Interkerkelijke Omroep Nederland (IKON)

Ahasverus, king of Persia and Media, puts aside Vashti and makes Esther his queen, choosing her among maidens in a kingdom stretching from India to Ethiopia. Esther, using information from Mordecai, her uncle and patron, saves the king from assassination. Haman, the king's favorite, is miffed when Mordecai won't bow to him, so he orders death to all Jews in the kingdom, under the seal of the king. Esther pleads for her people, and Mordecai is in turn given license to make his own edict under the king's seal. Mordecai loses sight of his original intention, and bloody murder ensues. Purim annually celebrates the story. At the end of the film, the actors comment.

Haunted by his violent past, the ambitious lawyer Anuol returns to his homeland, South Sudan, committed to serve his country and hold accountable those who are responsible. But his quest, led by the rules of law, hits a wall when he is confronted with his countrymen’s reluctance to reconcile with history.

Inhabitants of Beirut talk about their love for the singer Fairuz.

A group of Kuchi children are living in a minefield around Bagram airfield, Afghanistan. They dig out anti-personal mines in order to sell the explosives to child workers mining in a Lappis Lazulli mine. The trajectory of the blue precious stones goes towards Tajikistan and China, through an area controlled by child soldiers. When they are not waging their own mini-wars in the daily madness of life in Afghanistan, the children are fleeing away in their personal fantasies and dreams, while the American soldiers are planning their retreat...

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.

The documentary focuses on the struggles of those who survived the long siege by German forces during World War II (from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944). The three million inhabitants of Leningrad (now renamed St Petersburg) suffered extremes of starvation and deprivation.

A poetic depiction of life and ritual in the south Indian state of Kerala. We see how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation: within the family, through the village economy, and especially from teachers to students. Performance footage shows how song, dance, martial arts, and religion constitute the building blocks of a culture.

About the political controversy surrounding the Argentine World Cup football (1978).

A portrait of two Palestinian women whose individual struggles both define and transcend the politics that have torn apart their homes and their lives. Farah Hatoum, a widow living with her children and grandchildren, and Sahar Khalifeh, a novelist from the West Bank.

The tantric tradition of sensual spirituality was an esoteric and mystical religious tradition which flourished in Ancient India and China. The tantric rites of sexuality are now finding a new wave of adherents among the “new agers” of the post-industrial West. This video explores the sexual research and experimentation taking place in cities such as Berlin, New York, Aspen and San Francisco by western people attempting the difficult reconciliation of erotic desires and spiritual fulfilment when they have been raised in a Christian culture which fundamentally opposes the spirit and the body. From a “Sluts and Goddess” workshop hosted by famous dominatrix Annie Sprinkler, to a “Rebirthing and Sexuality” conference in Hawaii, “Sacred Sex” explores the new forms of pagan and Eastern philosophies being popularised in the West.

Young journalist has an interview with a succesfull gay playwright who likes to write frankly about sex. At first the interviewee responds cynical and distant, but after a while the tone of the conversation changes. This is because the playwright notices the journalist more than admires him.

The widows of Ahatović reminisce stories about their husbands and sons who were killed in a massacre during the Yougoslav civil war in 1992.

A portrait of Jacques Ellul, a French theologian/sociologist & anarchist who first became well-known to American readers with the English publishing of his book The Technological Society in 1964. For Ellul, technique represented an entire way of life characterized by life fragmented so that efficiency ultimately rules over all ethical decisions. Ellul warned that technique was having drastic effects on all aspects of modern life. Many Green Anarchists have cited Ellul's work on technique as influential on their thought.

Documentary that follows the lives of two pirates and their community on the Somali coastline; what are the incentives of the pirates, why did they become pirates, how did they grow up in a country with political chaos, war and extreme poverty? The narrative structure is built around two interweaving story-lines; one depicting the "present", the daily lives of the pirates and their community, and the second in the "past", revealing through epic animation, the unfolding of a recent hijacking.