NFB - About the NFB

The NFB is sending two powerful feature documentaries to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the premier showcase for U.S. and international independent films. Patrick Reed's Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma (White Pine Pictures/NFB) and Yung Chang's award-winning Up the Yangtze (EyeSteelFilm/NFB) both look at the human spirit during times of massive change and crises. Both films screen in World Cinema Documentary Competition.

In Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma, director Patrick Reed follows Dr. James Orbinski on a heart-wrenching journey back to the lands and people whose life-and-death struggle marked him forever. Orbinski accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as their president and was a field doctor during the Somali famine and the Rwandan genocide.

Yung Chang's award-winning documentary, Up the Yangtze, follows the Yu family as they lose their home and livelihood to the flooding of the Three Gorges Dam and are forced to send their daughter, Yu Shui, off to work. In a bitter irony, she is hired by the Farewell Cruises, the tourist trade that offers a final glimpse at a legendary world of the Yangtze River before it disappears forever. Stunningly photographed, the film juxtaposes the poignant details of Yu Shui's story against the monumental forces at work around her.