MADE IN ETHIOPIA (WORKING TITLE)
FEATURE DOCUMENTARY IN PRODUCTION
Co-director / Co-producer 2023
The film has been pitched at IDFA, Hot Docs, The Whickers, Sheffield, IFP (the Gotham) and EIDF.
BBC WORLD NEWS DOCUMENTARY
Cannabis: America's Green Gold Rush (23min)
As more US states move to legalise marijuana, there has been a rush to cash in on the business. In New Mexico, a bizarre boom and bust of marijuana has become a cautionary tale. Last summer, hundreds of Chinese migrant workers struggling with job scarcity during the pandemic flocked to a remote city on the Navajo Nation Indian reservation. They went there for what they believed were well paying jobs on hemp farms, but ended up in massive illegal marijuana operation that left 17 workers detained and many others displaced. Jessica Lussenhop explores the dark side of America's 'green gold rush' and its impact on the Navajo and Chinese communities.
Director / DP / Editor 2021
SCMP FILM
Fighting fentanyl: the drug from China destroying American lives (15min)
Overdoses linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, killed nearly 30,000 people in the United States in 2017. Authorities say most fentanyl sold in the state of Pennsylvania can be traced back to China. We went to Kensington, an area considered a “ground zero” of America’s opioid crisis, in the Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia, to find out how a drug funneled through from China is fueling a health crisis half a world away.
Director / DP / Editor 2019
CHANNEL NEWS ASIA
A Billion Chinese Dreams: Sustainable development in China (48 min)
Inspired by Peter Hessler's book ”Country Driving", a classic known for its keen observations of China as a time of monumental changes, veteran Chinese journalist Zhou Yijun travels across China along four unique routes - the Great Wall, railways running north-to-south, the Hu Line and the Yangtze River.
Yijun revisits the protagonists of "Country Driving" 10 years later to probe the meaning of home and happiness, the result of economic growth, the rich-poor divide and the issue of sustainable development as people seek to define their own Chinese dreams.
Aired on Channel News Asia in December, 2019.
Episodic director
BBC NEWS, OUR WORLD
China's New Silk Road (23 min)
China calls it the project of the century, a massive pathway of Chinese built infrastructure designed to drive trade across more than 60 countries. This new silk road, which echoes the trading routes of the past, could remake the global economy to China's advantage, and critics see it as a power grab by the communist state. The BBC's China Editor, Carrie Gracie, has travelled from the east of China to the west of Europe, to hear from people who live along the route of China's new Silk Road.
Aired on BBC News Channel in August, 2017.
Producer
BBC NEWS, OUR WORLD
China's Science Revolution (23 min)
From building the largest radio telescope the world has ever seen, transforming our understanding of the universe to vast subterranean experiments, hunting for the world’s weirdest particles to a radical new solution to a transplant crisis that’s now being rolled out to china’s vast population and missions into space with plans for the Moon and a race to the deep that could take China to the very bottom of the ocean. This is a nation making huge leaps in research. Welcome to China’s science revolution.
Aired on BBC News Channel in August, 2016.
Producer
CHOCOLATE TOWN: AFRICANS IN GUANGZHOU (14 min)
At least 20,000 African immigrants live and work in an area known as the "Chocolate Town"in China's Guangzhou.
Kojo, a businessman from Ghana tries to adjust to a new way of living as he carefully navigates challenges in a delicate relationship with his wife Cindy.
Director / Editor
Graduation project, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong, 2012.