This is our multi-award winning documentary film Skateistan: To Live And Skate Kabul. The film has received over a million hits online and has been the official selection at a number of top film festivals across the world including Sundance 2011, SXSW 2011, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2010, One World 2011 and Full Frame 2011.
Documentary
Grain has a vibrant and growing documentary wing. Our documentary films have won numerous awards, garnered plenty of international media attention and have been accepted into the world's most prestigious film festivals including Sundance, SXSW and Sheffield Doc/Fest.
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Client: DAZED & CONFUSEDThis is our multi-award winning documentary film Skateistan: To Live And Skate Kabul. The film has received over a million hits online and has been the official selection at a number of top film festivals across the world including Sundance 2011, SXSW 2011, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2010, One World 2011 and Full Frame 2011.
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Part documentary, part narrative, Radio Amina tells the story of Amina Dibir, a 12 year old street hawker from Kano, Nigeria and her imaginary radio show where she gets to say all of the things she wishes she could in real life. The film is currently on the festival circuit where it has screened at several top festivals including IDFA 2011. Please click above to see a trailer.
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Partially blind & working Nigeria's streets aged 9, Aisha Sani Abdullahi's life chances were not great. But a chance meeting sent her life on a different path. Aisha's Song is a musically lush & beautifully shot film that tells a story of female empowerment from a place where women are often overlooked. The film has screened at several top festivals worldwide. Click above to see a teaser.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHThe precious marine resources of some of the world's poorest people are being targeted by industrial-scale illegal fishing operations to feed the seafood hungry markets of Europe and Asia. Working with NGO the EJF, in this special investigative 47' film for Al Jazeera's People & Power we take to the seas off Sierra Leone to expose the multi-million dollar illegal fishing trade.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHThe Nigerian Connection is a 2-part investigative mini series we produced, alongside Pear Productions, for Al Jazeera English about the Nigerian mafia and the trafficking of women from West Africa to Europe. Click above to see Part 1 based in Italy's mafia stronghold of Castel Volturno.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHPart 2 of The Nigerian Connection takes us to Benin City in Nigeria, where women, desperately seeking an escape from grinding poverty, can find themselves trapped in a nightmare world of juju magic and prostitution.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHOne of a number of short films we've produced for the Earthrise strand on Al Jazeera English. This film is about a growing movement in New York to green urban spaces and has gone down a storm on youtube racking up over 270,000 hits!
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Client: CURRENT TVAn hour long access driven documentary about the work of the UK government's Forced Marriage Unit (FMU). Commissioned by Current TV and co-funded by World View, a team from Grain planted themselves within the FMU in the UK and their partner offices in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHThe Sahara Desert is creeping into verdant southern Africa. To counter this desertification, the Community Of Sahel-Saharan States has launched the Great Green Wall, a project to create a tree belt across the continent from Dakar to Djibouti.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHShot in Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco and Europe, Slaves To Football is an undercover investigation into the trafficking of child footballers from West Africa to Europe by scammers, dodgy agents & clubs. This is the 23' version of the film we made for Al Jazeera English's People and Power strand.
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In a very poor neighborhood in Old Dhaka, there is a building that doesn't look like it should actually be standing. Step inside and you'll be greeted by some truly inspiring and hardy folk, not at all squeamish about the cockroaches and spiders littering the building that terrified the not so hardy film makers who joined them one afternoon...
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHMade for Al Jazeera English's People and Power strand, The Green Lake is a 21' film investigating the pollution of the once clean Lake Koka in Ethiopia and the tragic effects this has been having on the lake's residents.
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This is one of three short films we produced for the British council about Mexican fashion designer Carla Fernandez.
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Client: AL JAZEERA ENGLISHHot Chocolate is a 21' investigative film about the role of the international chocolate trade in exaggerating violence and human rights abuse in war torn Ivory Coast. Made for Al Jazeera English's People And Power strand.
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Client: CURRENT TVIn 2007 we visited the Saharawi refugee camps in SW Algeria. In these sun scorched camps over 200,000 people etch out a living. Some of them have been there over 30 years and virtually no one outside of the region has ever heard of them.
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Client: CURRENT TVProduced at a time when media hysteria about gun crime was at a zenith, this is a short prize winning feature about the life of a gun carrier in Peckham, South London.
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This film is one of a series of shorts shot for Channel 4 about the Barclays Spaces For Sports campaign. We shot it on 16mm and HDV. This episode is about a project to build a BMX park.
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Client: BARCLAYSThis feature is about the Barclays Spaces For Sports campaign. We shot the piece on 16mm and HDV and it aired on Channel 4.
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Asylum seekers get a really bad rap in the press. This early Grain documentary, made in 2005 and funded by the UnLtd social enterprise fund, compares public perceptions of asylum seekers with asylum seekers' own stories about their lives.
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This is an excerp from a 30-min documentary we made about 2 Londoners running marathons in the North Pole and the Sahara Desert in order to raise awareness about the impact of climate change. Actor Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Show) did the voice over.
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This is a short film we made about world renowned social documentary photographer Carlos Reyes Manzo on a trip to Uganda in 2007. Carlos discusses his work, his vision as a photographer and his feelings about the future of the world.
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A short film we made for MySpace about Soulwax super fan Kevin
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This is a short we produced for Current TV about child soldier turned hip hop phenonmenon Emmanual Jal. Emmanual's story is truly incredible, and his music isn't bad either...
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Client: CURRENT TVThis is a short piece we made for Current TV about how climate change is directly affecting the UK.
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Client: CURRENT TVCaptain Leo Docherty left the army in disgust at what was happening in Afghanistan. We went to hear his story.