Gesbeen Mohammad
Journalist & Documentary Filmmaker
BAFTA and Emmy-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, Gesbeen Mohammad has spent her career getting at the heart of difficult stories by combining emotional human stories with complex undercover filming.
Gesbeen has produced FRONTLINE’s Peabody-winning China Undercover, broadcast in April 2020. The special documentary went undercover inside one of the world’s most repressive and secretive regions, Xinjiang in China’s northwest. The film featured undercover footage that showed extensive digital surveillance of Muslims living in Xinjiang – described as an “open prison” - and harrowing accounts of families torn apart and Muslims who were held in detention camps.
In 2019 and early 2020, Gesbeen spent several months in Hong Kong, for FRONTLINE and the UK’s Channel 4, following protesters through the most intense clashes over months of pro-democracy protests. The Peabody and BAFTA-nominated Battle for Hong Kong examines their struggle against what they say is growing influence from the communist government of mainland China.
In the UK, most recently Gesbeen produced Outbreak: The Virus That Shook The World for ITV (2021) – the global story of the first year of Covid-19, tracing the devastation caused by the spread of the virus across four continents. This feature-length documentary explores the science, the politics and the tragic stories of the victims who are often the most vulnerable. Going undercover into Wuhan, China, medical professionals are filmed covertly for the first time, claiming that the contagiousness of the virus was covered-up for weeks by the authorities.
In 2019, Gesbeen produced the ground-breaking Undercover: Inside China’s Gulag for the UK’s ITV channel. The documentary goes undercover inside a secretive province in China to provide a vivid insight into how its government is holding an estimated million or more Muslims in detention camps without trial - the largest incarceration of an ethnic group since the Second World War. The film won a BAFTA, Grierson, International Emmy, British Journalism Award, Prix Italia, Amnesty International Award, and Venice TV Award, as well as nominations at the Royal Television Society Awards, Banff Rockie Awards, and Broadcast Awards.
In 2018, she co-produced the BAFTA and Emmy-nominated Iran Unveiled: Taking on the Ayatollahs (ITV), which examines the political and social upheaval in Iran through the eyes of four women ‘The Girls of Revolution Street’.
Gesbeen has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in investigative journalism, both from City University.
Email:
FrontlineEditors@wgbh.orgLanguages Spoken:
English
Areas of Expertise:
Terrorism Social Issues Climate & Environment Terrorism World, China