The Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate

This is a collection of films about the newspaper industry, intrepid reporters, photojournalists and the important work that they do. Ranging from a profile of photographer Gerda Taro, who lost her life covering the Spanish Civil War, to films dealing with the role of mass media and journalism in today's society, these films showcase both the pivotal and difficult role news can play in our lives.

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The Fifth Estate
  • Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island

    Directed by Heidi Hutner • Documentary • 2023 • 77 minutes

    In this thrilling feminist documentary, indomitable women fight back against the nuclear industry to expose one of the worst cover-ups in U.S. history.

    RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island is an award-winning film about the 1979 ...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 1 - Turkey

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    Fidan revisits Istanbul, where she used to work as a news correspondent. Turkey has changed a lot under president Erdogan. For journalists who are critical towards the government, the social climate has become much harsher. Independent ne...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 2 - Uganda

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    On paper Uganda is a democracy, but in reality nepotism and corruption are the rule. Journalism is one of the lowest paying jobs, and journalists, newspapers and TV stations are easily intimidated.
    Freelance video journalist Ntege Willi...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 3 - Colombia

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    In this episode Fidan visits Henry Ramirez, a local journalist in the port city of Buenaventura. Its harbor attracts powerful criminals and drug smugglers , making it one of the most violent cities in Colombia. Henry has disclosed the exi...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 4 - Myanmar

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    Fidan arrives in Yangon on the eve before the latest elections. The military regime has promised fair elections, but who can tell what will really happen?

    There is one television station that has committed itself to monitoring the elec...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 5 - Hong Kong

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    Fidan travels to Hong Kong, where the free press is slowly being silenced by communist China.

    According to Shirley Yam of the Hong Kong Journalist Association it is like boiling a frog: “If you boil the water slowly the frogs doesn’t n...

  • Reporters Against Power, Ep. 6 - Russia

    Directed by Kees Schaap • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    In Moscow, Fidan visits Novaja Gazeta, one of the few critical newspapers in Russia.

    Ever since six journalists of NG were murdered in the line of duty, chief editor Muratov worries about the danger his colleagues get themselves into. ...

  • Agustin's Newspaper

    Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 2008 • 80 minutes

    El Mercurio, the oldest newspaper in Chile, has been owned and operated since 1849 by the Edwards family. Its current owner, Agustin Edwards Eastman, has controlled the journal since 1956. With editions published in Santiago and Valpar...

  • A Baptism of Fire

    Directed by Jerome Clement-Wilz • Documentary • 2015 • 52 minutes

    'As it gets harder to sell pictures, we take greater and greater risks,' explains Corentin Fohlen. A war correspondent still in his twenties, Fohlen is part of a new generation of freelance journalists who fly to war zones from Li...

  • Dateline - Saigon

    Directed by Thomas D. Herman • Documentary • With David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, Horst Faas, Sam Waterston • 2019 • 96 minutes

    Southeast Asia, 1960's. Flash point of the Cold War. Dateline-Saigon tells the inspiring story of a small group of Pulitzer Prize-winning ...

  • Sad Song of Yellow Skin

    Directed by Michael Rubbo • Documentary • 1971 • 58 minutes

    A film about the people of Saigon as seen through the experiences of three young American journalists who, in 1970, explored in their own way the consequences of war and of the American presence. It is not a film about the Vietnam war, ...

  • TVTV: Video Revolutionaries

    Directed by Paul Goldsmith • Documentary • With John Belushi, Hunter S. Thompson, Bill Murray, Steven Speilberg, Lily Tomlin, Abbie Hoffman • 2018 • 82 minutes

    Featuring Bill Murray, Hunter Thompson, John Belushi, Steven Spielberg, Lynn Swan, Goldie Hawn, Abbie Hoffman, Lily Tomlin and more, "TV...

  • Searching For Gerda Taro

    Directed by Camille Ménager • Documentary • 2021 • 58 minutes

    SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO celebrates the life and work of Taro — a charismatic Jewish refugee from Germany, an anti-fascist, and a trailblazing photographer whose work would be forgotten for decades.

    In 1935, Taro (then going by her b...

  • Sex, Lies and Tabloids!

    Directed by Jean-Baptiste Peretie • Documentary • 2015 • 52 minutes

    They're lurid, obnoxious, disdainful and explicit. And we love them - and love to hate them. SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! charts the rise and fall of tabloid papers in the UK and US, including the New York Post, The Sun, and notoriou...

  • Sound of Torture

    Directed by Keren Shayo • Documentary • 2013 • 58 minutes

    Since 2006 when Europe closed its borders, human trafficking has burgeoned in Egypt’s Sinai Desert, where Eritrean asylum seekers and refugees heading north to Israel are kidnapped, held hostage, and tortured by Bedouin smugglers demandin...

  • Spark

    Directed by Hu Jie • Documentary • 2019 • 114 minutes

    SPARK opens by the side of a road in Lanzhou City, northwestern China, as trucks rumble through a blasted hillside. An elderly man walks along the dusty road and pauses to point to a nearby spot—the former execution grounds. “They executed ma...

  • The Troubles We've Seen Part 1

    Directed by Marcel Ophüls • Documentary • With Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, John Burns, Martha Gellhorn, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Slobodan Miloševic • 1994 • 230 minutes

    One of the most important films of director Marcel Ophüls' career is also his least seen, facing backlash time and time ag...

  • The Troubles We've Seen Part 2

    Directed by Marcel Ophüls • Documentary • With Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, John Burns, Martha Gellhorn, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Slobodan Miloševic • 1994 • 230 minutes

    One of the most important films of director Marcel Ophüls' career is also his least seen, facing backlash time and time ag...

  • Images You Didn't See

    Directed by Anand Patwardhan • Documentary • 2006 • 5 minutes

    Global censorship of the war on Iraq has stifled the outrage that may have otherwise curtailed the ongoing atrocity of occupation. Not only have the real causes of war been hidden but also its effects. Most people see a sanitized and ...

  • Naji Al-Ali

    Directed by Kasim Abid • Documentary • 1999 • 52 minutes

    Throughout history artists have faced the threat of violence when their work offended the state or the political elite. The late Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali produced thousands of cartoons satirizing the powers that be in the Middle ...

  • How to Steal a Country

    Directed by Rehad Desai, co-directed by Mark Kaplan • Documentary • 2020 • 87 minutes

    HOW TO STEAL A COUNTRY opens like a classic thriller, with investigative journalists meeting anonymous whistleblowers in a parking garage. There, they receive a hard drive filled with hundreds of thousands of e...

  • McLibel

    Directed by Franny Armstrong • Documentary • 2005 • 85 minutes

    McLIBEL is the story of two ordinary people who humbled McDonald's in the biggest corporate PR disaster in history.

    McDonald's loved using the UK libel laws to suppress criticism. Major media organizations like the BBC and The Guard...

  • Seeing is Believing

    Directed by Katerina Cizek and Peter Wintonick • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes

    It may be the greatest media technology paradigm shift since TV's advent. From Rodney King to Osama Bin Laden, handicams aren't just for weddings and family vacations anymore. Over the past decade, amateur camcorder...