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“A Nuclear Family” begins as the Cold War ends — and North Korea has lost Soviet patronage, and with it, the security it guarantees and the economic support that has sustained the country for nearly half a century
S1E3 • Inside North Korea's Dynasty • 2018 • People
In May 2016, BBC reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was expelled from North Korea for showing disrespect and 'distorting facts'. He now tells the full story of his visit to the country and explores what his detention and interrogation by senior Korean officials say about this secretive state. He investigates the apparent upturn in the North Korean economy and asks if the signs of improvement in the capital Pyongyang are real. He also examines whether the people there are genuinely loyal to their young leader or whether Kim Jong Un is ruling by reign of terror.
2016 • People
In less than two years, Al Capone has risen from a humble bookkeeper to second-in-command of Johnny Torrio's criminal empire in Chicago. The empire is worth the modern-day equivalent of S35 million. Capone purchases a home for his family and moves them from New York to Chicago. Torrio and Capone expand their empire from Chicago's South Side to the North Side, which is controlled by Chicago's second largest gang, the Irish. Violence erupts as ruthless Irish gang leader Dean O'Banion protects his territory and bootlegging business from Torrio and Capone.
S1E2 • The Making of the Mob: Chicago • 2016 • People
The third episode opens on a world of drug trafficking that has been fragmented by the efforts of the police. Dealers have now changed; invisibility is their chief weapon. The trade has shifted to areas beyond law-and-order, like war zones in Afghanistan or areas with guerilla activity like Colombia. Designer drugs, which are easy to manufacture and conceal, play a key role in the transformation of the traffic. In Mexico, the cartels have dragged the whole country into a merciless spiral of violence – wherever one looks, the toll of the war on drugs makes for grim reading. Synthetic drugs, which are easy to manufacture and conceal, herald the fourth generation to come: traffickers in white coats. This poses the question: Is it time to legalize drugs, radically changing the current situation and perhaps the way we perceive them?
S1E3 • The Story of Drug Trafficking • 2020 • People
For years, Miles Lagoze served in Afghanistan as a combat cameraman, shooting footage and editing videos for Marine Corps recruiting purposes. In this devastating film, Lagoze assembles his own footage and that of his fellow combat cameramen into a never-before-seen look at the daily life of Marines from the ultimate insider's point of view. More than a mere compilation of violence, the edit ingeniously repurposes the original footage to reveal the intensity and paradoxes of war in an age of ubiquitous cameras, when all soldiers can record themselves with helmet-cams and cellphones. Combat Obscura revels in the chasm separating civilian from military life and questions the psychological toll war exacts on all that it touches.
2018 • People
Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in October 1922, after his March on Rome. He would hold it in his grasp until his death in 1945, establishing a dictatorship that lasted more than two decades. Long considered a buffoon and a second-rate dictator, Il Duce invented fascism that was imitated by Adolf Hitler, who viewed the Italian as his political master. Mussolini wanted to transform his country into a warrior nation and promised Italians a return to the grandeur of the Roman Empire. He governed by violence and trickery and was one of the first populist leaders of modern times, leading his country into the catastrophe of the Second World War. But who was Benito Mussolini, this former teacher who came from the extreme left to become a newspaper editor and creator of the Italian Fascist Party? Why did he ally himself with Adolf Hitler? Were the Italian people really behind him? With rare archives, some of which have been colorized, and interviews with the last-surviving witnesses of the era, along with perspectives from historian Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, this portrait takes a look back at one of the most notorious dictators of the 20th century.
2022 • People