Tag Archives: drugs

Silver’s Uprising

In March of 2019, Amos Dov Silver was arrested at a Kiev hotel, following a global sting operation. Silver, the creator of the drug-dealing mobile app “Telegrass”, has since been accused by the Isreali government of running a crime organization, but for thousands of Israelis Silver is a fearless folk hero, intent on exposing a corrupt and broken system.

Through exclusive footage of Silver, his family and his partners’ investigations, as well as secretly filmed footage of Silver in the Ukrainian prison, a polarizing portrayal of this man emerges: is he a champion of the people, or a lost soul corrupted by power?

“A great film with a clear aesthetic vision about a disturbed country”
Haaretz
“One of the best documentaries I’ve seen in recent years”
Geekonomics

Young & Afraid

In 2017 Petter (24) decides to end his life, but at the very last moment, is stopped by the police. His best friend and fellow film student Sverre is determined to help and suggests they make a film to keep Petter busy and focused on getting better. Equipped with a camera, they search the streets of Oslo to find out how other troubled souls deal with their lives.

With a naïve and spontaneous approach, they end up in dramatic and unpredictable situations. They meet Monica, whose past has led her to self-injurious behaviour. Oliver and Cornelia, both escaping their demons with alcohol and drugs, and Emma, who is transsexual, lesbian, and proud of who she is. They also meet Miriam, who becomes Petter’s girlfriend.

By getting to know their destructive patterns, Petter becomes aware of his own. By facing their problems, he sets off on a bumpy therapeutic journey, that eventually brings light into his darkness.

Young & Afraid is an authentic and raw documentary about choosing to live.

Medicating Normal

Millions of people worldwide are physically dependent on commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs. While these drugs can provide effective short-term relief, pharmaceutical companies have hidden -from both doctors and patients- their dangerous side effects, addictive nature and long-term harm.

Combining cinema verité and investigative journalism, Medicating Normal follows the stories of those whose lives have been torn apart by the very medications they believed would help them. Expert testimony and undercover footage reveal a systemically corrupt industry.

Medicating Normal is the untold story of the disastrous consequences that can occur when profit-driven medicine intersects with human beings in distress.

Ten Dollar Death Trip: Inside The Fentanyl Crisis

With the world fighting a deadly pandemic, another heartbreaking public health crisis is raging in North America.  A new synthetic drug is killing more than gun crime, homicide and car accidents combined.

100 times stronger than heroin, the deadly opioid fentanyl is cheap, potent and small enough to send in the post. These market forces have seen it replacing the heroin supply, spreading unprecedented death, destruction and misery. And, like all epidemics, it is spreading fast.

The death toll has disproportionately affected the homeless and marginalised. And now, due to its strength and low cost, the drug is also starting to appear in party drugs, such as cocaine and cannabis – with fatal results.

We travel to Vancouver, the epicentre of the fentanyl epidemic to meet with health care workers, activists, fentanyl dealers and people who use it.

We learn of radical initiatives to fight back against a toxic drug supply and ask what the world should expect if the fentanyl epidemic spreads outside of North America.

The Dark Web (series)

There’s a dark side to the internet, and you probably don’t even know it exists. Look behind the positive veneer of social media, communication apps and platforms that have made our lives easier and more connected, and you’ll find criminals using the same apps and platforms to run illicit and dangerous activities.

Sextortion syndicates target victims globally through social media. Illegal wildlife trades thrive on social consumer marketplaces. Digital black markets operate anonymously using software designed for press privacy and freedom to sell drugs. Secret child pornography rings run rampant in secret, closed groups and private chats.

This explosive new series lifts the lid on how criminal organisations are thriving in this new digital frontier.


Episode One – The Queen of Sextortion

Sextortion was invented by one woman in the Philippines, Maria Caparas. She turned the idea of making friends online and recording explicit video chats into a profitable blackmail and extortion scam that could not exist without social media. She now runs a mini empire seemingly beyond the reach of authorities, that has led to many suicides.

Episode Two – Wildlife Clickbait

They may look like ordinary posts of exotic pets for sale on social media. But they are feeding a growing trade in illegal and endangered animals in Malaysia and beyond. This criminal industry is worth billions and is jeopardising attempts to protect endangered species.

Episode Three – Black Market Boom

Drugs, guns, counterfeit documents and much more are sold on dark web marketplaces that run on anonymous browsers and using cryptocurrency. AlphaBay was the biggest marketplace, transacting over US$800,000 in a day enabling its founder to live a luxury lifestyle in anonymity, until international law enforcement caught up with him.

Episode Four – The Candyman

It was one of 640 million closed groups on Facebook. Hiding behind the anonymity, the creator of child pornography group Loli Candy and its 7,000 members hid their activities on Facebook and Whatsapp – the dissemination of horrifying images of abuse. While they were eventually bought to justice many more thrive.

Ayahuasca: Expansion of Consciousness

Ayhuasca: Expansion of Consciousness, tells the story of Ayahuasca, from its emergence in the Amazonian Forest, to its popularity with the Santo Daime religion, and on to its arrival in urban centres. 

Combining scientific, religious and anthropological perspectives on the use of Ayahuasca in modern society, and in parallel with the director Fausto Noro’s own healing process, Ayhuasca: Expansion of Consciousness provides for the first time, a holistic, yet balanced view of this controversial subject.

Bad Hombres

Bad Hombres explores the most heavily used migration route on Earth. Journalist Stef Biemans traveled between Guatemala and the US to see what the so-called ‘bad hombres’ hope to find in the USA.
Who are the people who inspired the building of a wall on the Mexican border?

“Biemans stays calm at all times and defers to his subjects. The result is rich and integral television, sometimes moving and always captivating”

De Volkskrant

Also available as a five part series:

Episode One:

Episode Two:

Episode Three:

Episode Four:

Episode Five:

Twilight of the Yakuza

The Yakuza, Japan’s organised crime syndicates, are a dying breed. Their members are aging and the government of Japan has launched a large-scale crackdown on them to eradicate them once and for all. But who are the Yakuza? The cancer of a nation or a necessary evil in a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the industrialised world?

Undoubtedly the Yakuza are involved in crimes including extortion, fraud, murder, drugs & gambling. However, Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the industrialised world, with crimes related to drugs -officially against the Yakuza code of honour- or street gangs strikingly low, a fact that many contribute to the presence of the Yakuza. Deeply rooted in Japanese society, they are seen as a necessary evil and ‘problem solvers’. They have been around since the 1700s and were said to protect the weak from the strong, following a rigorous code of honour. Several clans even contributed aid for the victims of the recent earthquake and Tsunami, all reasons why the public perception of the Yakuza in Japan is not solely a negative one.

Unlike the Mafia, the Yakuza is a legal, public group making them relatively easy to check on. Their offices are public, their members registered by the police and Yakuza members went as far as freely admitting their guilt in cases of crime investigations, as a part of their code of honour. In reaction to strict government measures against them, the Yakuza has ceased all cooperation with the law. As the police concentrate their resources on the Yakuza, many criminals simply don’t register with clans anymore and start operating underground, evading the grasp of police. A clear trend is emerging towards a new structure of organised crime in Japan, resulting in a steep decrease in the numbers of the traditional Yakuza while the underground is soaring – including foreign Russian and Chinese mafia’s.

This documentary deals with the struggle of the Yakuza for its survival and the restructuring of the organized crime scene in Japan. Furthermore, unprecedented access to the secret world of the Yakuza gives you an insight on who the Yakuza really are: criminals, outcasts, but also family men and a part of Japanese society.

Streets of Plenty

Vancouver has been voted the best city in the world to live in but it has a dark secret – the downtown east side ghetto. With the roughest neighbourhood and the highest crime rate in North America living conditions here are on a par with third world countries, and homelessness and drug-addiction are rife. And yet provisions for those in need couldn’t be better.

Misha Kleider, in an effort to find out what is going wrong, goes under cover for a month in December leaving behind his apartment, his friends and his wallet to see first-hand what life on the streets is really like. Starting with nothing but his underwear he journeys through the institutions and services available to the homeless and makes some startling revelations along the way. The experience upsets any pre-conceived notions about how to “fix” the problem and what begins as a social experiment in the vein of Orwell’s’ Down and Out in Paris and London takes a darker turn as Misha connects with the real residents of the downtown east side ghetto; the crack addicts, the junkies, the dealers and the diseased. As Misha becomes more involved in this world, the film speeds towards a shocking finale that will leave you breathless and in awe.

Streets of Plenty is a fearless, fast paced and entertaining exploration of what it means to live on the streets of North America’s worst ghetto.


Dennis Rodman is on a mission. After forging an unlikely friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he wants to improve relations between North Korea and the US by staging a historic basketball game between the two countries. But the North Korean team isn’t the only opposition he’ll face… Condemned by the NBA and The Whitehouse, and hounded every step of the way by the press, can Dennis keep it together and make the game happen? Or will it go up in a mushroom cloud of smoke? For the first time, discover the true story of what happened when Dennis Rodman took a team of former-NBA players to North Korea and staged the most controversial game of basketball the world has never seen.