On Women's Day, watch these five unsung heroes changing the world

On Women’s Day, watch these five unsung heroes changing the world

Remarkable women breaking barriers from Ukraine to Peru. These are some of our favourite short documentaries.


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Fulvia Conte on board the MSF rescue ship, Geo Barents, in the Mediterranean Sea [Screen grab / Al Jazeera]
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 8 Mar 20238 Mar 2023

From the battlefield in Ukraine, to the streets of Peru, to backstage at a Bollywood audition, every day women find ways to rise up against a world of challenges and fight back in a bid to improve people’s lives. This International Women’s Day seems the perfect opportunity to showcase Al Jazeera’s digital documentaries about some extraordinary women doing extraordinary things.

The Lifesaver

For thousands of asylum seekers facing certain death at sea, the first sign that they are safe is seeing the face of Fulvia Conte.
The young Italian woman leads a team on board the Geo Barents, a search-and-rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea operated by Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF). For weeks at a time, she and her crew set out to rescue asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Europe by crossing one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. “This sea has become a graveyard, so every second, every minute is important,” Fulvia says.

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Watch: Crossing the Mediterranean Sea: To Survive or To Die

The Principled Performer

The #MeToo movement brought down convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein and exposed, through the social media testimony of thousands of women, how often men in Hollywood wield their influence to pressure young women into unwanted sexual encounters.
That same practice pervades Bollywood, too, but the campaign has secured hardly any wins in India’s entertainment industry.
Satyaketi Mishra has been trying to break into a blockbuster role in Indian cinema for a while, but she finds that windows of opportunity slam shut when she rejects the advances of industry executives or sets boundaries about what she is comfortable doing on camera.
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Watch: Chasing Bollywood Dreams



The Medic Commander

When Yana Zinkevych was 18 years old, she ditched medical school and joined a unit of volunteer fighters in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. She was the only woman among them. “You had to fight for your place to prove you’re three times more capable than a man,” she says. “Sometimes, I had to disguise myself as a man.” It was then, while fighting against pro-Russian forces in 2014, that she realised her mission was to help injured comrades. Today, the 27-year-old is the founder of the Hospitallers, a battalion of volunteer medics that provides first aid and evacuates civilians and wounded soldiers from the front lines of Ukraine’s war. “There are so many injured people, injured physically and mentally. There is simply no chance for us to stop,” she says.
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Watch: Ukraine’s Unstoppable Medics




The Anti-Gun Campaigner

In the United States, gun violence kills, on average, more than 100 people every day. Men, overwhelmingly, are the perpetrators. Some, like lawyer Hayley Lawrence, have argued that the theory of toxic masculinity can explain this disparity. Men also are disproportionately the victims, accounting for 86 percent of deaths from firearms, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
And almost every victim leaves behind a grieving daughter, partner, sister or mother. One of those mothers is Tracy Tate, who lost her son, Jaleel, to gun violence in 2020.

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Watch: US Mothers Fighting Against Gun Violence



The Revolutionary (and Counter-revolutionary)
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Watch: Peru: A Divided Country


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Celebrate these trailblazers with outstanding Close Up digital documentaries here https://www.aljazeera.com/program/al-jazeera-close-up/).

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/8/international-womens-day-films-changing-the-world