Speaking at the BBC Unscripted panel at this year’s Sheffield DocFest, Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, announced two new series and three single films.
A new series from the award-winning team behind Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland will hear personal stories from different sides of the conflict in Once Upon a Time in the Middle East. The political and military consequences of the deadly Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 are still unfolding – both in Gaza, where more than fifty thousand have been killed, and across the Middle East, confirming its place as the most fought-over land on the planet. Once Upon a Time in the Middle East tells the personal stories of people caught up in a never-ending conflict across a sweep of history.
This series will take a long-term view, looking at how the situation in the Middle East has evolved, the roots of the conflict that has affected both Israelis and Palestinians and its ripple effect across the region, focusing on the personal cost of a war that has raged on and off for decades. By interviewing ordinary men and women from all sides of the conflict, who hold multiple points of view on the history of the Middle East, and by showing rare, unseen archival footage, the series will tell the human stories of those who have lived through this complex history.
James Bluemel said, “Our Once Upon a Time documentary strand gives regular people the space to share their experience of historical events without judgment and seeks empathy and understanding from all sides. We have told the stories of people who experienced the war in Iraq, lived through the conflict in Northern Ireland and even those who have been pioneers in outer space. Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is our most ambitious project yet.”
Three new feature-length films, all directed by women, shine a light on vital British stories. Leading documentary maker Molly Dineen explores the social history of Britain through 40 years of her incredible unseen archive in Molly Dineen: Our People. Dineen’s work has taken us into communities, workplaces, and institutions and has shown us how our country has been shaped by the past and adapted to the present. Using her extensive archive of unseen footage, Our People will present a personal portrait of Britain from the 1980s to now. We’ll meet an extraordinary diversity of people, from Black Rod to Blacker Dread, from road diggers to Tony Blair, in a series of behind-the-scenes encounters shot over 40 years.
Throughout the footage, there is a clear thread, both in the endless ways we separate but also in the ways we come together, how our connections and alliances define our way of life, and how our identity and sense of belonging – behind the scenes in the House of Lords, embedded in the Brixton Jamaican community, or in the East Sussex village where her mother ran the local Post Office — can lead us into the future.
Working closely with award-winning editor, Ollie Huddleston, this feature documentary will help us understand the profound changes in the psychology of the country during a period of political, economic and demographic ferment – a privileged insight into how Britain works and how we got here.
Poison Water, directed by Hannah Lowes, tells the true story of one of Britain’s worst mass water poisonings. On a summer afternoon in North Cornwall, 1988, 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate were accidentally poured into the drinking water supply. An estimated 20,000 homes were served a toxic cocktail with aluminium levels up to 3,000 times the EU limit. As taps ran black, skin blistered, and hair changed colour, the public was told it was safe to drink. Little did anyone realise that, years later, questions would still be unanswered about the consequences of consuming that poisoned water and the actions of those responsible for supplying it.
With Britain’s troubled water networks rarely out of the news, Poison Water rewinds the story of water privatisation to its very beginning. While Margaret Thatcher was preparing to launch her flagship policy in Westminster, in North Cornwall, the population was kept in the dark about the nature of the water in their homes. Exploring accusations of greed and cover-up, Poison Water tells the story of shattered public trust, safety compromised and a community’s search for the truth.
Taken: Britain’s Forced Adoption Scandal, a co-commission with BBC Scotland, directed by Kate Scholefield, uncovers the full story of Britain’s forced adoption scandal for the first time. Between the 1940s and the early 1980s, nearly 300,000 unmarried women in the UK had their babies forcibly taken for adoption by the state. Institutions – including social services, government agencies, and the NHS – appeared to be working together in a system seemingly driven by deep-rooted prejudice against women based on their class, race, and marital status.
This documentary centres on the mothers’ and their families’ powerful firsthand testimonies, revealing how these communities continue to live with the trauma decades later. Woven with rich archive material, these voices paint a vivid and deeply personal portrait of a shameful and hidden chapter in British history that inflicted lasting pain and divided families.
Now, those affected are seeking long-overdue justice. In Scotland, the film follows a team of distinguished lawyers pursuing government redress, while in England, calls for an official apology from the British government are growing. We have exclusive access to the lawyers leading these efforts.
Alongside these stories, the film explores ongoing investigations into the British government’s role in the policy of forced adoption and the lasting multigenerational impact of a hormone-blocking drug administered to many of these women, uncovering a potential medical scandal that still affects these communities today.
In addition, award-winning journalist Mobeen Azhar returns to investigate what’s really going on inside the UK prison system in a new BBC Three series, Coerced or Corrupted: Inside Prisons.
Clare Sillery said: “In our increasingly polarised world, where algorithms feed us the voices and opinions which chime with our own, documentaries have an ever more important role to play, bringing us perspectives and stories that have previously remained unheard.
I hope James Bluemel’s latest series will offer viewers a rare and precious opportunity. From the Iraq war to the conflict in Northern Ireland, in his Once Upon a Time series of documentaries, James has been fearless in tackling the most complex of subjects. His ability to draw out and connect intimate, unheard stories, combined with unseen archives, is truly remarkable, helping us experience events through the eyes of others, even those with whom we may profoundly disagree. This next series will focus that approach on the most challenging of conflicts.
The other documentaries announced today reveal big, complex, and uniquely British stories which explore who we are and the values that underpin us as a nation, from the forced adoption scandal to mass water poisoning in North Cornwall and an insight into the UK’s prison system. In addition, one of our most acclaimed filmmakers, Molly Dineen, shares her extensive personal archive to present a very personal portrait of Britain from the 1980s to now.”
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