Emmy-Winners Gesbeen Mohammad & Robin Barnwell Launch Current Affairs Indie Telling “Stories Of The Year” From Iran, Afghanistan & Beyond

EXCLUSIVE: Current affairs producer-directors Gesbeen Mohammad and Robin Barnwell, who between them have scooped Emmys, Peabodys and BAFTAs, are launching an indie dedicated to “taking on the stories of the year.”

Sisu Pictures kicks off with two docs airing on the same night in the shape of the BBC’s Iran: The People’s Story and Channel 4’s The Taliban’s War on Women, both of which explore authoritarian regimes and had to virtually be filmed in secret.

Co-founder Mohammad and Creative Director Barnwell are storied producer-directors who have won awards for the likes of Mariupol: The People’s Story and Inside Russia: Putin’s War at Home.

With “facts and verification at the heart of everything we do,” they said Sisu will sometimes make docs from regimes that are hard for journalists to reach. They will “take on the stories of the year,” often retrospectively. “Five years after the Taliban took over, or 25 years after 9/11, for example, we look at the big stories and find a way to tell them through a human, powerful lens,” said Barnwell.

Tonight’s Sisu-produced docs fall within this category and give a flavor of what the indie is trying to achieve. Iran: The People’s Story investigates a crackdown on dissent since the January massacre and reveals how the regime has used war as a smokescreen to tighten its grip and deepen authoritarianism, while The Taliban’s War on Women exposes the reality under the Taliban’s increasingly repressive rule, following Afghans in exile on a mission to rescue victims desperate to escape.

“We’re losing sight of the truth in many places,” said Barnwell. “People say the future will be defined by the battle between lies and truth, rather than simply by competing ideologies or liberal democracy. Both films we’re launching with address these lies. We’re providing a platform for people to speak the truth and helping deliver that truth to a wide audience.”

Going forwards, the pair revealed they are working on another two projects that are secret “to protect people on the ground,” while they are exploring more retrospective documentaries to pitch to the likes of Netflix and HBO.

The world of current affairs programming is in a tight spot with funding harder to come by than ever but rather than discourage the founders, it drove them to launch their own vehicle.

“At a personal level, we felt that Sisu could be a solution for us as filmmakers,” said Mohammad. “The market is shrinking so the question was, ‘How do we keep telling important stories about the world when budgets are stagnating?’ We wanted to keep the vision at the heart of the filmmaking, so we thought we’d create our own company. That gives us more control over budgets and lets us make serious, boutique films that we can raise the capital for as filmmakers.”

With that in mind, Barnwell and Mohammad are working with co-producers like French-German broadcaster Arte on the Iran and Afghanistan films alongside a yet-to-be-revealed American partner. The pair noted it is now rare to get full funding from one public service broadcaster for a knotty current affairs doc about a faraway regime that takes years to film.

Telling these stories remains front of mind, however, amid a “decrease” in places where journalists are now allowed to report, Mohammad said. “We often look at a map and think about where we can go to film or do journalism,” she said. “Bearing witness to people’s experiences, rather than making statements, helps protect the journalism itself.”

And in many senses this journalism remains in rude health. Investigative docs like Navalny and Mr. Nobody vs Putin have won Oscars of late, while Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s NAZA has attracted global acclaim. A documentary may even win the Best Picture Oscar this year, with A24’s You Can See Everything hotly tipped and raking in millions at the box office. “This all shows there’s demand for serious investigations,” said Barnwell.

“Report the facts fairly and complete the work”

The pair stressed several times their dedication to compliance and impartiality, with “the amount of time we spend verifying facts increasing enormously,” according to Barnwell.

The BBC has been hit hard by impartiality scandals of late including the botched Donald Trump edit that saw the resignations of its Director General and news chief, along with the Gaza documentary that was later revealed to have been part-narrated by the son of a Hamas minister.

Barnwell and Mohammad wouldn’t be drawn on these specific crises, both of which involved third-party production outfits, but they said it is getting harder to remain impartial in the age of social media.

“I think there’s pressure on journalists to comment constantly on social media, as part of the battle for attention,” added Mohammad. “Younger generations, in particular, can struggle to draw the line between activism and advocacy on one hand, and impartiality on the other. Activist filmmaking has its place, but filmmakers need to be transparent with viewers about their perspective, their contributors and the characters they’ve chosen. For us, the line is clear: report the facts fairly and complete the work.”