Instead of morning fog, a carbon monoxide cloud rolls over Kiselyovsk’s rooftops and black snow falls to the ground. In Kuzbass, a proud mining region, the volume of extracted black coal matters more than human lives.

Even as a child Anna Kurkurina loved animals, later working in zoos, promoting animal rights and founding shelters. At 40, she took up weight training with similar vigour. She became a multiple world champion in the power triathlon and coached people with physical disabilities.

The future of countries at war is often decided not by soldiers on the front line but by men in glass buildings. Until October 2024, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was one of them, as he tried from the start to arrange negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Director Tommy Gulliksen had a unique opportunity to record it all.

Documentarist Rashid Masharawi organised the creation of a series of 22 short films about current life in Gaza. On screen, they tell the unspoken stories of the current war using documentary style, live action and animation.

On one hand, the industrial zone in Dukem, Ethiopia, with more than 100 Chinese companies, offers tens of thousands of jobs; on the other, it changes the landscape and exploits the locals. The film captures the vision of prosperity through the eyes of 3 women tracked over 4 years.

After years of war, Homs no longer feels like the “city of smiles” it was once called. The camera, penetrating the ruins, and the memories of people who had to leave, take us there. Their thoughts about the war and the time after it describe the ambience of a specific place and the fate of a nation that wants to live again.

For 7 years, Chinese American filmmaker Nanfu Wang followed activist Rosa María Payá in her fight against the Cuban communist regime, which Rosa built on the work of her father Oswaldo Payá, an opposition democrat and five-times Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Agadez, in northern Niger, has long been a key hub for migration from the Sahel to northwest Africa and on to Europe. Nomadic Tuareg tribes made their living taking migrants across the Sahara, creating a lucrative but unregulated migration economy.

The cooperation of Central Asian countries such as Kyrgyzstan helps Russia resist Western economic sanctions. Due to the country’s strategic location, all Chinese goods bound for Central Asia and Russia must cross its borders, and it serves as a transshipment point for goods from countries with which Putin is not officially allowed to trade. Investigative journalist Ali Toktakunov, a long-time staff member of Radio Free Europe’s Kyrgyz section, helped to uncover the deeper implications.

Women in a remote south Egyptian village should help men, keep quiet, and bear children. To protest against these stereotypes, some girls start a theatre group.