The vast agricultural plains of the Agro-Pontino in central Italy is now one of the country's main areas of food production. Yet it was not always the case. This 100 mile-long stretch of land facing the Tyrrhenian Sea was marshland until a century ago when fascist dictator Benito Mussolini organised a mass migration from northern Italy to drain the swamps and turn them into fertile farmland. But many of those who live today are not Italian, they are Indian - at least 11,000 of them, and...

Watch Part 1: https://youtu.be/4b4y-2OXGTk The state of California's progressive stance on issues from climate change to immigration has long epitomised liberal opposition to President Donald Trump. He in turn portrays those values as a betrayal of the US heartland and his supporters in the Republican Party So what does this bitter ideological battle reveal about the choices facing Americans in the coming presidential election? Earlier this year, for a special two-part report, People...

The state of California's progressive stance on issues from climate change to immigration has long epitomised liberal opposition to President Donald Trump. He in turn portrays those values as a betrayal of the US heartland and his supporters in the Republican Party So what does this bitter ideological battle reveal about the choices facing Americans in the coming presidential election? Earlier this year, for a special two-part report, People & Power's Bob Abeshouse went to find out. -...

Content warning: Some viewers may find this film distressing Watch Part 1 here: https://youtu.be/F65Mc3oBylk Six years ago, Catherine Corless, a local historian from County Galway in the Republic of Ireland, discovered that hundreds of babies and young children had died in a home for unmarried pregnant women, run by Roman Catholic nuns in her hometown of Tuam. Further research revealed that many of the babies had died of malnutrition and other forms of neglect. Most of their bodies had...

Content warning: Some viewers may find this film distressing Six years ago, Catherine Corless, a local historian from County Galway in the Republic of Ireland, discovered that hundreds of babies and young children had died in a home for unmarried pregnant women, run by Roman Catholic nuns in her hometown of Tuam. Further research revealed that many of the babies had died of malnutrition and other forms of neglect. Most of their bodies had been disposed of, officially unrecorded, in an old...

In late 2019, widespread and sometimes violent protests against economic inequality in Chile forced the government to promise a national plebiscite on changes to a constitution that dates back to the Pinochet era of the 1970s and 80s. That process was put on hold as the coronavirus pandemic hit. The vote, originally set for April, is now supposedly rescheduled for October 2020 but, as this report from filmmakers Luis del Valle and Lali Houghton makes clear, the passionate debate about the...

When COVID-19 hit Iran earlier his year, filmmaker Jamshid Mojaddadi was working on a project about a zoo - not far from his home and office in Mashhad, a city in the northeast of the country. Then, suddenly, like so many people in this extraordinary year, his life was turned upside down as emergency government restrictions began to bite, businesses shut down and people retreated behind closed doors. Cut adrift from his crew and his usual subject matter, he began documenting his own daily...

When the coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the world earlier this year, Italy quickly became one of Europe's worst-affected nations and soon after went into lockdown. As its hospitals began to falter under the growing strain, its economy ground to a halt and the population retreated into their homes. We asked two filmmakers from Rome, Alessandro Righi and Emanuele Piano, to document those remarkable first few weeks. Their episode of People & Power is a revealing and moving...

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a protected region in Alaska's far north, is one of the world's last few unspoiled environments - a remarkable wilderness that is home to endangered polar bears, grey wolves and wild caribou. But now the Trump administration, brushing aside objections from Democrats in Congress, is pressing ahead with plans to let oil and gas companies drill in the refuge. With a mandatory public comment period currently drawing to a close (a process that does not seem...

Greece has a proud reputation as the birthplace of democracy, of government by the people, for the people. But to the ethnic Turkish minority of Thrace in the country's northeast, who say they have suffered decades of discrimination from the state, that is not how it often seems. We sent filmmaker Glenn Ellis to investigate. - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook:...

A country that has relied on coal as an energy source for hundreds of years has had enough. Germany has declared the industry must end. The country's last black coal mines were closed in 2018, and now Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration has decided to phase out all remaining brown coal mines and coal-fired power plants. Highly polluting and a major source of carbon emissions, most of the latter are in the east of the country, lingering remnants of the communist era. Under what's...

Mass migration from Africa and the Middle East into southern Europe through Italy has become one of the most sensitive political issues in that country in recent times. The arrival of around 700,000 people since 2014 - whether refugees from war and persecution or those in search of better economic opportunities - has inspired both xenophobia and a more open-minded, if heated, debate about how best to handle their integration. One northern Italian city has adopted a radical solution to both...

The Italian island of Sardinia presents many faces to the world, from the pretty harbours, sun-kissed beaches and fancy coastal villas of the super-rich to the famously stunning landscape of the interior, with picturesque towns and remote villages dotted among the mountains, woods and streams. Unsurprisingly, such things attract holidaymakers from all over Europe and tourism has long been one of the island's main industries. But few of those visitors will fully appreciate just how much of...

Where are all the insects going? To anyone suffering from the over-enthusiastic attention of a cloud of mosquitoes or lamenting the effects of leaf-munching creepy crawlies in their back garden, it might seem like a ridiculous question, but it’s one that many scientists have been asking for some time now. Since the 1970s, according to one report from UK ecologists, half of all insects in Europe may have been lost as a result of intensive farming, the heavy use of pesticides and climate...

Last November, celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall were overshadowed by a palpable sense of unease in parts of Europe. To be sure, the events of those weeks through late 1989 and beyond were hugely significant - iconic moments in history that came to symbolise the end of the Cold War and the decades of nuclear-tipped standoff between West and East. Many Europeans felt that things could never be the same again, that their continent had seen the back of...

For well over a year, France's yellow vest activists have been making full use of their constitutionally enshrined right to protest against the economic policies of President Emmanuel Macron - most recently in support of a trade union standoff with the government over pension reform proposals. But the often uncompromising response of the authorities during some of those demonstrations - in which thousands of protesters and police officers have been injured - has raised disturbing questions...

In 2014, People & Power revealed the shameful treatment of people with disabilities in Romania's state-run care homes. That film also raised disturbing questions about why the EU was funding some of those institutions. Now, five years on, there are fresh allegations about neglect and mistreatment - this time not just in Romania, but in neighbouring countries, too. For the second episode of our two-part investigation, filmmakers Sarah Spiller, Callum Macrae and Mark Williams went to...

In 2014, in a truly disturbing episode of People & Power, we revealed the shocking mistreatment of disabled people in state-run care homes in Romania. That film, which we called Europe's Hidden Shame, also raised very troubling questions about how and why some of those institutions were in receipt of funding from the EU. We took our evidence to the relevant ministry in Romania's capital Bucharest and then to EU headquarters in Brussels. The authorities in Romania promised to halt the...

Since the 1960s, when Europe’s middle classes first had the money and time to travel, tourism has shown no signs of slowing down. Last year, international tourist arrivals increased by another six percent to 1.4 billion globally and the rise now seems exponential. It speaks of increasing prosperity and leisure time for some - still largely a developed-world phenomenon - and a boost for the economies of popular destinations. But it also carries an environmental cost, particularly for...

Filmmaker: Fanny Bouteiller Africa is rich with natural resources, yet all too often the benefits of that abundance end up with overseas consumers, foreign investors and the international markets. This is often seen as the consequence of a post-colonial globalised economy, in which the rich somehow keep getting richer and the poorest, denied the full fruits of their labours, are kept in penury. It is also a state of affairs with which many on the continent are understandably deeply...

Note: This is Episode 2 of a two-part report. Watch Episode 1 here: https://youtu.be/WDpPQ63WgFM - More than three months of dramatic public protests throughout the summer of 2019 have shaken Hong Kong, bringing huge demonstrations onto the streets - on occasion numbering well over a million people - and at times escalating into violent confrontations between police and activists. The protests began in June in response to the government's plans to amend Hong Kong's extradition law amid...

More than three months of dramatic public protests throughout the summer of 2019 have shaken Hong Kong, bringing huge demonstrations onto the streets - on occasion numbering well over a million people - and at times escalating into violent confrontations between police and activists. The protests began in June in response to the government's plans to amend Hong Kong's extradition law amid widespread fears that, if the legislation were enacted, anyone suspected of breaking the law in the...

West Africa - and particularly its most populous nation, Nigeria - is battling an opioid abuse crisis. Medicines such as tramadol, legally and legitimately prescribed by doctors for pain relief, are also being taken in life-threatening doses by millions in search of a fix or a release from poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity. People & Power sent filmmakers Naashon Zalk and Antony Loewenstein to Nigeria to investigate how the drug is smuggled, traded and abused, as well as the...

Note: This is the second of a two-part report. Watch Part 1 here: https://youtu.be/TrECb874LyY The United States seems more disunited than at any point in recent history - its politics so undermined by partisan divisions that consensus on almost anything is impossible to achieve. Toxic partisanship between Democrats and Republicans - the nation's two main parties - has soared under President Donald Trump's administration - worsening since the release of then-Special Counsel Robert...