Max Duncan is an award-winning, multilingual director, cinematographer and journalist making long- and short-form documentaries and series. He started his career in China as a video journalist for Reuters before going freelance to dive into the human stories at the heart of the country’s extraordinary transformation. After a decade in Beijing, seven years in Madrid and one year in London, he brings the same energy and curiosity to diverse factual projects around the world. His films are urgent but intimate, always cinematic while never losing sight of the humanity or the facts. He uses fluent Mandarin and Spanish and cultural sensitivity to build access and trust with subjects from farmers and factory workers to celebrities. Max has received recognition including a World Press Photo Award, support from Pulitzer, and is an alumnus of Yaddo and Logan Nonfiction programs. His first feature documentary, Made in Ethiopia, was awarded the Jury Special Mention at Tribeca Festival 2024, toured 50 international festivals and screened on 15 international broadcasters.
Feature-length Documentary (2024)
Director/Producer/Director of Photography/Co-editor
When a massive Chinese factory complex attempts a high-stakes expansion in rural Ethiopia, three women have their faith in industrialisation tested to the limit.
After premiering at Tribeca Festival, where it received the Special Jury Mention, Made in Ethiopia went on to screen at over 50 festivals. Represented by sales agent Dogwoof,
it sold to 15 international broadcasters and counting.
“Absorbing study of Chinese investment in Africa|”
One of FT’s Six Films to Watch this Week ⭐︎ ⭐︎ ⭐︎ ⭐︎
Danny Leigh, The Financial Times
Director / director of photography / editor / aerial photographer
Down From the Mountains
A World Press Photo Award-winning documentary follows the lives of three children from the Yi ethnic group left behind in the mountains of southwest China by parents seeking work over 1,000 miles away. The film was made with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is featured on ChinaFile, a product of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, as well as PBS, Aeon and The Atlantic.
Filmmaker / aerial photographer
Frozen Out: The Abandoned US Interpreters on Europe’s Border
A short documentary for the Guardian on two friends who served the US military as interpreters during the war in Afghanistan, but like many, weren't been granted visas to emigrate to the US. With their lives threatened by the Taliban, they joined the migrants heading for western Europe, only to find themselves trapped in Serbia on the wrong side of impenetrable borders, living in squalor with hundreds of others.
Ahmad's (not his real name) face was obscured for his safety over 6 months after the original film was released as he was forced to return to Afghanistan)
Filmmaker / aerial photographer
Surviving the Sun
People with albinism in sub-Saharan Africa face discrimination and violence, but by far the greatest threat to their lives is skin cancer. This short documentary produced in collaboration with NGO Standing Voice profiles Tanzania farmer and mother Kudra Maingu from her village on the banks of Lake Victoria through a clinic that removes a life-threatening tumour.
Series director / cinematographer / editor
DIVIDED CITIES: Melilla
Everyone in Melilla has some connection to the city’s most visible and controversial feature: a huge barbed-wire fence, which separates this Spanish port city from the rest of north Africa. Asylum seekers like Aboubacar wait for months in hidden forest camps to scale the fence, populist politicians like Jesús want to strengthen it, and both the Moroccan and Melillan economy depend on the 30,000 Moroccans like Youssra who cross through it every day to work. Will Melilla embrace its fate as a city embedded in Africa – or will it succumb to populist Trump-style demands to build a wall?
One episode of Divided Cities, a five-part documentary series I directed for the Guardian exploring five cities split by major global divisions.
Director of photography / producer / aerial photographer
Link to the Guardian interactive documentary here.
Mekong: A River Rising is a multiple award-winning interactive documentary, part of the Guardian's Keep it in the Ground climate change campaign. The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the most important river in Southeast Asia. Ahead of the crucial 2015 climate change talks in Paris, environmental correspondent John Vidal and I travelled through the Mekong countries of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, meeting the people affected by climate change and witnessing the ecological havoc created by giant dams, deforestation, coastal erosion and fast-growing cities. The project won a Webby Award 2016 for best use of video or moving image online and a One World Media Award 2016 for digital media.
Videographer
Link to the interactive documentary here
Part of the Guardian's 'Keep it in the Ground Campaign', this special interactive documentary investigates the effect of China's addiction to coal both on the people who mine it, and on those affected by the climate change it causes. We travelled through barren northwest China, and saw landscapes scarred by coal mining and ravaged by desertification. We met families broken by black lung, a disease caused by the inhalation of fine dust particles estimated to affect 6 million Chinese miners and manual labourers. We also met the last hangers on in villages otherwise deserted due to rising temperatures and drying wells.