Skip to main content

Human Rights Watch Film Festival · 2011

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2011

Full Line-up

Programme

21 films · 11 reviews

Jump to a film

12 Angry Lebanese - The Documentary

A multiple award winning documentary looking at a drama project in a Lebanese prison.

(Country: Lebanon; Year: 2009; Director: Zeina Daccache)

Familia

Observes one matriarch's decision to go to work as a hotel maid in Spain and the impact that choice has on her extended family in Peru.

(Country: Sweden; Year: 2010; Director: Alberto Herskovits, Mikael Wiström; Writer: Alberto Herskovits, Mikael Wiström; Stars: Nati Barrientos) , Official site

The First Grader

Review preview for The First Grader

There is plenty of intriguing historical backdrop to this story, and Chadwick manages to incorporate much of it without losing focus on the very personal subject at the film's centre.

David Graham · 3 out of 5
The story of an 84-year-old Kenyan man's fight for education and equality.

(Country: UK, Kenya; Year: 2010; Director: Justin Chadwick; Writer: Ann Peacock; Stars: Naomie Harris, Tony Kgoroge, Sam Feuer, Nick Reding, Oliver Litondo, Vusi Kunene, Dan 'Churchill' Ndambuki, John Sibi-Okumu, Israel Makoe, Lydia Gitachu, Lwanda Jawar, Agnes Simaloi, Shoki Mokgapa, Melvin Alusa, Peter Marias) , Official site

Full review

Four Days Inside Guantanamo (You Don't Like The Truth - Four Days Inside Guantanamo)

Review preview for Four Days Inside Guantanamo

Has a quiet, thorough and compelling insistence, made all the more powerful by its measured approach.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
Documentary based on security camera footage from an encounter in Guantanamo Bay between a team of Canadian intelligence agents and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, then a 16-year-old detainee.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2010; Director: Luc Côté, Patricio Henriquez) , Official site

Full review

Granito (Granito: How To Nail A Dictator)

Review preview for Granito

The film is at its best in its footage of those who are picking up the fight that their parents began against Montt, these 'granito' - or grains of sand - who hope that by coming together they can make a difference.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Documentary charting the Mayan people's fight for justice in Guatemala and the key role played by documentarian Pamela Yates.

(Country: US, Guatemala, Spain; Year: 2010; Director: Pamela Yates)

Full review

The Green Wave (Irans Grüner Sommer)

Review preview for The Green Wave

Ali Samadi Ahadi paints a poetic and heartfelt portrait of a nation oppressed.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Story of the 2009 Iranian elections and subsequent protests, told by bloggers from within the country

(Country: Germany; Year: 2010; Director: Ali Samadi Ahadi) , Official site

Full review

Illegal

A young Russian woman detained as an illegal immigrant in Belgium desperately fights the system, trying to get back to her teenage son.

(Country: Belgium, Luxembourg, France; Year: 2010; Director: Olivier Masset-Depasse; Writer: Olivier Masset-Depasse; Stars: Anne Coesens, Essé Lawson, Gabriela Perez, Alexandre Gontcharov)

Incendies

Review preview for Incendies

Though providing food for thought regarding the nature of conflict and how easy it is to tear a community apart, Villeneuve's heavy-handed approach to metaphor will not be for everyone.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
A mother's past sends her twin children on a Middle Eastern odyssey.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2010; Director: Denis Villeneuve; Writer: Denis Villeneuve with the collaboration of Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne, based on a stage play by Wajdi Mouawad; Stars: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard, Abdelghafour Elaaziz, Allen Altman, Mohamed Majd, Nabil Sawalha, Baya Belal, Bader Alami, Karim Babin, Yousef Shweihat) , Official site

Full review

Life, Above All (Chanda's Secret)

Review preview for Life, Above All

Director Oliver Shmitz does a good job of balancing the immediate, visible tragedy of the characters we follow with a wider, national problem.

James Benefield · 3.5 out of 5
A 12-year-old girl struggles to protect her family as her stepfather descends into alcoholism and her mother becomes increasingly ill, in a small town full of prejudice and hostility.

(Country: South Africa, Germany; Year: 2010; Director: Oliver Schmitz; Writer: Dennis Foon, based on the book Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton.; Stars: Khomotso Manyaka, Lerato Mvelase, Harriet Manamela)

Full review

Lost Angels (Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home)

Review preview for Lost Angels

Napper paints a picture of a place that which may well be the last destination anyone wants to reach but which also, paradoxically, offers a substantial amount of hope for those who find themselves there.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
The plight of those on Los Angeles' Skid Row.

(Country: US; Year: 2010; Director: Thomas Q Napper; Writer: Christine Triano; Stars: Kevin Cohen, Danny Harris, Linda Harris, Terri Hughes, Catherine Keener, Albert Olson) , Official site

Full review

The Oath

Review preview for The Oath

A low-key, but fascinating, documentary.

James Benefield · 4.5 out of 5
The story of two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a course of events that led them to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo, and the US Supreme Court.

(Country: US, Cuba, Yemen; Year: 2010; Director: Laura Poitras)

Full review

The Pipe

Review preview for The Pipe

In between helicopter shots of the glorious landscape and the slightly irritating finger-wagging, there's a good story here with a sprinkling of jaw-dropping moments.

James Benefield · 3 out of 5
A documentary about a County Mayo campaign against the laying of a new Shell oil pipeline.

(Country: Ireland; Year: 2010; Director: Risteard Ó Domhnaill)

Full review

Pushing The Elephant

Review preview for Pushing The Elephant

The film is at its strongest when it uses simple images.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
A mother is reunited with the daughter 12 years after she was separated from her during the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Country: US; Year: 2010; Director: Beth Davenport, Elizabeth Mandel) , Official site

Full review

A Small Act

Review preview for A Small Act

What gives the film an edge is its immediacy and emotional impact.

Angus Wolfe Murray · 5 out of 5
Giving poor children in Kenya a chance of further education and offering them hope for a better life.

(Country: US; Year: 2010; Director: Jennifer Arnold; Writer: Jennifer Arnold)

Full review

The Team

A group of Kenyans breach social barriers to produce The Team, a TV soap opera, hoping taboo storylines can bridge deep ethnic divisions as their country struggles to recover from the violence after the 2007 elections.

(Year: 2010; Director: Patrick Reed; Writer: Patrick Reed)

This Is My Land... Hebron

Life in the torn city of Hebron, from a Palestinian and Israeli perspective.

(Country: Israel, Italy; Year: 2010; Director: Giulia Amati, Stephen Natanson) , Official site

Unwanted Witness

Exploration of a highly controversial justice and peace process in Colombia, which allowed paramilitary leaders to hand in their weapons and give themselves up voluntarily in exchange for reduced sentences.

(Country: Colombia, France, Switzerland; Year: 2010; Director: Juan José Lozano, Juan José Lozano) , Official site

When The Mountains Tremble

In the early 1980s, death squads roamed the Guatemalan countryside in a war against the unarmed indigenous population and filmmakers tried to bring their plight to the attention of the world.

(Country: US; Year: 1983; Director: Newton Thomas Sigel, Pamela Yates; Stars: Rigoberta Menchú, Susan Sarandon) , Official site

When We Leave (Die Fremde)

hen young Turkish-German woman Umay can no longer stand her husband’s ill-treatment, she flees from Istanbul with her five-year-old son into the arms of her family in Berlin. But love, affection, and loyalty soon become irrelevant as they struggle to reconcile Umay’s willful self-determination with the social system that governs their lives.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2010; Director: Feo Aladag; Writer: Feo Aladag; Stars: Sibel Kekilli, Nizam Schiller, Derya Alabora, Settar Tanriogen, Serhad Can, Almila Bagriacik, Tamer Yigit, Alwara Höfels, Florian Lukas, Blanca Apilanez Fernandez, Mustafa Jouni, Aram Arami, Ufuk Bayraktar, Edin Hasanovic, Nursel Köse)

The Whistleblower

The story of Nebraska police officer Kathryn Bolkovac, who discovers a deplorable cover-up and launches an fight for justice in the former Yugoslavia.

(Country: Canada, Germany; Year: 2010; Director: Larysa Kondracki; Writer: Larysa Kondracki, Eilis Kirwan; Stars: Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci, Benedict Cumberbatch, Liam Cunningham, Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, David Hewlett, William Hope, Sergej Trifunovic, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Luke Treadaway, Jeanette Hain, Alexandru Potocean, Johan Philip Asbæk, Demetri Goritsas) , Official site

!Women Art Revolution

One part of a transmedia project that includes the interactive video installation RAW WAR presented at New Frontier. This seminal documentary depicts the history of women artists who have used art as an activist practice to fight oppression and protest gender and racial exclusion – creating what many historians feel is the most significant art movement of the late-20th century.

(Country: US; Year: 2010; Director: Lynn Hershman-Leeson; Stars: Lynn Hershman-Leeson) , Official site