own capital city.

S24E19 - The Hijacker Who Vanished: The Mystery of DB Cooper 2020-11-23

A mysterious fugitive, a hijacked airplane and a daring mid-air escape. This is the extraordinary, real-life tale of one of the greatest unsolved heists in American history and a case that has taunted the FBI for decades. This documentary brings the stories of the four possible suspects to life through candid testimony, archive footage and stylised drama. Each account is gripping and highly plausible. But who is telling the truth, who is lying and, ultimately, who is DB Cooper?

S24E20 - Locked In: Breaking the Silence 2020-11-30

An intimate, personal and surprisingly life-affirming story with a rare illness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, at its heart. Director Xavier Alford is finally confronting an illness he has been hiding from family, close friends and even himself. Locked In: Breaking the Silence follows him trying to make sense of the mysterious illness that has taken over his life in the only way he knows how - by making a film about it. What is it like to get a diagnosis of an incredibly rare condition that turns your whole world upside down? No-one can tell you why or how you got it, not even doctors. No-one knows how to beat it and there is no cure. In a time when much of the world is experiencing lockdown, Locked In offers, with unflinching positivity, a fresh perspective on coping mechanisms and the recovery from virus-related diseases.

S24E21 - Red Penguins: Murder, Money and Ice Hockey 2020-12-07

A tale of capitalism and opportunism run amok - complete with gangsters, strippers and live bears serving beer on a hockey rink in Moscow. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture that showed that anything was possible in the new Russia. Eccentric marketing whiz Steve Warshaw is sent to Russia and tasked with transforming the team into the greatest show in Moscow. He takes the viewer on a bizarre journey, highlighting a pivotal moment in US-Russia relations in a lawless era when oligarchs made their fortunes and multiple murders went unsolved.

S25E1 - Whirlybird: Live above LA 2021-02-15

Flying high above Los Angeles in a whirling news helicopter, Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur (then known as Bob) spent the 80s and 90s capturing the city’s most epic breaking news stories. Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, this daring husband-and-wife team invested in a helicopter and pilot’s licence, taking their cameras to the sky and changing broadcast news forever. The cameras not only captured the adrenaline of live news culture, but also the subsequent strain on their relationship and an identity struggle that eventually culminated in a major life transition for Zoey. A wholly unique take on the story of Los Angeles, told through stunning aerial footage and remarkable home videos, Whirlybird reframes many of the city’s pivotal moments of the 1990s, including the OJ Simpson pursuit and the 1992 riots.

S25E2 - Into the Storm: Surfing to Survive 2021-02-22

After finding a broken surfboard on his local beach, Jhonny Guerrero, a teenager from one of Peru’s toughest barrios, sets his heart on becoming a professional surfer. With his father in prison for armed robbery and a mother struggling to feed and clothe his younger brother, the sea is his escape. When Jhonny is spotted by Peru’s most successful surf champion, Sofia Mulanovich, he is taken under her wing and given a chance to succeed. Yet the pressure to do so weighs hard. Without his dad around, the lure of his friends and the risks of life in the barrios threaten to jeopardise everything he has worked for. When he’s injured outside a nightclub in a drive-by shooting, Jhonny is forced to decide once and for all which path to take.

S25E3 - The Hunt for Gaddafi's Billions 2021-03-01

This investigative Storyville documentary takes us inside the dark and mysterious world of spies, special forces and political insiders as they race to find Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s billions in a dangerous treasure hunt. In life, the Libyan leader ruled with an iron fist for 42 years and treated Libya’s wealth as his own. He died the richest man on the planet with a fortune of $150 billion. A dictatorial leader in life, the spell of Gaddafi’s money remained in place after his death, triggering a ruthless race to find his missing billions. Two journalists pick up the trail of a mysterious $12.5 billion in cash, flown out of Libya in the dead of night just months before Gaddafi’s demise. In South Africa, they discover an eyewitness who seems to know all about the money. His testimony changes everything, but before he can provide them with proof the story takes a sinister twist, the first of many.

S25E4 - Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne 2021-03-15

Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne tells the extraordinary story of the child abuse scandal that erupted on the idyllic island of Jersey in 2007. For a long time, the victims’ voices had remained unheard, but when widespread allegations of sexual abuse resurfaced in the late 2000s, Jersey’s then health minister Stuart Syvret spoke out about the scale of this historic child abuse and the damage done to the victims. Syvret’s words sparked a moment of reckoning for the small community, whose leaders were determined to protect the island’s reputation, home to a trillion dollars in offshore investment. This discreet offshore tax haven found itself in the middle of a major police investigation as the world’s media descended on the island, creating a media circus. In the midst of all this, the community became divided, with one group fearful that the scandal would drive investors away, and another demanding justice for the victims.

S25E5 - Undercover OAP: The Mole Agent 2021-03-22

A recently widowed 83-year-old goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home in a warm-hearted and surprising look at age, isolation and loneliness. Sergio is a Chilean spy - sort of. At least, he is offered the role of one after a casting session organised by Detective Romulo, a private investigator who needs a credible mole to infiltrate a retirement home. Romulo’s client, the concerned daughter of a resident, suspects her mother is being abused and hires him to find out what is really happening. However, Sergio is 83, not 007, and not an easy trainee when it comes to technology and spying techniques. But he is a keen student, looking for ways to distract himself after recently losing his wife. What could be a better distraction than some undercover spy action? While gathering intelligence, Sergio grows close to several residents and realises that the truth beneath the surface is not what anyone had suspected.

S25E6 - Collective: Unravelling a Scandal 2021-03-29

In 2015, a fire at a nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, leaves 27 dead and 180 injured. Soon afterwards, the burn victims recovering in hospital - from seemingly non-life-threatening injuries - begin dying too. A doctor at the heart of the story acts as whistleblower to a team of journalists, who in turn uncover outrageous corruption in Romania’s hospitals that goes all the way to the top. One revelation leads to another as the journalists begin to find fraud on a vast scale in the healthcare system. When a new health minister is appointed, the journalists follow his attempts, in the face of monumental obstacles, to reform a system riddled with corruption. Oscar-shortlisted and Bafta-longlisted for best documentary, Collective: Unravelling a Scandal examines the explosive impact of investigative journalism.

S25E7 - Petite Fille 2021-06-30

A sensitive and moving account of a year in the life of Sasha, a seven-year-old French girl assigned male at birth, and her familys fight for her acceptance. The film follows her parents as they come to terms with their daughters gender dysmorphia and reveals how Sasha is affected by the societal norms that make it far from easy for her to experience childhood in the same way as most of her peers.

S25E8 - Raising a School Shooter 2021-07-07

As the disaster of yet another school shooting hits, some parents are faced with a brutal fact: their child was the one pulling the trigger. In this powerful and sensitively told Storyville documentary, set in America, three parents share their personal stories. Jeff Williams is the father of Andy, who in 2001, at the age of 15, shot and killed two classmates and wounded 13 other students. Andy, 25 at the time of filming, is now serving life in prison. Clarence Elliot’s son Nicholas shot and killed his teacher and wounded another in 1988. He too is serving life in prison. Sue Klebold’s son Dylan was one of the two teenagers behind the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, one of the deadliest school shootings in history. Dylan ended the shooting by committing suicide.

S25E9 - Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight 2021-07-14

In December 2019, Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, charged with financial crimes, stunned the world by fleeing Japan in a box supposedly containing a priceless cello. It was an audacious Hollywood-worthy escape. With exclusive access to Ghosn himself, this gripping Storyville documentary charts the rise and fall of a superstar CEO from celebrated industry leader to wanted fugitive, exploring themes of corporate greed, ruthlessness, vanity and racism.

S25E10 - Hillsong Church: God Goes Viral 2021-07-21

This Storyville documentary details the story of celebrity favourite and globally trending megachurch Hillsong. In a relatively short time it has grown explosively, from small family church to international phenomenon. Gaining rare access to this highly-guarded organisation, director Nick Aldridge follows key church figures and a number of its followers, who tell personal stories of salvation and shed light on the scandals currently engulfing the church.

S2017E9 - Season 2017, Episode 9

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S2017E10 - Season 2017, Episode 10

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S2017E11 - Season 2017, Episode 11

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S2017E12 - Season 2017, Episode 12

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S2017E13 - Season 2017, Episode 13

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S2017E26 - Season 2017, Episode 26

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