Festival:
The 28th Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Dates:
June 9-18
About:
Human rights issues are explored in eighteen new documentary features, as well as a handful of retrospective films.
The event is bookended by Zaradasht Ahmed’s NOWHERE TO HIDE, a look at an Iraqi family facing the migration crisis; and Brian Knappenberger’s NOBODY SPEAK: TRIALS OF THE FREE PRESS (pictured), about legal assaults on the freedom of the press.
The migration crisis is also explored in Sophia Scott and Georgia Scott’s LOST IN LEBANON (pictured), which explores four resilient Syrians attempting to start over in Lebanon. Accountability and justice is at the core of Erik Ljung’s THE BLOOD IS AT THE DOORSTEP, an intimate look at the impact of the killing of an unarmed African-American Milwaukee man on his family and community; while the fest addresses the intersection of science, technology, and human rights in Nicholas de Pencier’s BLACK CODE, which exposes digital activism around the world.
Among the event’s other thematic programming are women’s rights, with work like April Hayes and Katia Maguire’s HOME TRUTH (pictured), on the generational impact of domestic violence; and LGBT rights, with Cristina Herrera Borquez’s NO DRESS CODE REQUIRED, which follows a gay couple’s role in fighting for marriage equality in Mexico.
what (not) to doc 