EU
An extract from a film we are making, about victims of police violence in France, has made it onto the front page of the Guardian.
I also captured the moment where a policeman is about to shoot Yellow Vest protesters with a rubber bullet gun, only to realise one of them is his friend. The video got viewed nearly one million times on twitter.
You can view the clip here.
Bellow is a selection of short films that I shot in Paris amongst the Yellow Vest revolt.
Pleased to announce that our film '44 Messages from Catalonia' commissioned by Field of Vision was published online via The Intercept. Directed by myself and Anna Giralt Gris and executively produced by Laura Poitras (Citizenfour).
'In 2017, the citizens of Catalonia voted to become an independent state. The referendum was then deemed illegal in Spain’s constitutional court. Through on-the-street conversations and actual WhatsApp chats, join the voters as they head to the polls and anxiously await the results.'
Links to film:
https://fieldofvision.org/44-messages-from-catalonia
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/28/44-messages-from-catalonia-referendum-whatsapp/
Experimental film from Athens 2012.
Another tragedy strikes London. This time through negligence and greed. A horrific fire has blitzed the whole of Grenfell estate in one of London's richest borough and over a hundred are feared dead. The people demand answers and talk politics on the streets.
From the archive: A short clip from a documentary we were never able to finish in early 2016. It shows the hardships of volunteers who run a self orginized refugee rescue camp (Platanos) on the Greek island of Lesvos. A group of friends from Athens set up the camp in the face of E.U inaction with regards to the refugee crisis on the island of Lesvos.
This film is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
Details here: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_GB
After Le Pen wins the first round of the presidential elections in France - heavy clashes erupt at May Day demonstrations in Paris.
As the press and politicians obsess themselves with the second round of voting in the French elections, with the choice between the two final contenders seeming meaningless for many, we follow those who were never offered a choice to begin with: France's forgotten refugee populations are now faced with grim future scenarios, dictated by either the neoliberal, or the outright fascist policies of the two remaining candidates.
'As France braces itself for the April 22 election, we visit the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis to talk with the locals there: to get a sense of their fears and hopes for what lies ahead.'
Glare at your TV screen, flick through your feeds, blink at your flashing updates and you will soon immerse yourself in what is meant to be an election like no other, an election that is supposed to determine the future of France and even Europe as we’ve known it so far.
Keep it at that, and you could easily believe the election is fought at the TV studios, between the four gladiators fighting for the soul of the Republic. But out in the city things are, as always, more complicated. In the days leading up to, and following the election, we ask urbanites about their fears and their hopes. As the country grips itself for the mother of all battles, we delve into the city’s streets and its metro carriages to brush out its psyche.
Ross Domoney & Antonis Vradis.
With the help of Daniel Murphy & Eric Amalraj