JWP just returned from the Al Jazeera Documentary Festival in Doha. Al Jazeera’s 17 channels have grown up like skyscrapers in the desert….so, for the first time they organised conferences to explain their plans for improving programming—including launching Balkan and Turkish channels—to the production companies they work with. We are developing the series Soapbox with them. Meanwhile we continue production of a feature documentary about a story of murder, love, and political conspiracy in Guatemala. Internationally co-produced with BBC, ITVS, and others. We’re still in the early stages, but will keep updating as the project moves forward.
The story of the secret behind Spain’s world leadership in organ transplants. Human more than technical factors explain a medical revolution that has taken place over the last 25 years in Spain, started by pioneering Catalan doctors like Martín Manyalich, who now travels the world to teach others about how to create and sustain what is for those involved a moment charged with meaning and emotion — when grief of some can be transformed into hope for others.
Baltasar Garzón, the famous Spanish investigating magistrate was convicted of abuse of power and expelled from the judiciary this year. Internationally he is most famous for having General Pinochet arrested in London in 1998 on charges of torture, a landmark case which furthered the cause of “Universal Justice,” for which Garzón is still a leading campaigner. His troubles in Spain started when he opened an investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed under Spain’s Franco regime, more than half a century ago. Far right groups brought a case against him for abuse of power and were successful.
Tom Cholmondeley, the great-grandson of the founder of the British colony of Kenya, Lord Delamere, shot dead a black poacher, Robert Njoya, on the edge of his huge estate in the highlands of Kenya. Charged with murder, his trial gripped the nation as the forensic arguments inevitably were mixed with memories of the Happy Valley lifestyle, themes of racism, the violent struggle of land, and the rule of law in a fast-developing country still coming to terms with its colonial past.
The Madrid Connection is a profound, two-year long investigation into the lives and motivations of the two men who became the leaders of the terrorist cell that committed the Madrid bombings of 2004, Europe’s worst ever terrorist atrocity, in which 191 people died and nearly 2000 were injured.
A unique observational film about a year on the inside of the biggest football club in the world, at the worst moment of its history. FC Barcelona was on the verge of bankruptcy and struggling to keep its place in the elite of Spanish–let alone the world–football, when a bunch of impassioned 40-something enthusiasts won the club’s unique elections and started a revolution.
