Tag Archives: mafia

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

At the Gates of Hell (series)

At the Gates of Hell takes us into the most deadly parts of the world where escaping abuse, exploitation, extortion and even death is a daily battle. This series takes us deep into hidden worlds, covering: child exploitation by gangs in Colombia, femicide in Mexico, business in the shadow of the Mafia in Napoli, life as a homosexual in Russia, environmentalists under fire in the Amazon, the abandoned communities of Detroit and beyond.

Episode 1 – Broken Children – Colombia

Childhood is not a happy time in Colombia, it can mean living in constant threat of coerced into gangs or caught in the cross-fire. In the forgotten barrios of Bogotá and Medellín, children find themselves hired as killers or forced into prostitution before they have left their teens. We give voice to this lost generation.

Episode 2 – Searching for Camorra – Napoli, Italy

Napoli has for hundreds of years been in the hands of a handful of criminal families. To run a business here is to pay ever increasing extortion demands or face destruction, arson or murder. We visit the communities – and the gang members – to understand this violent eco-system.

Episode 3 – Women Without a Name – Mexico

Between Jan 2012 and June 2016 –  9,581 women were violently murdered in Mexico, but just 1,887 were categorised as Femicides. Mexican authorities are unwilling to face the rising tide of violence against woman, and domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution remain hidden from public view and public discourse. We meet with the victims familiers, survivors and perpetrators and analyze, together with anthropologists, why there is so much machismo and misogyny in the Mexican culture.

Episode 4 – Trapped in Homophobia – Russia

After years of slow but steady progress, the rights of homosexuals in Russia took a giant step backwards with the passing of the Anti-Propaganda law – effectively forcing the gay population of Russia to live in the shadows and in shame. Lacking the basic right of living openly, as well as facing legal discrimination in work and study – Russia’s LGBT are also now facing a growing wave of violence. We meet those who are fighting for their rights, those responsible for the swell of homophobia and the many ordinary gay citizens for whom the future is so bleak that choose to stay in the closet or leave.

Episode 5 – (De)construction – Detroit, USA

Detroit was the most promising city in the USA, the birthplace of Fordism and mass credit and a bedrock of reinforced concrete and fair salaries. Racial riots, the gutting of the car industry and the crisis drained the city, from a high of nearly 2 million inhabitants to a waking nightmare for the 700K remaining. We meet with those left behind – many of them low income African-American, condemned to live in delinquency, poverty and abandonment.

Episode 6 – Mara’s War Tax – Honduras

Every year, dozens of public transport and taxi drivers are murdered in Honduras – the worlds most dangerous country – turning the entire sector into struggle for survival. The ‘war tax’ is a toll that gangs demand from drivers to work in their territory. Whoever refuses to pay it, will pay it with his life or that of a close relative´s. Who would work in this terrifying business and at what cost?

Episode 7 – On the Right Side of the Wall – Lima, Peru

There is a 10km wall in Lima that separates the richest neighbourhood in the city from the poorest. For some it is known as the ‘wall of shame’, for others its essential to security. What are the root causes of this massive monument to inequality, how is it that a low income person on one side of the wall is paying twice what their rich neighbour is, on the other side of the wall, for a glass of water?

Episode 8 – Threatened – Amazon, Brazil

In parts of the Amazon, protecting your ancestral land from illegal loggers, and oil and gold prospectors, can be a death sentence. Shady businesses from far away, not content with destroying the environment and stealing the resources of indigenous communities are now engaged in a violence and intimidation. We meet with the environmental heroes, who are threatened daily, and those who will do anything to get their hands on these resources – including a hit man who has murdered over 20 activists.

 

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.