Women directors are dominant in the upcoming Human Rights Watch Film Festival in NYC from June 16–30.
The themes of the Festival this year are: Truth, Justice and Accountability; Times of Conflict and Responses to Terrorism; Human Dignity, Discrimination and Resources; and Migrants’ and Women’s Rights.
The festival will kick off on June 16 with a benefit for Human Rights Watch and a screening of The Whistleblower starring Rachel Weisz an incredibly powerful movie about a woman who blows the whistle on a large scale human trafficking operation conducted and abetted by peacekeepers working under the UN mandate in Bosnia.
Pamela Yates’ film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator will be the opening night film on June 17. The film is “part political thriller, part memoir, Granito takes us through a haunting tale of genocide and justice that spans four decades, two films, and filmmaker Pamela Yates’s own career.” And the South African film Life, Above All is the closing night film. The film “reinvents the coming-of-age story when a young girl must maintain the facade of a normal life amidst utter instability.”
Other women directed films include:
Better This World — directed by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
A dramatic story of idealism, loyalty, crime, and betrayal, Better This World goes to the heart of the “war on terror” and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in the United States after 9/11.
Sing Your Song — directed by Susanne Rostock
With remarkable intimacy, visual style, and musical panache, Susanne Rostock’s documentary, Sing Your Song, surveys the inspiring life of singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte.
12 Angry Lebanese — directed by Zeina Daccache
For nearly a year and a half, 45 prison inmates in Lebanon’s largest prison found themselves working together to present their version of Reginald Rose’s play 12 Angry Men, which they rename 12 Angry Lebanese.
Love Crimes of Kabul — directed by Tanaz Eshaghian
Jailed for running away from home to escape abuse, for allegations of adultery, and other “moral crimes,” the women of Afghanistan’s Badum Bagh prison band together to fight for their freedom.
The Price of Sex — directed by Mimi Chakarova
The Price of Sex is an unprecedented inquiry into a dark side of immigration: the underground criminal network of human trafficking and the experiences of Eastern European women forced into prostitution abroad.
This is My Land…Hebron — directed by Giulia Amati and Stephen Natanson
Hebron is the largest city in the occupied West Bank, home to 160,000 Palestinians. It is also home to one of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the only one right in the heart of a Palestinian city.
When the Mountains Tremble directed by Pamela Yates
In the early 1980s, death squads roamed the Guatemalan countryside in a war against the unarmed indigenous population that went largely unreported in the international media. A unique group of filmmakers threw themselves into the task of bringing the crisis to the world’s attention
Buy tickets here
(descriptions from Human Rights Watch website)
