The Beeb have confirmed spring programming from the Storyville strand…
The corporation’s award-winning strand showcasing the very best in international documentaries today announced a new slate of films to be shown this Spring on BBC Four and iPlayer.
The Jackal Speaks: Inside the Mind of a Mass Murderer. The film offers unprecedented access to Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – better known as Carlos the Jackal. The mastermind of some of the most audacious and shocking attacks of the 20th century, he has never spoken for himself – until now.
From his childhood in Venezuela to his radicalisation, his operations across Europe and the Middle East, and his relationships with some of the era’s most infamous figures – from Colonel Gaddafi to Osama Bin Laden – Carlos speaks with unsettling clarity about his life, past actions and ideology.
In this rare and intimate portrait, recorded from the confines of a French high-security prison, where he is serving three life sentences, Carlos shares his story – unfiltered, unapologetic and deeply revealing. Tuesday 3 June, BBC Four and iPlayer.
Wedding Night. In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, boys and girls are raised almost entirely separately. While young men are educated not to look at or think about women, young women are taught to dress, think and behave with modesty. Marriages are arranged and when the time comes to marry, young couples will have had little, if any interaction with one another. On their wedding night, despite this being their first time alone together, the expectation is they will consummate their marriage. The forbidden becomes permitted, the impure pure, and modesty turns into full exposure.
Wedding Night paints a portrait of a society and a place: men and women speak bravely about their feelings during matchmaking, the engagement period, the wedding ceremony, their first night alone together, and the morning after. Tuesday 10 June, BBC Four and iPlayer.
The Contestant is the incredible true story of a man who lived for 15 months trapped inside a small room, naked, starving and alone… completely unaware that his life was being broadcast on national TV to over 17 million viewers a week.
The Contestant traces the experience of aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, nicknamed Nasubi, who in 1998 thought he was going to an audition when a Japanese TV producer enlisted him to take part in a challenge. He led Nasubi into a room, ordered him to strip naked and left him with a stack of magazines. Nasubi was told his task was to fill out contest coupons to win what he needed to survive—food, clothing, appliances, and so on—until he reached the prize goal of one million yen.
Although Nasubi could have left at any time, he stayed for months with a fierce determination to complete his mission. He was cut off from all contact with his family. What he didn’t realise was that his experiences were being broadcast to over 15 million people in a TV show called Denpa Shōnen: A Life in Prizes. Without his knowledge or consent, Nasubi became the most famous television personality in Japan. Tuesday 17 June, BBC Four and iPlayer.
The Wolves Always Come at Night. Shot in Mongolia this documentary tells the moving story of a young couple left devastated by a sandstorm which kills their entire flock of sheep. They are forced to move to the city and leave behind the land and rural lives they treasure. Born to generations of herders in Mongolia’s immense Gobi desert, young couple Davaa and Zaya are raising their four children as they were brought up: with an intimate connection to the land and the animals they share their lives with.
After an unexpectedly severe sandstorm leaves a devastating impact in its wake, with their entire herd wiped out, Davaa and Zaya must make a once-unthinkable decision that will irrevocably change their family’s lives and wrench them from the land they love so much. With universal themes of love and loss, death and survival the film gives us access to a hidden world and haunting images of Mongolian people and landscape.
In the city the family attempts to stay connected, all the while haunted by dreams of their herding past. The Wolves Always Come at Night blends documentary and fiction, with Davaa and Zaya themselves co-authoring their own story. Tuesday 24 June, BBC Four and iPlayer.
The Srebrenica Tape. Once a town with vibrant and integrated communities, Srebrenica, was torn apart by racial hatred. During the Bosnian war, it was cut off by Serb forces – its now mostly Muslim inhabitants surrounded by a hostile Army. Although the United Nations declared it a “safe area” – an enclave under its protection, it was far from safe when Bosnian Serb troops invaded in July 1995, murdering around eight thousand Muslim men and destroying every trace of their lives: their diaries, photos and letters.
One VHS survived the destruction. A unique document: a 4-hour film describing in emotional detail everyday life in the enclave and shot for a single viewer: Alisa, the then nine-year-old daughter of Sejfo, an avid amateur filmmaker who’d been trapped in Srebrenica until he was amongst those massacred there.
In The Srebrenica Tape, Alisa returns to the town of her birth to trace the footsteps of her father whose film sends her on a quest for clues about family and belonging, after her life is forever altered by one of modern Europe’s greatest crimes against humanity. Tuesday 1 July, BBC Four and iPlayer.
