Many of Doran's documentaries cover the lives of people caught up war zones around the world.[17] His 2017 film The Boy Who Started the Syrian War, which has received over 100 million views globally, centers on the story of how anti-Assad graffiti created by schoolboys had reportedly started the Syrian civil war.[8] In 2016, his film ISIS in Afghanistan won two Emmy awards in the outstanding continuing coverage of a news story in a news magazine, and the best report in a news magazine categories,[18] as well as a Peabody award[19] and three awards at the New York Film Festival.
Doran has directed and produced numerous documentaries, including:
Year
Title
Plot
2021
The Fans Who Make Football: Celtic FC
This documentary explores what it means to be a fan of Celtic football club.[24][25]
2018
Crimea: Russia's Dark Secret
The documentary reveals the occupation of Crimea by Russia, and Russia's systematic and blatant violations of human rights on the territory of the peninsula.[26]
2017
ISIL Target Russia
This film journeys deep into the impregnable mountains of northern Afghanistan, where thousands of ISIL fighters are training and plotting an attack on Russia.[27]
2017
The Boy Who Started the Syrian War
An intimate look at the war in Syria through the eyes of Mouawiyah Syasneh, the boy whose anti-Assad graffiti lit the spark that engulfed Syria.[28][8]
2016
ISIS and the Taliban: The Journey
Doran journeys to Afghanistan to join Zubair Massoud, adviser to the national security council. They travel through some of the most dangerous territory in the world, to discover just how bad the situation really is after the withdrawal of most NATO forces two years previously.[29]
2015
The Taliban Hunters
This film follows the 'Taliban Hunters,' Karachi's elite police unit who are fighting back against Taliban militants in an attempt to regain control of the dangerous city.[30]
2015
Kenya's Enemy Within
An investigation into whether the wall promised by Kenya on the border of Somalia, in response to al-Shabab attacks, is already too late.[31]
2015
ISIS in Afghanistan
A special report that reveals how ISIS is on the rise in Afghanistan, and how they are targeting and training children to join Jihad in the war-torn country.[32][8]
2015
Living Beneath the Drones
A film that investigates the devastating impact that war and living under the constant threat of drones has on the mental health of the people of Afghanistan.[33]
2014
Syria's Second Front
A film which looks at the complexities of Syria's civil war. It is no longer the regime fighting president al-Assad, but they are also facing ISIS, who are quickly gaining ground and imposing their own barbaric rule.[34]
2014
On the Front Lines with the Taliban
With unprecedented access, this film follows Taliban fighters, as they launch an attack against the Afghan National Army from the Taliban stronghold in Charkh district, just an hour outside the Afghan capital, Kabul.[35]
2014
Arming the Rebels
This film offers a rare glimpse into a covert programme by US intelligence forces who have been training and arming select groups of Syrian rebels out of a previously reported location, in Qatar.[36]
2014
The Girls of the Taliban
A film which explores the new wave of privately run madrasahs that are opening across Afghanistan. As well as meeting the girls who study there, their families and the men behind the schools, the feeling among women's rights groups is also captured - they fear their already limited freedoms are again under threat.
2014
Pakistan's Hidden Shame
A film directed by Mohammed Naqvi focusing on a culture in Peshawar of sexual abuse of street children.[37] It was screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest in June 2014.
2012
The Battle for Syria
Doran and Guardian correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad travel to the frontline where rebel fighters face the forces of Bashar al-Assad's regime, witnessing the deadliest period of the fighting so far.
2012
Opium Brides
Najibullah Quraishi journeys deep into the Afghan countryside to reveal how ISAF poppy eradication programmes are forcing Afghan peasant farmers into debt with drug mafias. When they cannot pay, the traffickers take their daughters.[38]
2012
In the Hands of Al Qaeda
Ghaith Abdul Ahad investigates how Al Qaeda was able to capture Yemeni towns and cities from right under the noses of the United States and the Sana'a administration.[39]
2011
Pakistan's Open Secret
An observational documentary following a flamboyant 'family' of transgender people as they hustle and scrape together a living on the streets of Karachi.[40]
2011
The Promoters
An investigation into extra judicial killings in Kenya, where human rights workers accuse police of killing more than 8,500 young men in the last ten years alone.[41]
2011
Sudan: The Break Up
Made for Al-Jazeera, this three part series charts the troubled history of Sudan from pre-colonial times to the present day.[42][43]
This controversial and widely acclaimed[22][44][45][46][47] film shows how former Northern Alliancewarlords and powerful businessmen are preying on impoverished young boys in Afghanistan. The ancient tradition of Bachi Bazi (translation: boy-play) was banned under the Taliban, but has resurfaced since they were routed by ISAF in late 2001. Boys as young as 11 are bought and sold like slaves, dressed up like women and made to dance before audiences of men. The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan exposes how these boys are systematically sexually abused, and frequently murdered by jealous rival owners. Despite these practices being illegal under Afghan law, the film shows that the men committing the abuse do so with impunity. This film premiered at the Royal Society of Arts on 29 March 2010.[48] It was aired on PBS Frontline in the United States, and True Stories in the UK on 20 April 2010.
2010
Afghanistan: Behind Enemy Lines
Broadcast in February, 2010, as an episode of Dispatches on the British television network, Channel 4, this film shows how fighters from the proscribed extremist Islamic group, Hezb-e-Islami, are opening a new battlefront in Northern Afghanistan.[49][50] Filmed by the Rory Peck Award winning British-Afghan journalist, Najibullah Quraishi, who spent 2 weeks with these fighters, Afghanistan: Behind Enemy Lines includes footage of the fighters constructing, planting and detonating roadside bombs (or IEDs).[51] Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Guardian newspaper, described the film as "An extraordinary and intimate documentary depicting the lives of fighters within the Taliban's insurgency in Afghanistan".[52] This film was broadcast on PBS Frontline as Behind Taliban Lines in February 2010.[53] This film was nominated for a British Film and Television Academy Award in the Best Current Affairs programme category. In June 2010 it won the One World Media Award for best TV documentary.
2009
Africa Rising
This film documents the failure of Western development policy in Africa, and shows how a community of impoverished Ethiopian farmers are working themselves out of poverty through collectivization and micro-finance initiatives. It won the 2010 One World Media MDGs Award, being described by judges as "superbly shot and uplifting... a compelling piece of work that drew the viewer into the heart of a community as it struggled to shake off a dependency culture".[54]
2007
Whiskey in the Jar
Documenting life on the remote Irish island of Tory, the only place in Ireland with an appointed sovereign.[55][56]
Shown on BBC2, this programme exposed how anti-HIV drugs were tested on "vulnerable and poor children at a New York care home ... who had no choice in whether or not to take part in trials and no proper advocates to speak on their behalf".[57] Describing HIV medicines given to the children as "futile" and "dangerous", the programme also demonstrated how children had been taken from their families to enable the "experimental" drug treatment to continue.[57] Despite critics' charges that the programme was "lurid, untrue" and contained "dangerous lies" a BBC investigation did not uphold these complaints.
Interviewees presented as eyewitnesses state that several thousand Taliban prisoners of war were transported to Sheberghan prison in sealed containers and that hundreds or thousands of prisoners died.[63][64] Afghans interviewed in the film claim that U.S. personnel were present and involved in mass killings.[65][64][66]
A preliminary version of the documentary was shown to the European Parliament and the German Parliament in June 2002, under the title Massacre at Mazar, prompting calls for investigations from human rights bodies.[65][63][64][66]The Pentagon denied allegations of U.S. involvement and released a statement, saying "U.S. Central Command looked into it a few months ago, when allegations first surfaced when there were graves discovered in the area of Sherberghan prison. They looked into it and did not substantiate any knowledge, presence or participation of US service members."[63] An August 2002 report in Newsweek, based on a UN memo, described a mass grave site in the Dasht-i-Leili desert, but said there was no evidence that U.S. personnel had been involved.[67][68]
The story resurfaced in July 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama asked his national security team to look into allegations that the Bush administration had resisted calls to have the matter investigated.[69][70][71]
Life in post-Soviet era Moscow: the film documents a month in the life of one of Russia's new breed of oligarch bankers, and shadows an elite police unit tasked with tackling organised crime.[citation needed]
The story of the young women who were forced by the KGB to seduce foreign military personnel, businessmen and diplomats in order to elicit secrets from them. Includes first-hand testimony from former KGB agents, some of the women involved, as well as American intelligence analysts.[75][76]
1994
The Red Bomb
A three-part series on the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb, built in 1949, years before the West thought the Soviet Union had the capability to build such a bomb. Features interviews with former Soviet spies and scientists.[77][78][79]
^Anderson Cooper (12 July 2009). "Obama orders review of alleged slayings of Taliban in Bush era". CNN. Retrieved 14 July 2009. President Obama has ordered national security officials to look into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001.