Tag Archives: mexico

The Caravan

Born of desperation, a caravan of migrants left Honduras in October 2018 with the goal of walking to the US border with Mexico. Donald Trump repudiated these migrants as they traveled north through Central America, inflating the threat they posed to the United States declaring that they were drug dealers, criminals and Islamic terrorists.

The Caravan follows Yuri, eight months pregnant, as she walks from her home in Honduras towards the US border with her husband Mike and two-year old son Santi. Yuri is determined to give birth in the United States, guaranteeing her second child US citizenship. For her husband Mike, it is an opportunity to escape the endemic corruption, violence and poverty that plague Honduras and create a more secure future for his young family.

Like millions of Americans before them, the story of their journey is one of determination, faith, and a desire to build a new life in the promised land.

The Face of Anonymous

In the late Spring 2020—in the midst of coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and U.S. presidential nomination coverage—mainstream media outlets reported that the anarchic “hacktivist” network Anonymous was back after several years of relative quiet.  “We will be exposing your many crimes to the world,” a masked messenger told the Minneapolis police department in a clip that went viral, captivating millions of young viewers. “We are legion. Expect us.”

This pivotal moment is the perfect time to unveil The Face of Anonymous, a verité journey into the world of Commander X, one of the most iconic, divisive, and outspoken figures in the history of the international online movement. Now living in exile in Mexico, Commander X is ready to tell his own remarkable story and to reveal not just the How but the Why of Anon’s modus operandi.

Christopher Mark Doyon, aka Commander X, personifies the trajectory of American activism “from the streets, to the Internet, and then back to the streets,” says journalist and author David Kushner, one of several observers, compadres, and detractors who provide the context—and, sometimes, reality check—in which Commander X’s rough and righteous odyssey unfolds.

We are introduced to Commander X by Toronto novelist Ian Thornton who confesses that, at first, he couldn’t believe that the thin, craggy, talkative panhandler he’d befriended was a cyber warlord who’d been on the run from the FBI for six years. 

We soon learn Doyon is an old-school revolutionary. As a computer-smitten teeager, he fled a difficult childhood in rural Maine, moving Zelig-like through various activist hotspots and taking up hacking long before most of us had heard the term. He considers himself a freedom-fighter who’s helped shape the 21st century.

When PayPal, Mastercard, and VISA blocked people from using their services to support Wikileaks, Commander X led the charge to nuke their websites, costing millions and waking the FBI up to the power of Anonymous. When the Egyptian government cut off the Internet during the Arab Spring, Commander X was one of the lead hackers to turn it back on.

More recently, as Homeland investigates Russian election hacking, Commander X says he knows that the Russian hackers are the real deal—he’s seen them lurking in the digital world through which he continues to stride.

“I’ll see you all later tonight on Anonymous Bites Back,” says Doyon, closing his livestream from a town square in Mexico. “Look for that on Twitter. I’ll be on, expect me.”

Premiered at Hot Docs 2021

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:

The God Cells: A Fetal Stem Cell Journey

Stem Cell research and therapy have been growing at a rapid rate over the past fifteen years. Scientific advances coupled with consumer demand have proven that stem cell therapy is the wave of the future, and is poised to change the face of medicine.

The only hurdles have been religious and regulatory roadblocks slowing down the approval process for fetal stem cell therapy, arguably the most contested and controversial form of stem cell therapy to date, due to them being harvested from abortions.

The God Cells takes the audience on a journey with those who seek the life changing fetal stem cell therapy abroad, while avoiding the seemingly insurmountable roadblocks at home.

“The demand is real, patients with current unmet medical needs are desperate and require this therapy, but the current regulatory and industry hurdles are making it near impossible for us to do our job and get these important stem cell therapies to those people in need. Because of this, many scientific organizations are taking their technology abroad to appease patient demand, because they feel the current regulatory hurdles are insurmountable.”

Randal Mills, PhD, President and CEO for California Institute For Regenerative Medicine

Killing the Messenger: The Deadly Cost of News

In December 2006, the UN Security Council unanimously passed landmark Resolution 1738 which demanded greater safety for journalists in conflict areas and called for an end to impunity for their killers. Since the UN resolution was passed, over 600 news media workers have been killed, while more have been imprisoned or have simply disappeared while on the job. Countless others have been intimidated into self-censorship or have gone into exile.

If no story is worth a life, then why is murder the number one cause of journalists’ deaths worldwide?

Murder is the leading cause of work related deaths for journalists as censorship increases worldwide. In addition to those who have been killed, dozens have been attacked, kidnapped, or forced into exile in connection with their coverage of crime and corruption.

Journalists reporting from Mexico, Russia and the conflict zones of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria tell their personal stories of kidnapping, intimidation, and beatings. They’ve experienced the loss of colleagues in the field and have been close to death themselves. Their stories are heartfelt, captivating, engaging and at moments – unbelievable.

The targeting of Journalists worldwide affects anyone who believes that information and accurate reporting play a part in healthy societies.

Awards:

2015: The Edward R. Murrow Award, from The Radio Television Digital News Association, recognising excellence in electronic journalism.

2015: National Headliner Award, recognising journalistic merit in the communications industry.

Beautiful Faces

Beautiful Faces offers a compelling look at one of the world’s most remarkable hospitals, the disfigured young patients to whom it offers new lives, and the team of surgeons, physicians, and medical professionals who believe it’s the best place in the world to practice their unique, life-transforming craft.

You’ll come away convinced that health-care can be affordable, humane, and excellent, and that every one of us deserves a face with which we can bravely meet the world.

Hospital General Gea Gonzalez, located in Mexico City’s frenetic Tlalpan district, is surrounded by a high metal-barred fence, its entrances guarded by policemen carrying automatic weapons. On any day, literally thousands of impoverished Mexicans wait patiently for services, often for many hours, yet the hospital’s plastic and reconstructive surgery unit.

It is a hospital that ably demonstrates that even the very poor can receive excellent medical care at costs that don’t bankrupt health-care systems and that everyone can be offered the basic human right of a normal face.

Beautiful Faces interweaves the stories of patients and their families who come to the reconstructive plastic surgery unit at Hospital Gea Gonzalez seeking physical transformations that will renew their own and their loved ones lives with the personal stories of the enormously talented medical professionals whose work is both their passion and their gift to humankind.

The film chronicles the remarkable community of caregivers and care-receivers who come together on the hospital’s fascinating fourth floor, and who profoundly influence each others lives. From Dr. Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, the beloved patriarch whose demands for excellence from his subordinates remain exacting, to four-year-old Sebastián Castillo, whose irrepressible enthusiasm for life helps him cope remarkably with the challenges of Crouzon’s syndrome, Beautiful Faces is a mosaic of stories–the richly visual tales of people who meet in a singular place and who collectively understand that in valuing individual lives and striving to make them better, we value all of humanity.

Beautiful Faces ultimately demonstrates that, in many ways, the distinction between patients and caregivers is only an illusory one, and that much more than cutting, sawing, and sewing, the essential task of the hospital is the freeing of the human spirit. It is work that allows doctors and patients alike to look comfortably in the mirror and understand that they are vitally important members of the human family.

Beyond Pollution

A thought provoking, in-depth look at the causes and effects of the most devastating man made environmental disaster America has ever experienced.

Beyond Pollution is a firsthand investigation into BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Traveling thousands of miles across the Gulf coast interviewing environmental experts, government officials, fisherman & distributors, scientists, drilling engineers, and key BP contractors, the film reveals, in depth the immediate and long term environmental, economic, and health impacts the tragedy is having on the local communities.

In the context of BP’s record on safety and the environment, the oil spill now seems sadly inevitable, so why weren’t measures put in place to avoid the disaster that will be felt for generations to come? How were they able to play down the consequences and avoid criminal responsibility, and how did their response further devestate those communities affected?

Beyond Pollution is an exhaustively researched and elegantly executed expose on an avoidable tragedy that began with an oil spill but had far-reaching, and unreported repercussions, uncovering what really happened, why, and who really benefited