Liz Mermin

Shot in Bombay

Liz Mermin

A fast-paced, feature-length documentary which goes beyond the tinselly glamour of Bollywood to expose the industry's rather less alluring underbelly. The Mumbai film industry has long been rumoured to be associated with crime syndicates. The connection was publicly established when, in July 2007, one of India's superstars, Sanjay Dutt, was convicted of possessing firearms which were linked to India's 9/11 - the day in 1993 when Mumbai suffered 13 terrorist bomb blasts in the space of two hours. As full of sudden reversals as any thriller, this documentary follows Sanjay Dutt as he makes Shootout In Lokhandwala, his last film before being sentenced. He plays a real-life Mumbai police officer, AA Khan, who became a local hero after a fatal shootout with criminals in which 1,400 rounds of ammunition were fired. The documentary subtly underlines the ironies of this situation and has as colourful a cast of its own as any Bollywood movie. (Storyville)

Team Qatar

Liz Mermin

Qatar is said to be the world's richest country, while competitive debating is said to be a training ground for future world leaders. So when the Qatari Emiress charged two recent Oxford graduates with creating the country's first national debate team and taking them to the world championships, the stakes were high. This documentary follows the journey of five ambitious teenagers as they are initiated into the cut-throat subculture of competitive high school debate. Training in London, Doha and New York, they learn more about the world as they hone their debating skills. (Storyville)

Generation 9/11

Liz Mermin

"Generation 9/11" is an intimate film driven by the stories and personalities of its protagonists, who were born in the wake of a global tragedy which, for them, was also deeply personal. But it is also the story an entire generation that has been shaped by the attacks and their aftermath.

Horses

Liz Mermin

James Nolan, Paul Nolan

What might it be like to be a horse? Not just any horse, but a top-end racehorse in Ireland? This is the question Horses explores, following three promising, charismatic horses over the course of one rather difficult racing year, bringing us into their world and revealing their distinct individual characters. Beautiful, unusual, and highly entertaining, the film combines the drama of a sports movie with the exploration of an ancient human obsession, offering a subtle critique of humanity's quirks on the side. (Storyville)

On Hostile Ground

Liz Mermin, Jenny Raskin

On October 23, 1998, a sniper carrying a high-powered rifle assassinated Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home, altering forever a family, a community, and the bounds of our imaginings about anti-abortion violence. This horrific act punctuated a decade of escalating harassment and violence against women’s heath care providers – a decade marred by murders, assaults, death threats, stalking, clinic blockades, arsons, bombings, and chemical attacks. How do these events affect the personal and professional lives of abortion providers? What motivates them to continue their work in the face of such terrorism?

The Beauty Academy of Kabul

Liz Mermin

What happens when a group of hairdressers from America travel to Kabul with the intention of telling Afghan women how to do hair and makeup? This engaging, optimistic documentary tracks a unique development project: a shiny new beauty school, funded in part by beauty-industry mainstays, which sets out to teach the latest cutting, coloring, and perming techniques to practicing and aspiring Afghan hairdressers and beauticians. The American teachers, all volunteers, include three Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in over twenty years. The Beauty Academy of Kabul offers a rare glimpse into Afghan women’s lives, and documents the poignant and often humorous process through which women with very different experiences of life come to learn about one another.

Office Tigers

Liz Mermin

Joseph Sigelman

There was a time, not so long ago, when multi-national corporations saw the developing world merely as a source for natural resources and cheap labor. No longer. In recent years, corporations have opened back offices in countries where costs are low and ambition is high, most notably in India. The companies that house and staff these offices are known as BPOs Business Process Outsourcing companies. Office Tigers is set in the crème de la crème of BPOs, a multi-national company that provides high-end support work to the worlds top legal firms, investment banks, and consultancies. It takes us inside the closed world of corporate outsourcing. It introduces us to ambitious and charismatic Office Tiger employees, models for the new global economy, and the Americans who strive to guide them in their quest to join the ranks of the global business elite. The results are mixed often comic, occasionally brilliant.