Jirga

In the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, a widowed father expects his only son to follow in his footsteps. Darra Adam Khel is home to the ethnic Pashtuns. The local industry is the handcrafting of firearms. It has been this way since long before the war on terror. Eleven-year-old Niaz Afridi works with his father learning how to make and test weapons just as Sher Alam learnt from his father before him. But Niaz doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wants to go to school.

Paramedico is an observational documentary following emergency ambulance workers in four diverse locations Mexico, Pakistan, Venice and Hawaii. The camp, military style of Pakistans rescue teams, with their marching and theatrical disaster exercises are a world away from the relaxed beachside work of the Hawaiians who stop for ice-cream at every turn. On the other side of the globe, above the romantic canals of Venice, ambulance doctors and nurses watch a generation of old Venetians quietly die as tourists pass below. Meanwhile, Mexican paramedics put their mind off the terror of the countrys drug war with their on-station games and madcap antics.