If ever there was a project to build bridges between North Korea and the rest of us, this is it.

Every six months, without fanfare, medics and volunteers from the US, South Korea and other countries head to the North Korean countryside where they link up with local doctors and nurses to treat patients suffering from the deadly multi-drug resistant TB (MDRTB).

As an outsider you're sort of pulling two worlds together. When I stand in front of North Koreans, most of whom have never seen a non-Asian in their entire lives, I represent a sort of visual spectacle. I represent Americans who they've been taught all of their lives to believe are their enemy – Dr Stephen Linton, founder of the US-based Eugene Bell Foundation

MDRTB strikes close to 500,000 people worldwide each year, many of them in North Korea.

It's a very painful way to die. But the cruellest thing about TB is that it's infectious. You don't just die – you actually kill the people you love – Dr K. J. Seung, Eugene Bell Foundation

Over time the volunteers become emotionally attached to the patients, unashamedly so. On one of her first trips Hyuna Linton met a 14-year-old girl with MDRTB. Six months later, Hyuna returned with medicine and hope. It was too late.

My heart broke then. She was the first patient who died that I can remember – Hyuna Linton, Eugene Bell Foundation

North Korean doctor Im Soonhee dreads facing the family of any patient who's died.

I feel sorry and guilty. I feel we didn't try hard enough or care for them enough – Dr Im, North Korea

Deep emotional bonds also form between the foreigners and their North Korean hosts.

I remember Dr Im touching my cheek and saying, ‘Don't get sick.' I realised how much she worries about us. That kind of warmth is special – Hyuna Linton, volunteer, Eugene Bell Foundation

Their cultural differences put aside, the teams share not only grief but also moments of joy. Such as when a teenage girl recovering from the disease announces her life's new goal:

I want to study medicine. I want to cure people who are sick like me – Youngshim, patient

Defying a common perception of North Koreans as automatons, this film presents them as real people who laugh and cry and love. It's also a rare insight into a part of the world that's been mostly hidden from western eyes.

Out of Breath – from filmmaker Hein S. Seok.

A radical experiment in democracy and women's rights is under way in the old badlands of Islamic State. But as Yaara Bou Melhem reports, it could be crushed in an instant.

It was love at first sight – Azad, 26. My dreams are coming true! – Bercem, 19

Lovestruck couple Azad and Bercem are about to get married. They want the usual things - kids, a nice house, a car. They're just hoping war doesn't get in the way.

Azad and Bercem live in the town of Kobani in north eastern Syria, smack bang in the former territory of Islamic State. Their dream of a normal, peaceful life is shared by millions of fellow Kurds who now lead control of this area and are carving out a bold new system – a direct, secular democracy that enshrines gender equality.

For Azad and Bercem, that means getting married in a civil ceremony, no sheikh required.

We are building democracy, building a life we'd never dreamed of - Azad

In the drably named Autonomous Administration of North Eastern Syria, women hold 50 percent of official positions. Incredibly, Raqqa, the once notorious capital of Islamic State, is now headed by a young woman, Leila Mustapha. The bomber jacket-clad Mustapha is using her civil engineering skills to rebuild the city which will include a makeover of the square where IS displayed crucified and decapitated bodies.

The locals called it ‘Hell Roundabout' because of all the brutal acts committed here – Leila Mustapha

As she tours Raqqa with reporter Yaara Bou Melhem, she does what would have been unthinkable under ISIS: she shakes hands with men on a worksite.

But ISIS isn't wholly gone. It clings to a tiny pocket of territory south of Raqqa, moving among civilians as protection from attack, as Yaara Bou Melham discovers on a trip to the frontline.

The Kurdish-led authority has some 900 ISIS foreign fighters in jail and it wants their home countries to take them back. One prisoner tells Bou Melhem how ISIS pushed its fighters:

If you're not going to fight, you're not going to eat. People, kids, died from starvation - prisoner

ISIS is now the least of the administration's problems. To the west they must deal with Syria's Assad regime and to the north, the biggest worry, Turkey, which has sworn to smash the Kurds when Donald Trump pulls out American troops.

Soldier Azad and journalist Bercem know a Turkish invasion could wreck their new life together. They will do what they know best.

If necessary, he will go to war – Bercem

She will report the situation and expose it to the world – Azad