Prokop Souček

Real people and their stories hidden behind the shared cell phone amateur videos shot during the Arab Spring in 2011. A documentary road movie in between digital space and reality. In December 2010, after a desperate shopkeeper set fire to himself and burnt to death in Tunisia, public riots began. In the following weeks and months a massive wave of revolutions moved to other Arab countries, with its extraordinary power set in motion by apparent certainties of oligarchic North African and Middle Eastern regimes. The main media and revolutionary method of communication between young Arabs is the internet. Social networks and Youtube represent a kind of meta-space free of government control. Videos shot with cell phone cameras, thousands of hours of brutal evidence against the power of the state, Revolution documenting itself online. How many personal videoarchives were possibly shot only during the mythical gathering of one million Egyptians in Tahrir square in February? And who are the real people hidden behind these iconic images? Would there be any revolution without these strong shared video-images?

Our documentary film "What’s the News?" will examine the process of news coverage and investigative journalism in established news outlets, the rising influence of alternative news media platforms and the motivations behind the creation of news. We will take a close look at the role of media in influencing opinions and social and democratic processes as well as threats that compromise the freedom of independent press and journalism in different parts of the world.
We will follow several established journalists in different countries with different socio-political and economic backgrounds and show how they operate in today’s changing media environment.