Human Rights Watch Film Festival — A–Z of films

Rather than heaping condemnation on everyone involved – as you might expect – Ramos just tells it like it is.

Although this film has got a very serious point to make, Hana Makhalbaf has an enviable lightness of touch and always remembers to keep the story front and centre.

A powerful testimony to the changes that may come when people make an effort to let their voices be heard.

You feel the urgency to improve things. You feel their dilemmas. “In Africa, 100% democracy is not working. Especially after war.”

It is the unspoken experience, the agony that is Iraq, which hangs so heavy in the vacuum between what you see and what you imagine.

There is nothing wrong with Baichwal's camerawork, with a fascinating opening eight-minute shot of it roaming across a Chinese factory floor, particularly stunning - but everything lacks depth.

Seen purely in aesthetic terms, Persepolis is an object of rare beauty, with no obvious precedents or parallels in the history of anime.

There’s a lot of meandering in this documentary but this does not detract from the overall impact.

In the mindscape of Alice Through The Looking Glass, the surrealism of Steve’s predicament would be a footnote to The Patriot Act: Fear Or Frenzy?, if it wasn’t so tragic.

This film is not a hectoring polemic, rather a passionate plea for understanding and empathy.

Chang’s sensitive observational style allows the contrast between the unreality of the ship and the crushing hardship of the lives of Yu Shui’s family to develop naturally.