Switched at birth

Karina, who calls herself a living Barbie doll, enjoys a glamorous, carefree lifestyle. She believes she is envied and looked up to by most young women. And her whole life is coloured pink.

Meet a man who has taken in dozens of children that have been failed by their parents and the system. With tough love he is teaching them how to get over their pasts and succeed in life.

In the poverty-stricken former Soviet country of Tajikistan, the men have sought job opportunities abroad and the women are left in charge of agrarian communities where cattle provide almost everything and luxuries are few.

“Gender equality gives children a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.” This is the basic idea of the gender-free pedagogy taught in Sweden. Any reference to gender is eliminated from toys, books and even speech. Tanja Bergkvist, a Swedish blogger, shows how this process can reach absurdity.

Alyona felt unfulfilled with her respectable city job, so she dropped everything to live in a rural village community which had been established for abandoned children. How does the village purport to save children's souls? Can it save hers?

Kosovo, with NATO’s help, won independence from Serbia in 1999. In 2014 Serbia opened its borders with the young republic allowing tens of thousands of migrants to leave Kosovo for Europe. Disenchanted Kosovars hoped to escape poverty and unemployment  by seeking better lives abroad for themselves and their children. The massed departure has come to be known as “the Exodus”.

Single dads are both breadwinners and nurturers: they raise their children without their wives. Learn the reasons behind single fatherhood in Russia on RTDoc.

Escaping harsh reality or relaxing after a hard working day? A guilty pleasure or the only reason to wake up in the morning? Computer games are made for fun, but sometimes they cause one's real life turning into a slaughterous level which inevitably results in Game Over. 

Don’t mess with Texas. RT travels to the Republic of Texas and meets Texans who are proud of their heritage, embrace self-reliance and are ready to live by what they preach, even if it strays from the norms of mainstream American society.

A stranger in his homeland and a stranger in his adopted country, a former Soviet soldier had to stay in Afghanistan for 29 years after being captured by the Mujahideen and made to fight on the side of his country's enemy. In this film, he finally comes back to his native land, but is he welcomed?

When the local men prove to be too unreliable in a small Russian village, it's up to the women to take control, doing everything from administrating the community to running one of the local dairy farms. 

Pastor and pilgrim Gennady Mokhnenko - a foster father of 32 former street boys, travels to Africa to sponsor a 33rd son, a boy from the streets of Kenya. He brings along three of his foster sons and a team of volunteers. They work in orphanages and hospitals, bring money to provide medications, food and clothes in their mission to help Kenyan street kids and orphans in their day-to-day struggles. RT’s camera crew follows them in Kenya to hear about their experiences in this troubled part of the world.

These women are not ashamed of their appearance – on the contrary, they live happy lives and are proud of what they have achieved. They are called little ladies, but the life they lead is full of big accomplishments and great events. We meet two little ladies to hear their stories.

When people are released from jail they have nowhere to live, no jobs and no opportunities to start over, so they are in danger of ending up behind bars again. Having been in their shoes once, Yury Potapenko knows just how much they need another chance and gives them one.

Egypt is a land where the concept of gender equality has barely taken root. It’s hard for women to make ends meet and even harder if they happen to be single parents. When Sisa’s husband died, leaving her alone to bring up and feed a young daughter, she came up with a novel solution; she became a man! For the next 43 years she pretended to be male.  Now in her 60s, she has no doubts about living that lie, saying it was a far better choice than taking another husband.

For some people, the so-called ‘Tower of David’ is just an unfinished skyscraper. For others, it’s an asylum for robbers and murderers. About 800 families call this place home. RTD presents a film about people that live in this tower.

At the age of 15, Oleg and Polina have to get used to the adult responsibilities of parenthood. To help them adapt to their new life, Yulia steps in, a foster mother who has brought up 7 children and now hopes to make a difference for these young people and their baby daughter. She soon learns though that old habits die hard, and working through what they learned at the orphanage is a challenge.

Every August the Pine Ridge annual powwow is held to celebrate the culture and traditions of the Lakota people, but it looks like a feast in a time of plague, as most of them have lost all hope of getting through the dire straits.