Pani: Women, Drugs and Kathmandu

From current events but with cinematic, intimate, and innovative storytelling, this series of short docs portrays the unprecedented transformation the world is undergoing. We focus on conflicts and stories that are at a point of paradigm shift, at a moment when the decisions that are made now can affect humanity and the planet.

In February 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed a bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to face trial in mainland China. The controversial bill sparked immediate outrage over widespread fear of arbitrary detention and politically motivated trials that would decimate Hong Kong’s autonomy under ‘one country, two systems.’ Protests escalated into epic pro-democracy demonstrations, in part led by young people connected via social media. COCKROACH, filmed during the height of the protests, captures the extraordinary intensity of an unprecedented era in Hong Kong’s history.

For more than 100 years, thousands of Indigenous children died while in Canada’s residential school system. Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones survived, but he, like many others, experienced years of beatings and sexual abuse. The scandal has finally brought the Indigenous rights struggle into focus, none more so than at Fairy Creek, an area of forest on First Nations land that protesters are desperately trying to prevent from falling into the hands of logging companies.

Is it possible to make a peaceful revolt in the 21st century? Students in Serbia, with the support of the population, have been trying for more than ten months. But repression and police violence in the State keep increasing. As predicted by Filip Balunovic, professor of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade, "the president has used all the tactics unimaginable, but he will have no problem resorting to violence." Is Serbia at a point of no return?