Sunday, 10th November
16:15 - 18:15
107 Kingsland High Street
London
E8 2PB
Director: John La Raw
In the Kachin State of Myanmar, more than half of the youth is addict on opium, sold with the help of a corrupted police. Citizens decide to fight with the dealers by themselves through a militia, but they will face not only drug dealers armed like an army, but also opium field owners or the government that doesn’t care about the Kachin state, since it’s a Catholic area in a Buddhist country.
52 minutes
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Director Chris Norman
Two individuals detail their experiences navigating the opiate landscape which led them to Methadone and their subsequent difficulties with the drug that replaced one addiction with another.
10 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here
Tuesday, 12th November
19:30 - 21:30
Dugard Way
London
SE11 4TH
Director: Catherine Brookes
In El Salvador, a small coastal community fights to protect the sea turtles from poachers. A dedicated all-female team provides hope, but will their unique conservation initiative succeed?
15 minutes
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Director: Akanksha Sood Singh
In 2003, scientists discovered the Purple Frog, an enigmatic species that is endemic to India. Living underground for most of the year, it emerges to breed only when the monsoon arrives. So how can a creature so small explain 130 million years of evolution?
23 minutes
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Director: Kaelyn S Maehara
The fishing village of Baguran Jalpai in north-east India is one of many similar fighting for their very existence. India’s draft legislation will open India’s entire coastline to industry and development, leaving the 170 million people who live mostly by traditional fishing means, out of options.
12 minutes
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Director: Jeremy Williams
Along British Columbia's Fraser River, its most important salmon watershed, massive dams are holding back mine waste mixed with water. Some mines are even permitted to release effluent directly into waterways. It's time to ban risky tailings ponds and clean up the mining industry.
6 minutes
Director: Kristin Gates and Jeremy Là Zelle
While tracking the world’s longest land mammal migration through arctic Alaska and Canada, scientists discover an incredible ecosystem protected by the Gwich’in Nation for more than 25,000 years, but now under threat by mining companies.
25 minutes
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Director: Marvin del Cid
‘SnotBot’ is a project of OCEAN ALLIANCE which uses drones to capture the whales’ blows and studying the biological matter it contains.
5 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here.
Sunday, 17th November
16:00 - 18:00
107 Kingsland High Street
London
E8 2PB
Director: Pierre Haski Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, never ceased to demand a democratic China. He paid the highest price, dying in captivity in July 2017.
In spring 1989, when students occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese literature scholar and outstanding speaker, became one of the movement's mentors. Shortly before the massacre began, on the night of June 3-4, he begged the youth to evacuate the square and went on hunger strike to request the authorities to avoid violence. Immediately arrested, he was sent to a re-education camp. Upon his release, a year and a half later, he chose to remain in China and resist from within, while many of his compatriots opted for exile. Arrested in 2008, for co-signing Charter 08, a program for a democratic transition in China, he was sentenced to eleven years in prison for subverting state power. Still imprisoned in 2010, he could not personally receive the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him and died in captivity seven years later, in July 2017.
Today, the Chinese regime is making every effort to ensure that Liu Xiaobo's name is forgotten but in 2008, he agreed to a long interview. This serves to frame Pierre Haski’s fascinating portrait of a man who, all his life, fought for his convictions and paid the high price.
59 minutes
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Director: Ansiqi Li
This observational documentary tells the story of a Chinese Russian ranger whose job and mission is to guard the forest on the frontier between China and Kazakhstan.
16 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here
Tuesday, 19th November
19:00 - 21:00
Dugard Way
London
SE11 4TH
Director: Orlando von Einsiedel
This National Geographic film follows daily life in the world’s largest refugee camp where daily people of all ages get lost. The film follows Kamal Hussein, a Rohingya refugee, who has dedicated his life to reuniting children with their parents. Missing children are his mission.
22 minutes
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Director: Patrick Bodenham
The personal story of a family of Rohingya refugees from persecution in Myanmar into the world's newest and largest refugee camp.
18 minutes
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Director: Shahryar Ahadi
On the abandoned baseball field of the 2004 Olympic Games, 500 refugees live in UNCHR tents. While populist parties speak worldwide of the downfall of Western civilization, the Christian West, mass rape, terrorism or exploitation of their social systems, the refugees live in this abandoned stadium until they get their papers. One of these, a 78-year old English teacher from Afghanistan manages to live with dignity in his own way.
15 minutes
AND the world premiere of
Director: Giulia Gandini
Giulia Gandini won the 2018 #TweetaPitch competition organised by the We The Peoples film festival. She used her £500 bursary to make a film about the life of homeless people. After rebuffs by several, she met Lily Blackham, homeless for a year and a half. Giulia gave her a phone for three days to tell her story. Giulia received help also from BFI Future Film. She will speak about her films after the screening.
9 minutes
Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here.
Wednesday, 20th November
19:00 - 21:00
270 Mare Street
London
E8 1HE
Directors: Anne Paq and Haidi Motola
In the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, local cameraman and veteran activist, Bilal Tamimi, has for over a decade, stubbornly documented the highs and lows of his village's struggle for freedom and justice, as well as its toll on its residents and his own family. Like the rest of the village's residents, he has braved beatings, intimidation, detention, injury and even the killing of three protesters, hoping to bring change in the village in its struggle against Israeli occupation.
10 minutes
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Director: Thea Elisabeth
Haavet Human rights activist Sajid Christopher Paul of Human Friends Organisation is fighting for freedom of faith and belief for all in Pakistan. The stakes are high. Many have been killed because they stood against the extremists and challenged the country´s blasphemy laws. The work is dangerous but Sajid and colleagues are willing to risk their lives and sacrifice comfort to help the Christians and other persecuted minorities in Pakistan. He meets the family of Asia Bibi who must live in hiding, falsely accused of blasphemy and a madrassa leader who shares his views on the blasphemy laws.
35 minutes
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Director: Stanislav Schubert
Environmental activist Julia Kolevatova devoted her life to saving the Izdrevaya River in Siberia. She drew attention to its ecological challenges, being littered with rubbish, and losing birch forests. When regional authorities decided to build a garbage processing plant and a solid waste landfill near the Izdrevaya River, together with local people actively opposed this, she arranged protest actions, and as a result, the construction was suspended…but what then?
26 minutes
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Director: Maud Webster
Greta Thunberg's weekly protests in Sweden led hundreds of school-aged young people to walk out of lessons, urging governments worldwide to fulfil their pledges on the environment.
3 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here.
Thursday, 21st November
19:00 - 21:00
25 Red Lion Square
London
WC1R 4RL
Director: Álvaro Orús
On 7 July 2017, 122 countries voted in favour of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Countries that don’t have nuclear weapons but live under their threat voted for a ban. Without the knowledge of most of their citizens, the governments of the world’s nuclear powers didn’t vote, and yet the ban went ahead. Something new is happening. This film about efforts to bring a nuclear weapon ban treaty into international law and the role of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, is told through the voices of leading activists from several different organizations and countries and the president of the negotiating conference. It takes the viewer through a brief history of the bomb and the anti-nuclear activism that has pushed to eliminate them ever since their invention. It moves into a consideration of the humanitarian initiative that successfully challenged the dominant security narrative and the historic steps taken since 2010 to turn the treaty from a dream into a reality. Also, it shows what can be done by anyone to help bring the treaty into force and to stigmatise nuclear weapons until they are finally eradicated. Feel inspired!
56 minutes
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Director: Kevin Hourigan
This animated short relates the history of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the US role in this calamity.
7 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here.
Tuesday, 26th November
19:00 - 21:00
12 Balham Station Road
London
SW12 9SG
Director: Lubna Yusuf
Filmed over a span of eight years in the Indian village of Bihar, Maida explores the societal norms of dowry, child marriage and the prevalent practice of school dropouts after the onset of menstruation. The film traces the dreams of a young schoolgirl and through her stories and Bhojpuri folk songs, she breaks the myth of women empowerment, as we know it. Such incidents go unreported for lack of courage to face societal consequences.
19 minutes
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Director: KM Taj-Biul Hasan
Boat schools are school bus, schoolhouse, training hub, library and medical centre. Serving villages to village in north-east Bangladesh, they are the answer to adverse climate conditions in marshlands inundated by water 8 months a year. Traveling on boat is the only means of transportation for communication.
14 minutes
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Director: Tom Heinemann
They are devoted to journalism but are under an immense pressure by governments, companies and criminals. They use freedom of expression to fight corruption and injustices. They reveal what those in power want’s to hide. They face torture, jail and even death, but still they keep on fighting. From three different countries - on different continents – with one thing in common: They have Courage – because Journalism is not a crime.
43 minutes
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Director: Raju Hittalamani
The film captures the situation of migrant laborers who end up as bonded laborers in the brick kilns of Punjab, India.
17 minutes
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Tickets £5 and free: To book your tickets click here.
Festival Aims
BFI Youth Day 2019
Festival History
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