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The Fifth Floor

Factual: Life Stories

Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

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The Fifth Floor: A Childhood on the Rubbish Tips

Documentaries

Child scavenging plastic on Erbil tip

17/06/2016 GMT

A Childhood on the Rubbish Tips

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, A Childhood on the Rubbish Tips

The refugee children scavenging for a living on the toxic tips of Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.

From rubbish tip scavenger to BBC film maker: Namak Khoshnaw tells David Amanor why making a film about a rubbish dump in Erbil was a step back into his own childhood.

Namak Khoshaw is a freelance producer for BBC Persian.  He's made several films with the BBC about his birthplace, Iraqi Kurdistan, but his forthcoming documentary Life on the Rubbish Dump, about the child rubbish pickers on Erbil's main tip, is very close to home.  As a child Namak and his brothers were also rubbish pickers following the Kurdish uprising.  He tells us about that time, and about the refugee children he filmed working on the rubbish dump now.

The power of the headscarf
With headscarves being reclaimed as a style statement by young South African women, we take a walk around BBC Africa to find out about headscarf traditions and trends across the continent. 

India's Dalit Romeo and Juliet
How has an anti-Bollywood, low-budget regional language film made by a Dalit (formerly untouchable caste) filmmaker, become India's biggest sleeper hit of the year? The film is called Sairat, which means wild, and is about the often cruel and unsettling consequences of falling in love in India. The BBC's Khadeeja Arif and Sushant Mohan shed light on this unusual hit.

Searching for the Disappeared
BBC Mundo's Valeria Perasso shares her story of following a ground-breaking Argentine forensics team to Medellin, Colombia to search for the bodies of those who disappeared in the country's conflict between left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups. 

Following my father's tastebuds 
Juicy mangoes, dhal puri, potato balls, curry, chowmein... Carinya Sharples grew up hearing her father's mouthwatering memories of life in Guyana. How he would go and pick a mango off the tree in his garden, and buy 'shave ice' from street vendors. Now Carinya has returned to her father's homeland, and she takes the Fifth Floor on an exploration of the country through taste.

And Fifi Haroon's pick of stories from across the world wide web...

Image credit: BBC Namak Khoshnaw

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