Keyword Press Freedom

Doaa el-Adl, the first woman to be awarded the esteemed Journalistic Distinction in Caricature, serves as a catalyst for transformation within the predominantly male-dominated realm of Egyptian political cartoonists. Challenging patriarchal norms, she routinely confronts censorship, harassment, and even threats to her life. In a remarkable fusion of documentary, cartoons, and animation, Egyptian director Nada Riyadh breathes life into el-Adl's most renowned works. This dynamic and fearless presentation delves into the issue of violence against women, stretching the boundaries of freedom of speech in a society often characterized by restrictions. Through her exceptional talent, el-Adl not only champions women's rights but also serves as an inspiration for societal change.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of John Peter Zenger, who in Colonial New York was tried for sedition based on what he printed in his newspaper.

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

The film is set in 1521 Antwerp, in a Europe ravaged by religious wars, and during the early years of the Reformation. It tells the story of the twelve year old, Falko Voeten – a printer’s son. When Falko’s father, Klaas Voeten, a printer of forbidden literature, is caught by the Inquisition for printing a letter written by Maarten Luther; Falko is unwittingly propelled into helping his father and into searching for the letter. Threatened by the Inquisition but aided by Marieke, a Catholic orphan girl from the underground sewers, Falko is faced with a race against time if he is to save his father from being executed for heresy.

A married couple retreats to a luxury, high-tech, fully automated house on a remote island. The house AI system goes rogue and turns against them.

In 2008, Natasha, a newly rich woman, decides to open an independent TV station in Russia and builds an open-minded team of outcasts. By 2020, Natasha has lost everything to Russia's war between Propaganda and Truth.

The story of a Kurdish newspaper whose journalists are under the constant threat of being abducted and killed by the state security forces.

This film explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the elitist theory of democracy and the relationship between war, propaganda and class. Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (Project Censored), John Stauber (PR Watch), Christopher Simpson (The Science of Coercion) and others. A deep, richly illustrated study of the nature and history of propaganda, featuring some of the world’s most insightful critics, Psywar exposes the propaganda system, providing crucial background and insight into the control of information and thought.

This MGM Passing Parade series short presents how separate events led to the creation of three provisions - freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and prohibition of the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments - in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights.

Belgrade, 2022: A photojournalist is threatened by right-wing extremist groups in her Serbian home and flees to Germany with her daughter. But then she also experiences increasing strong threats and attacks in her new home.

A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.

A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances.

The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son. Arguably the world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a figure pretty much everybody has an opinion about; perhaps more importantly, he serves as the emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes. For his family members who face the prospect of losing him forever to the abyss of the US justice system, however, this David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with his health declining in a British maximum-security prison and American government prosecutors pulling out all the stops to extradite him, the clock is ticking.

Ed Gerlock, Romeo Mariano, and DJ De Guzman shares their experience in documenting a range of events in the decades of media censorship.

Tommy Robinson goes on the offensive by documenting how his own “hit piece” on his character was being constructed by the taxpayer-funded BBC for their popular investigative news special “Panorama.” In the film he manages to capture footage of the blackmailing of his former employees to invent stories, along with an organization—known as “Hope not Hate”—on set with the BBC, intimidating ex-employees of Robinson during interviews. The host of “Panorama” at the time of filming is caught on camera casually using racist and homophobic slurs during a £220 champagne lunch with the same ex-employee they had planned to coach for a fake interview in which the BBC would possibly edit in which to make it appear as, “a gender, a sexual thing against Tommy Robinson,” according to the host. Within 24 hours of releasing the film, social media giant Facebook made a public statement of their own and removed Tommy Robinson’s accounts permanently.

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

Matthew Leung Ming-hong had been working as a breaking-news reporter for six years in Hong Kong but recently emigrated to the United Kingdom because of concerns about growing restrictions on journalists working in the city. Three Hong Kong media outlets popular with the opposition have folded in just six months, following the introduction of a controversial national security law in Hong Kong on June 30, 2020, raising fears about the future of press freedom in the city. The 29-year-old is starting a new life in Britain’s northern city of Manchester and plans to eventually resume his journalism career in Europe.

On the 10th anniversary of his band Rall Tide’s debut album, artist Peter Kotas takes you on a flowering multimedia tour of Detroit musicians trying to survive in a world where you can’t even enjoy a baseball game without supporting The Bay of Pigs. Along the way he shows you how the band’s abrupt break-up led to his career as a political journalist peeking behind the curtains of Kansas to find diplomatic wizard Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA Director and Secretary of State, wears no clothes. Iowa Writer’s Workshop hero Kurt Vonnegut (or some entity that knows all about his life) hosts this documentary as the ideal human from his 1985 novel Galapagos: a penguin with flippers unable to pull triggers or press buttons to bomb and kill people.

Listening Post is Al Jazeera English's weekly media review show. It casts a critical eye over not just what gets reported, but how it's reported - covering the coverage of the news & analyzing global events through the prism of the media.

Explore the process and progress of The New York Times and its journalists in covering the Trump administration. Through extraordinary access, on-the-scene filmmaking, and exclusive sit-down interviews, this documentary series illuminates critical issues facing journalism today – including the challenge to the bedrock concept of truth, the changing role of the media, and the Times’ response to President Trump’s war of words.