The Documentary: Archive 2014

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the Middle East has experienced a proliferation of new TV channels keen to spread religious and political messages to audiences. There are new media stars – TV evangelists and religious leaders. But some of what is broadcast has been described as openly sectarian, provocative and even blasphemous. We look at two countries where this kind of broadcasting proliferates – Iraq and Egypt - and try to uncover the reasons for it, and the possible consequences.

Hungarian conductor – Ivan Fischer – is holding up a mirror to Hungarian society and has written an opera to expose growing intolerance. Lucy Ash reports

With regulation of newspapers planned, Steve Hewlett and a panel of international editors ask: how free is the UK press?

Fashion magazines, consumerism, and the changing face of Chinese fashion. Jessie Levene speaks to editors, photographers, designers and cultural commentators to find out how Chinese women are creating a new Chinese female identity.

A decision by his father to send him to ballet school changed the direction of Carlos Acosta’s life. Thanks to Fidel Castro’s belief that art should be accessible to all Cubans he received free ballet tuition. It shaped his character, and secured his future. Now he wants to give something back to his country by saving an abandoned ballet school in Havana. Vittorio Garatti’s School of Ballet is an extraordinary labyrinth of corridors, graceful arches and majestic brick and terracotta domes, and has been described as one of the most remarkable buildings of the 20th Century. But the ballet star’s attempts to restore the building have stirred Latin passions and protest.

Rupa Jha meets fellow Indian women who choose to be, or are forced to be, single. She comes face-to-face with a story of coercion, prejudice and neglect that is both shocking and moving. It is also a story about the reactionary attitudes, narrow-mindedness and sometimes outright misogyny that obstruct such women's choices.

Thousands of Uruguayans are hooked on a highly addictive cocaine derivative – ‘pasta base’. Will the legalisation of marijuana impact this problematic drug abuse? Linda Pressly reports.

Ingrid Betancourt - who was held captive for six years - explores how people's minds can be free even while they are in captivity.

The number of families in India employing detectives to spy on future brides and grooms is on the rise. Many dozens of premarital investigations happen each week, it’s now reported. Ed Butler has been finding out why.

Ex-Guantanamo detainees talk about freedom and how detention in the military prison changed their lives and thinking.

They are Asia’s economic giants – yet the historical record of Japan and China continues to cause tensions. In programme two, Japanese journalist Mariko Oi and Chinese journalist Haining Liu, travel around China, including the city of Nanjing, where Japanese forces committed rapes and mass killings during the war. How are events like these remembered in modern China? And, why can young Chinese consume Japanese pop culture while demonstrating against Japan’s historical record? The pair discover that, despite the deep cultural links between their nations, history remains a barrier.

Kim Ghattas travels through her native country Lebanon exploring the deepening sense of anxiety there over the war in neighbouring Syria.

They are Asia’s economic giants - yet the historical record of Japan and China continues to cause tensions. China’s leaders accuse Japan of failing to apologise for its wartime aggression – while Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, talks of rewriting the country’s pacifist Constitution. Tensions are rising in the South China seas. Japanese journalist Mariko Oi and Chinese journalist Haining Liu, visit each other's country to explore the intertwineed histories of their two nations and what they mean today.

The story of Russia's volunteer diggers armed with spades and metal detectors who search forests and swamps for the remains of Red Army soldiers seventy years after World War Two.

What role does music play for today’s soldiers? Soldiers stationed at Camp Bastion describe their music as an essential part of their lives - helping to drown out the hum of activity around camp and helps everybody to relax in their free time.

Voluntary euthanasia for adults has been legal since 2002 in Belgium. Now legislators are considering extending the right to die to children who are terminally ill.

With accusations of corruption and criminality, are the concerns about Sochi justified? Given that all Olympic host cities endure fierce criticism in the lead-up to the Games are they being exaggerated?

For centuries, Turkish traders have exploited their location on the historic Silk Road between east and west, selling to merchants travelling in both directions. And, as Jim O'Neill reports Turkey's geography remains important to this day as the country becomes an aviation hub, a conduit for gas and oil, and a unique visitor destination. Yet Turkish plans go much further too. So can this ambitious country combine its deep-rooted trading skills with ultra modern technology to develop world-beating manufacturers? Or will its much lauded potential remain just that?

Mexico's hope of becoming the workshop of North America was shattered by China's domination of cheap exports, but recently, the Mexican dream is in sight again. As Beijing opts for "quality not quantity" of growth, companies are returning, drawn by competitive labour and proximity to the US market. In the first part of a landmark series, the economist Jim O'Neill travels across Mexico to investigate. He discovers that its ambitions now go far beyond cheap manufacturing. But can Mexico's youthful, reforming government overcome the challenges of widespread poverty, crime and a huge number of people living outside the formal economy

Turkey has notoriously vague and extensive anti-terror laws which have been used to jail dozens of journalists over the last six months. Journalists say these laws have been used as a pretext to prevent them from reporting on subjects the government finds sensitive, such as the Kurdish issue or Turkey’s policy towards Syria. Selin Gerit investigates why journalists so often find themselves under attack from the authorities.