Al Jazeera Documentaries
Season 2014
The Big Picture documents the full story behind the most pressing issues of our times. With a unique format, seamlessly mixing documentary filmmaking with informed panel discussion, we combine the best of strong, interview-based storytelling and incisive investigation to offer unparalleled analysis. The Big Picture sheds new light on the major issues of the present.
Where to Watch Season 2014
23 Episodes
- Killing the Count: White Buses
E1Killing the Count: White BusesThe story of Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden and how he rescued concentration camp inmates from Germany during WWII. In part one of Killing the Count , we explore the story of Count Folke Bernadotte’s efforts during World War II to help prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Bernadotte negotiated the release of more than 30,000 prisoners, one third of them Jews, from German concentration camps, in an extraordinary humanitarian effort which would come to be known as the 'White Buses campaign'. - Killing the Count: Mediation and Assassination
E2Killing the Count: Mediation and AssassinationThe story of Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden and how he rescued concentration camp inmates from Germany during WWII. In part two we look at the appointment of the Count, three years later, as the United Nation's first mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and his assassination four months later in September 1948 by Zionist extremists during an official visit to Jerusalem. Al Jazeera's documentary offers unique insight into his life and death, including accessing family and film archives never seen before. - World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode One: The ArabsE3
World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode One: The ArabsWorld War One was four years of bitter conflict from 1914 to 1918. Called 'The Great War' and the 'war to end all wars', it is often remembered for its grim and relentless trench warfare - with Europe seen as the main theatre of war. But this was a battle fought on many fronts. There is a story other than the mainstream European narrative. It is not told as often but was of huge importance during the war and of lasting significance afterwards. It is the story of the Arab troops who were forced to fight on both sides but whose contribution is often forgotten. They fought as conscripts for the European colonial powers occupying Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - and for the Ottomans on the side of Germany and the Central Powers. The post-war settlement would also shape the Middle East for the next hundred years. In this three-part series, Tunisian writer and broadcaster Malek Triki explores the events surrounding World War One and its legacy from an Arab perspective. - World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode Two: The OttomansE4
World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode Two: The OttomansEpisode two tells the story of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the fall Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the rise of the young Turk government in his place - and the history of the Ottoman-Germany relationship which led to the Treaty of Alliance between them in August 1914. The war saw the rise of feelings of nationalism among the Arabs of North Africa and the Levant. But the Ottoman response was to crack down hard on the Arabs of Greater Syria – and many leading intellectuals were executed, sentenced to long jail terms or forced into exile under the authoritarian governorship of Jamal Pasha. - World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode Three: The New Middle EastE5
World War One Through Arab Eyes - Episode Three: The New Middle EastEpisode three covers the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France and the way the two imperial powers carved up the former Ottoman Empire between them, regardless of the rights and demands of rights and nationalist movements across the Arab world. Despite the Egyptian Revolution and the Iraq Uprising, Arab subservience to Ottoman rule was replaced by a series of mandates across the region in which Britain and France seized control of the areas they prized most – to satisfy their own ambitions, interests and ultimately to gain access to region's valuable oil resources. The war gave birth to the Turkish nationalist movement which led to the founding of the modern Turkish state; and to Zionism, aided greatly by the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The Treaty of Versaillles, however, was referred to by one German-Ottoman military leader not as a peace but as 'a twenty year armistice' – and so it proved ... - The Girls of the Taliban
E6The Girls of the TalibanAn insight into a girls' school in Afghanistan which imposes an even stricter interpretation of Islam than the Taliban. Filmmakers: Najibullah Quraishi and Jamie Doran Kunduz in northern Afghanistan is the country's fifth largest city and home to more than 300,000 people. It was once a Taliban stronghold where women were deprived of their basic rights and education for girls was prohibited. Today, particularly in towns and cities, women can go outside without their husbands or fathers, they can work, and girls can attend school and even university. But with a new wave of privately run madrasas - or religious schools - being opened across the country, there is a growing feeling among women's rights groups that these freedoms are again under threat. There are now 1,300 unregistered madrasas in Afghanistan, where children are given only religious teaching. This is increasing fears among those involved in mainstream education. Arguably the most controversial of these madrasas is Ashraf-ul Madares in Kunduz, founded by two local senior clerics, where 6,000 girls study full time. The girls attend the madrasa solely to study the Quran and the teachings of the prophet Mohammed. They are taught by male teachers, who they are forbidden from meeting face-to-face, and full hijab must be worn. In The Girls of the Taliban, our cameras gain unprecedented access to film inside this madrasa, to meet with the girls and their families and to question the men behind it. - The Day Israel Attacked America
E17The Day Israel Attacked AmericaIn 1967, at the height of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship that was monitoring the conflict from the safety of international waters in the Mediterranean. - Orphans of the Sahara: Return
E19Orphans of the Sahara: ReturnIn late 2011, thousands of Tuareg workers and fighters, many of them mercenaries for slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, return to their Saharan homeland in Niger and Mali. Having lost access to the country that was their only source of livelihood, they find little more than crushing poverty, hunger and drought back home. Barely able to feed their children amidst total state neglect, the men launch a rebellion to found their own country. - Orphans of the Sahara: Rebellion
E20Orphans of the Sahara: RebellionEarly in 2012, as the massive Tuareg rebellion sweeps northern Mali, defeated Mali Army officers stage a coup d'etat in the south leading to the total collapse of government in the country. Tuareg rebels declare an independent state in the north called "Azawad", but al-Qaeda emerges from the Sahara to take over historic Timbuktu, and compete with the secular rebels for control of northern Mali. Isolated, illiterate and imploding from extreme poverty, Tuaregs provide the foot soldiers of both separatism and jihad - Orphans of the Sahara: Exile
E21Orphans of the Sahara: ExileThe final episode of this three-part series goes inside the French uranium mining zone in Niger - the most deprived nation on earth. Eighty percent of Niger's people are illiterate and 90 percent have no electricity. Yet under Tuareg land in the north of the country lies a massive and lucrative reserve of uranium which a French state-owned corporation has been mining - with fees to the Niger government - for over 40 years. - Killing The Messenger: The Deadly Cost Of News
E22Killing The Messenger: The Deadly Cost Of NewsKilling the Messenger : The Deadly Cost of News is a riveting documentary showing what censorship looks like close up, revealing the true human cost of news and what it takes to stay alive to get the story. Journalists reporting in Mexico, Russia and the conflict zones of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria relate stories of kidnapping, intimidation and beatings. Their vividly rendered tales about the loss of colleagues in the field and narrow escapes from death point to their dedication to the job, and the illusion of any real protection. These stories are heartfelt, captivating, shocking – and unforgettable. - Inside the US Federal Reserve
E23Inside the US Federal ReserveAn inside look at the US Federal Reserve. The most powerful - and least understood - financial institution on earth. Since 1971, the US dollar and the global financial system have been based solely on faith - faith in the guardian of that currency and of that system: The American Central Bank, the Federal Reserve.
