Storyville unveils latest slate of international docs

BBC Storyville has unveiled its Spring slate of international documentaries, led by a Misfits doc following a man who was tricked to take part in a Japanese reality TV show.

McQueen and Super/Man: The Cristopher Reeve Story outfit Misfits Entertainment is behind The Contestant which unpacks how the man – Nasubi – thought he was going to an audition when a TV producer led him into a room, ordered him to strip naked and told him his task was to fill out contest coupons to win what he needed to survive.

Although he could have left at any time, he stayed for 15 months, not knowing his experiences were being broadcast to over 15m people and he had become the most famous television personality in Japan.

The 2023 Hulu film was directed by Claire Titley and combines clips from the show with previously unseen footage and interviews with Nasubi, his family and the show’s producer.

Produced by Megumi Inman, Andee Ryder and Ian Bonhôte, the doc will air on 17 June.

German indie DocDays Productions is the producer of 2025 film The Srebrenica Tape, centring on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, where around 8,000 Muslim men were murdered after an invasion by Bosnian Serb troops in 1995.

The doc is inspired a four-hour VHS tape shot by an amateur filmmaker for his nine-year-old daughter, describing everyday life in the enclave. The filmmaker died during the massacre, but the tape survived the destruction. In the doc, the daughter returns to the town to retrace her father’s footsteps.

The Srebrenica Tape, which will air on 1 July, is directed by Chiara Sambuchi and produced by Antje Boehmert.

Australia’s Over Here Productions and Guru Media are the co-producers of 2024 film The Wolves Always Come at Night, which is shot in Mongolia.

It follows a young couple who are left devastated by a sandstorm which kills their flock of sheep, forcing them to move to the city. The film will show them being haunted by dreams of their past, blending documentary and fiction.

Set to air on 24 June, the doc is directed by Gabrielle Brady and produced by Ariunaa Tserenpil, Julia Niethammer and Rita Walsh. The writers are Brady, Davaasuren Dagvasuren and Otgonzaya Dashzeveg.

Israel’s Kuma Studios and NGI Productions have co-produced the film The Jackal Speaks: Inside the Mind of a Mass Murderer, with first-time access to Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, aka Carlos the Jackal – the man behind a series of assassinations and bombings from 1973 to 1985.

Speaking from a French high-security prison, he discusses his childhood in Venezuela, his radicalisation, his operations across Europe and the Middle East, and his relationships with the likes of Colonel Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden.

The film is produced and directed by Yaron Niski and Danny Liber with producers Donna Naor Hacohen, Shira Margalit and Elad Kuperma, and it will air on 3 June.

Also produced out of Israel is 2023 film Wedding Night, exploring the feelings of ultra-Orthodox Jews about the expectations and pressures around matchmaking and marriage, being raised almost entirely separately from the opposite sex until marriage.

Airing on 10 June, the film is directed by Rachel Elitzur with producer and cinematographer Avigail Sperber, and Guy Lavie and Keren Gleicher exec producers for the indie yesDocu.

A previously announced doc called White Man Walking, produced by Osun Group in association with Doc Hearts, is also part of the Spring slate. It follows white filmmaker Rob Bliss as he walks across the US wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt.