Season 2021

Flying high above Los Angeles in a whirling news helicopter, Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur (then known as Bob) spent the 80s and 90s capturing the city’s most epic breaking news stories. Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, this daring husband-and-wife team invested in a helicopter and pilot’s licence, taking their cameras to the sky and changing broadcast news forever. The cameras not only captured the adrenaline of live news culture, but also the subsequent strain on their relationship and an identity struggle that eventually culminated in a major life transition for Zoey. A wholly unique take on the story of Los Angeles, told through stunning aerial footage and remarkable home videos, Whirlybird reframes many of the city’s pivotal moments of the 1990s, including the OJ Simpson pursuit and the 1992 riots.

After finding a broken surfboard on his local beach, Jhonny Guerrero, a teenager from one of Peru’s toughest barrios, sets his heart on becoming a professional surfer. With his father in prison for armed robbery and a mother struggling to feed and clothe his younger brother, the sea is his escape. When Jhonny is spotted by Peru’s most successful surf champion, Sofia Mulanovich, he is taken under her wing and given a chance to succeed. Yet the pressure to do so weighs hard. Without his dad around, the lure of his friends and the risks of life in the barrios threaten to jeopardise everything he has worked for. When he’s injured outside a nightclub in a drive-by shooting, Jhonny is forced to decide once and for all which path to take.

This investigative Storyville documentary takes us inside the dark and mysterious world of spies, special forces and political insiders as they race to find Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s billions in a dangerous treasure hunt. In life, the Libyan leader ruled with an iron fist for 42 years and treated Libya’s wealth as his own. He died the richest man on the planet with a fortune of $150 billion. A dictatorial leader in life, the spell of Gaddafi’s money remained in place after his death, triggering a ruthless race to find his missing billions. Two journalists pick up the trail of a mysterious $12.5 billion in cash, flown out of Libya in the dead of night just months before Gaddafi’s demise. In South Africa, they discover an eyewitness who seems to know all about the money. His testimony changes everything, but before he can provide them with proof the story takes a sinister twist, the first of many.

Dark Secrets of a Trillion Dollar Island: Garenne tells the extraordinary story of the child abuse scandal that erupted on the idyllic island of Jersey in 2007. For a long time, the victims’ voices had remained unheard, but when widespread allegations of sexual abuse resurfaced in the late 2000s, Jersey’s then health minister Stuart Syvret spoke out about the scale of this historic child abuse and the damage done to the victims. Syvret’s words sparked a moment of reckoning for the small community, whose leaders were determined to protect the island’s reputation, home to a trillion dollars in offshore investment. This discreet offshore tax haven found itself in the middle of a major police investigation as the world’s media descended on the island, creating a media circus. In the midst of all this, the community became divided, with one group fearful that the scandal would drive investors away, and another demanding justice for the victims.

A recently widowed 83-year-old goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home in a warm-hearted and surprising look at age, isolation and loneliness. Sergio is a Chilean spy - sort of. At least, he is offered the role of one after a casting session organised by Detective Romulo, a private investigator who needs a credible mole to infiltrate a retirement home. Romulo’s client, the concerned daughter of a resident, suspects her mother is being abused and hires him to find out what is really happening. However, Sergio is 83, not 007, and not an easy trainee when it comes to technology and spying techniques. But he is a keen student, looking for ways to distract himself after recently losing his wife. What could be a better distraction than some undercover spy action? While gathering intelligence, Sergio grows close to several residents and realises that the truth beneath the surface is not what anyone had suspected.

In 2015, a fire at a nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, leaves 27 dead and 180 injured. Soon afterwards, the burn victims recovering in hospital - from seemingly non-life-threatening injuries - begin dying too. A doctor at the heart of the story acts as whistleblower to a team of journalists, who in turn uncover outrageous corruption in Romania’s hospitals that goes all the way to the top. One revelation leads to another as the journalists begin to find fraud on a vast scale in the healthcare system. When a new health minister is appointed, the journalists follow his attempts, in the face of monumental obstacles, to reform a system riddled with corruption. Oscar-shortlisted and Bafta-longlisted for best documentary, Collective: Unravelling a Scandal examines the explosive impact of investigative journalism.

A sensitive and moving account of a year in the life of Sasha, a seven-year-old French girl assigned male at birth, and her family's fight for her acceptance. The film follows her parents as they come to terms with their daughter's gender dysmorphia and reveals how Sasha is affected by the societal norms that make it far from easy for her to experience childhood in the same way as most of her peers.

As the disaster of yet another school shooting hits, some parents are faced with a brutal fact: their child was the one pulling the trigger. In this powerful and sensitively told Storyville documentary, set in America, three parents share their personal stories. Jeff Williams is the father of Andy, who in 2001, at the age of 15, shot and killed two classmates and wounded 13 other students. Andy, 25 at the time of filming, is now serving life in prison. Clarence Elliot’s son Nicholas shot and killed his teacher and wounded another in 1988. He too is serving life in prison. Sue Klebold’s son Dylan was one of the two teenagers behind the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, one of the deadliest school shootings in history. Dylan ended the shooting by committing suicide.

In December 2019, Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, charged with financial crimes, stunned the world by fleeing Japan in a box supposedly containing a priceless cello. It was an audacious Hollywood-worthy escape. With exclusive access to Ghosn himself, this gripping Storyville documentary charts the rise and fall of a superstar CEO from celebrated industry leader to wanted fugitive, exploring themes of corporate greed, ruthlessness, vanity and racism.

This Storyville documentary details the story of celebrity favourite and globally trending megachurch Hillsong. In a relatively short time it has grown explosively, from small family church to international phenomenon. Gaining rare access to this highly-guarded organisation, director Nick Aldridge follows key church figures and a number of its followers, who tell personal stories of salvation and shed light on the scandals currently engulfing the church.