Two-time Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and activist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is in the news once again as her documentary A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers is all set to premiere on March 26, 2019 at 10:00 p.m. in honor of Women’s History Month in the series Women, War & Peace II on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) - an American public broadcaster and television program distributor.
Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy took to social media to announce the good news. “Tune in to watch A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers on #womenwarpeacepbs March 25 and 26, 9-11pm,” she posted on her official Instagram handle.
According to the filmmaker, when they began to think about this film and interviewed women in Bangladesh who were part of the UN’s Peacekeeping unit, it shattered every stereotype that people held about Muslim women. “Here were these women wearing fatigues, leaving their children, leaving their husbands, leaving their families, traveling across the world…to a country, to a culture that was alien to them…to patrol the streets, to quell violence, to make sure that the women in that country were safe. Bangladeshi women were going to Haiti and they were making a difference. And that was a story that needed to be told,” she said.
Directed by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Geeta Gandbhir, A Journey of A Thousand Miles is a bold look at the women who make up the United Nations global force. It follows stories of three Bangladeshi policewomen who served with the UN Peacekeeping Mission to Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake and how they grapple with the harsh realities of becoming foot soldiers in fulfilling this mission.
