Documentaries That Changed The World

Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia is a 1979 documentary film by John Pilger concerning first the bombing of Cambodia by the U.S. that took place in 1970, the subsequent brutality and genocide that occurred when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge militia took over, and finally the lack of aid given by the western countries.

Almost all the people in Nicaragua rose up against a tyrant called Somoza, whose family had been in power for more than 40 years, put there by the United States marines. That uprising costs 50,000 lives, almost as many as died for America in Vietnam, but out of a population of less than 3 million people. In 1979, the Sandinistas won a popular revolution in Nicaragua, putting an end to decades of the corrupt US-backed Somoza dictatorship. They based their reformist ideology on that of the English Co-operative Movement, but was to prove too ‘radical’ for the Reagan administration. In this film, Pilger describes the achievements of the Sandinistas and their “threat of a good example”.

Burp! Pepsi Vs Coke in the Ice Cold War traces the history of these brands against the backdrop of global politics. The second world war was the perfect vehicle for Coca-Cola distribution (including to the Nazis), bottling plants on frontlines paid for by the US war department.

John Pilger and David Munro look behind the political rhetoric and discover the world of international arms dealing.

John Pilger investigates US soldiers' attitudes to the Vietnam War

The sensational expose of the complicity of Britain, USA and Australia in the continuing genocide in East Timor.

John Pilger and David Munro go undercover in one of the world's most isolated, and extraordinary countries, Burma, which Amnesty International calls 'a prison without bars'. They discover slave labour preparing for tourism and foreign investment.

The Australian heroine from start, when she carried the Olympic torch into the stadium, to finish, as she crossed the line to take 400m gold, was the indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman. Against the will of many of her still oppressed people, she came to represent the symbol, albeit shallow, of reconciliation between White and Aboriginal Australia. But the frenzy of flames and fireworks surrounding the Games blinded the rest of the world to the darker side of a land down under.

John Pilger exposes the devastating effect that UN sanctions had on the children of Iraq during the 1990s

A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have lasted for more than 50 years. Contains some interviews with the children in this conflict.

The documentary investigates George W Bush's "war on terror". In "liberated" Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one women, "in many ways worse than the Taliban". In Washington, a series of remarkable interviews includes senior Bush officials and former intelligence officers. In the week that the Hutton inquiry into the death of the British scientist Dr David Kelly releases its report, a former senior CIA official tells Pilger that the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction was "95 per cent charade"

This tells a story literally 'hidden from history'. In the 1960s and 70s, British governments, conspiring with American officials, tricked into leaving, then expelled the entire population of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean. The aim was to give the principal island of this Crown Colony, Diego Garcia, to the Americans who wanted it as a major military base.

Interview with John Pilger at HAY Festival, 2006