Paul Mitchell

In 1971, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE ceased to be part of Britain’s empire in the Middle East and became fully independent states. BBC News Persia and BBC Arabic collaborate in this gripping film, to uncover the secrets and shady deals that underpinned the decolonization process. From eye-witness accounts of a British-organised coup to Iran being left in control of disputed islands, it's a fascinating insight to a murky history.

History of the political events and the wars which broke the former state of Yugoslavia into several nations and caused an international political and humanitarian crisis. Using interviews with all the major participants and archive footage of the events, the series impressively performed the double feat of making understandable something which had appeared intractable and of producing 'immediate' history.

Despite the huge risks, two Russian film-makers have been filming the impact of the invasion of Ukraine in their country. Many thousands have fled. Those that have stayed have had to make a choice – oppose the war, support it, or stay silent.

Who is the new Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Gogol waiting to be discovered by the English-speaking world? Hosted by actor, author, and activist Stephen Fry, focuses on six authors whose vibrant, idiosyncratic work continues to gain traction with a global audience: Dmitry Bykov, Mariam Petrosyan, Zakhar Prilepin, Anna Starobinets, Vladimir Sorokin, and Lyudmila Ultiskaya. With contributions from their literary critics, publishers, and peers, the film features extensive interviews with each author.

"Malvinas: The Story That Could Have Been" is an original Discovery Channel production documentary in co-production with Cuatro Cabezas, from Argentina, and Wilton Films, from England. This documentary raises a new question: Could Argentina have won the Falklands War?

Vladimir Putin reemerges after eight years as President and another four years as Prime Minister of The Federation of Russia

Spetsnaz is the Russian for Special Forces. In this series this highly secretive organisation will be laid bare. Since the mid-seventies the unit has seen active service in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and the crime-ridden streets of Moscow. The films follows some of the different units on operations in Chechnya, Angola and Moscow, as well as their competitive selection process. This film delves inside the domestic counter-terrorism unit ALPHA GROUP, the KGB's foreign commando force, VYMPEL and the special police commandos, OMON. For the first time, our cameras record how new candidates to Spetsnaz units are put through their paces at Balashikha, the joint KGB/Interior Ministry training centre outside Moscow. We will get to know the men and women who aspire to make the transition from regular soldier / policeman to fully-fledged Spetsnaz.

The Death of Yugoslavia is a BAFTA-award winning BBC documentary series first broadcast in 1995. It covers the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. It is notable in its combination of never-before-seen archive footage interspersed with interviews of most of the main players in the conflict, including Slobodan Milošević, the then President of Serbia. Norma Percy won the 1996 BAFTA TV Award for 'Best Factual Series' for the documentary. However, it has been argued that it presents a potentially slightly biased point-of-view; for instance during the trial of Milošević before the ICTY in The Hague, Judge Bonomy called the nature of much of the commentary "tendentious" (partisan).