Because I Choose Freedom (2022)

2022-02-0413m

Matthew Leung Ming-hong had been working as a breaking-news reporter for six years in Hong Kong but recently emigrated to the United Kingdom because of concerns about growing restrictions on journalists working in the city. Three Hong Kong media outlets popular with the opposition have folded in just six months, following the introduction of a controversial national security law in Hong Kong on June 30, 2020, raising fears about the future of press freedom in the city. The 29-year-old is starting a new life in Britain’s northern city of Manchester and plans to eventually resume his journalism career in Europe.

Related Movies

578804-thumbnail

Robert Scheer: Above the Fold (2019)

A documentary on the six-decades long career of a muckraking journalist, who was involved with the radical 196os magazine Ramparts, with the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and later with the Internet website Truthdig.

417108-thumbnail

Bricks! (2016)

In 1976, the Tate Gallery exhibited an experimental artwork that became a national sensation - Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, or, to its detractors, 120 bricks laid on the floor. This documentary explores the origins of Andre's work and the extraordinary fallout from its exhibition.

924120-thumbnail

Blue Island (2022)

Although the Chinese government promised that Hong Kong would retain separate status until 2047, in recent years the Chinese state has consolidated its power over the metropolis. Large-scale protests by the populace have been brutally suppressed. This mix of documentary, fiction, and visions of the future reveals the current state of desolate depression among the people of Hong Kong. “A desperate attempt to capture the final moments of a sinking island”, as maker Chan Tze-woon himself puts it.

259908-thumbnail

The Valley of the Jato (2013)

In the heart of Sicily, where the Mafia still rules, one man and his family-run TV station, has become the lone voice against corruption and organized crime.

1099023-thumbnail

Hong Kong Mixtape (2023)

Political engagement spawned the wildest of wonderlands for Hong Kong’s creativity – but as a new law annihilates freedom of expression overnight, underground artists and creatives find themselves targets, and their works disappeared. Together we race to preserve the creative uprising amid China’s crackdown.

262453-thumbnail

Princess Diana: The Mourning After (1998)

In "Diana: The Mourning After" Christopher Hitchens sets out to examine the bogusness of "a nation's grief", tries to uncover the few voices of sanity that cut against the grain of contrived hysteria. His findings suggested that the collective hordes of emotive Dianaphiles sobbing in the streets were not only encouraged but emulated by the media. In the aftermath of Diana's death a three-line whip was enforced on newspapers and on TV, selling the sainthood line wholesale. The suspicion was that journalists, like the public, greeted the death as a chance to wax emotional in print, as a change from the customary knowing cynicism, to wheel out all those portentous phrases they'd been saving up for the big occasion. Sadly, they just seemed to be showboating; the eulogies, laments and tear-soaked platitudes ringing risibly hollow.

264050-thumbnail

Lessons in Dissent (2014)

A vivid portrait of a generation of Hong Kongers committed to creating a new more democratic Hong Kong. Schoolboy Joshua Wong dedicates himself to stopping the introduction of National Education. Whilst former classmate Ma Jai fights against political oppression on the streets and in the courts. Catapulting the viewer on to the streets of Hong Kong and into the heart of the action. The viewer is confronted with Hong Kong's oppressive heat, stifling humidity and air thick with dissent. Filmed over 18 months this is a kaleidoscopic, visceral experience of their epic struggle.

419732-thumbnail

Enemy Image (2005)

An examination of the how television news in the US has covered war from Vietnam to the present day

756597-thumbnail

Red Taxi (2021)

An anonymous, authentic video secretly filmed from taxi windows captures fragments of violence right in the middle of clashes between police and protesting Hong Kong residents. In addition to the contact sound of fights, screams, singing, chants of the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”, and the howls of those who've been beaten, we also hear the conflicting comments of taxi drivers from both sides of the border - Hong Kong and the neighboring mainland Shenzhen.

428587-thumbnail

Die Meute (2001)

427757-thumbnail

Mashed Media (2010)

From the front lines of the bankrupt Chicago Tribune, to the vibrant local online publishing and start-up scene, pioneering journalists struggle to reinvent a storied, yet troubled industry. "Mashed Media" visits bloggers, independent publishers, hacker journalists, and social media mavens working in the trenches of Chicago, providing a rare and intimate look at the future of journalism now.

575412-thumbnail

Last Exit to Kai Tak (2018)

In the aftermath of 2014's Umbrella Revolution, five Hong Kong activists are confronted with the question of what it means to be Hong Kongers.

13372-thumbnail

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)

This film examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news, and provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangerous impact on society when a broad swath of media is controlled by one person. Media experts, including Jeff Cohen (FAIR) Bob McChesney (Free Press), Chellie Pingree (Common Cause), Jeff Chester (Center for Digital Democracy) and David Brock (Media Matters) provide context and guidance for the story of Fox News and its effect on society. This documentary also reveals the secrets of Former Fox news producers, reporters, bookers and writers who expose what it's like to work for Fox News. These former Fox employees talk about how they were forced to push a "right-wing" point of view or risk their jobs. Some have even chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect their current livelihoods. As one employee said "There's no sense of integrity as far as having a line that can't be crossed."

748424-thumbnail

The Last Reporters (2021)

North German community journalists: an endangered species. Their Mission: to find and process local stories – and the desperate search for them. Their nemesis: digitalisation. Their everyday business: amateur football, toad migrations and the community bus.

434880-thumbnail

Nana (2016)

607908-thumbnail

Hong Kong: Retrocession Generation (2017)

In 2017, twenty years after the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, young people, more politicized than any previous generation and proud of their land, do not feel Chinese and actively fight against the oligarchs who want to subdue them to China's authoritarian power.

436315-thumbnail

Relatively Free (2016)

A short film following the release of journalist and activist Barrett Brown from prison, and his drive across Texas to a halfway house. 'Relatively Free' is an examination of Brown's return to a very different world, post the election.

956443-thumbnail

The Killing of a Journalist (2023)

A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

774803-thumbnail

The Agency (2020)

A look at the work of a group of reporters and photographers from EFE, a Spanish news agency founded in 1939, which is celebrating its eightieth anniversary. A journey around the world —Mexico, Congo, USA, Libya, France, Spain, China and the Chilean Patagonia— with the purpose of honoring all people who work in the shadows, tirelessly seeking the truth in the era of social networks and fake news.

22285-thumbnail

Good Copy Bad Copy (2007)

Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances.