Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Lincoln Center

Photo from Life, Above Ali

If you are in New York, check out the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Human Rights Watch Film Festival June 16 - 30. The film makers will be in attendance at all screenings. Here is some information about the event and a list of films with descriptions:

The 22nd annual edition of the festival returns with stories of resilience from across the globe about the universal issues that grip our time. Human Rights Watch—one of the world’s leading independent human rights organizations—invites you to engage with these compelling films that are spurring vital dialogue. One of the most striking themes in this year’s selection is the power of media in all its forms to influence the craft of filmmaking and to impact human rights. Many titles are making their exclusive New York or U.S. debuts.
The festival will launch on June 16 with a fundraising Benefit Night for Human Rights Watch, featuring the Bosnia-set political thriller The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weisz. More information about the film and the benefit is available on hrw.org. 

The main program will begin on June 17, with the Opening Night presentation of Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, the latest documentary from Pamela Yates, here with her sixth film in the festival. Another highlight is the Festival Centerpiece on June 25, Sing Your Song, an inspiring portrait of Harry Belafonte, with the legendary entertainer and activist present to discuss the film. On June 26 the festival will feature a special program, No Boundaries: Tim Hetherington, a tribute to the visionary work of the late photographer, filmmaker and journalist. The Closing Night screening on June 30 will be Life, Above All, a moving coming-of-age drama set in a South African township ravaged by HIV/AIDS.

We Card: Presentation of valid ID required to be served alcoholic beverages at the reception.

Save with a Three-Film Pass!

$18 Film Society & HRW Members ($30 General Public/ $21 Seniors & Students) Buy Now

Films in this Series

12 Angry Lebanese: The Documentary

Zeina Daccache, 2009

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 25: 9:15 pm | Sun Jun 26: 4:00 pm |

This is the extraordinary record of the director’s project in Lebanon’s largest prison to stage a version of the play 12 Angry Men with inmates.

Better This World

Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega, 2011

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 18: 6:30 pm | Sun Jun 19: 4:00 pm | Mon Jun 20: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmakers and film subject Bradley Crowder
Two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas fall under the sway of a charismatic revolutionary ten years their senior at the volatile 2008 Republican Convention.

Familia

Mikael Wiström, Alberto Herskovits, 2010

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 25: 1:00 pm | Mon Jun 27: 6:30 pm | Wed Jun 29: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
This poignant, powerful documentary sensitively observes one matriarch’s decision to work as a hotel maid in Spain and the impact on her extended family in Peru.

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy, Paco de Onís, 2011

Buy Tickets: Fri Jun 17: 7:00 pm | Sat Jun 18: 1:00 pm |

Screenings followed by discussion with filmmakers and film subjects Kate Doyle, Alejandra Garcia and Fredy Peccerelli
Part political thriller and part memoir, Yates’s film shows what happened when her 1982 footage of Guatemalan genocide became evidence in an international war crimes case.

If a Tree Falls

Marshall Curry, Sam Cullman, 2011

Buy Tickets: Sun Jun 19: 6:30 pm | Mon Jun 20: 8:45 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
Posing hard questions about affecting change in the United States, this chronicle of the Earth Liberation Front is a fascinating exploration of a modern revolutionary movement

Impunity

Juan José Lozano, Hollman Morris, 2010

Buy Tickets: Wed Jun 22: 6:30 pm | Thu Jun 23: 9:00 pm | Fri Jun 24: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmakers
The brutal history of illegal paramilitias and their victims in Colombia is freshly documented through the lens of the country’s controversial Justice and Peace process.

La Toma (The Siege)

Angus Gibson, Miguel Salazar, 2011

Buy Tickets: Tue Jun 28: 8:45 pm | Wed Jun 29: 6:30 pm | Thu Jun 30: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmakers
This challenging film recounts the action-packed day of the Siege of the Palace of Justice in Colombia and the dramatic trial of a key colonel 25 years later.

Life, Above All

Oliver Schmitz, 2010

Buy Tickets: Thu Jun 30: 7:00 pm |

Closing Night Film & Reception
Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Oliver Schmitz and lead actress Khomotso Manyaka
In this artful reinvention of the “coming-of-age story,” a girl in a South African township struggles when the spread of HIV/AIDS afflicts her own mother.

Lost Angels

Thomas Napper, 2010

Buy Tickets: Sun Jun 26: 6:30 pm | Mon Jun 27: 9:00 pm | Tue Jun 28: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
Napper’s empathetic but tough-minded documentary invites us into a part of the homeless capital of America—Los Angeles—that many choose to ignore: Skid Row.

Love Crimes of Kabul

Tanaz Eshaghian, 2011

Buy Tickets: Mon Jun 20: 6:30 pm | Tue Jun 21: 8:45 pm | Wed Jun 22: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
Eshaghian’s intimate portrait follows three young Afghan women accused of committing “moral crimes” as they courageously and cannily navigate prison and court.

No Boundaries: Tim Hetherington

Buy Tickets: Sun Jun 26: 9:00 pm |

Screening of Diary followed by a panel discussion
In Diary, a highly personal and experimental film that expressed the subjective experience of his work, Tim turns the camera inward after more than a decade reporting.No

Sing Your Song

Susanne Rostock, 2011

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 25: 6:00 pm |

Harry Belafonte in person!
With remarkable intimacy, visual style, and musical panache, Rostock’s documentary surveys the life and times of pioneering singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte.

The Green Wave

Ali Samadi Ahadi, 2010

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 18: 9:00 pm | Sun Jun 19: 1:30 pm | Tue Jun 21: 4:00 pm |

Samadi’s sharp portrait of modern political rebellion spans the 2009 elections in Iran and the brutal suppression of mass protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.

The Price of Sex

Mimi Chakarova, 2011

Buy Tickets: Fri Jun 24: 9:30 pm | Sat Jun 25: 3:30 pm | Sun Jun 26: 1:30 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova exposes the shadowy world of sex trafficking from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Western Europe, filming undercover with extraordinary access.

The Team

Patrick Reed, 2010

Buy Tickets: Tue Jun 21: 6:30 pm | Wed Jun 22: 9:00 pm | Thu Jun 23: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmaker
A group of Kenyans produce a TV soap opera hoping to bridge deep ethnic divisions in a country struggling to recover from violence after the 2007 elections.

This Is My Land… Hebron

Giulia Amati , Stephen Natanson, 2010

Buy Tickets: Mon Jun 27: 4:00 pm | Tue Jun 28: 6:30 pm | Wed Jun 29: 9:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmakers
Amati and Natanson’s documentary listens to voices from all sides to examine Hebron, home to one of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

When the Mountains Tremble

Pamela Yates, 1983

Buy Tickets: Sat Jun 18: 4:00 pm |

Q&A with filmmakers
The striking 1983 film helped bring world attention to the roaming death squads that terrorized Guatemala’s unarmed indigenous population. Featuring Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchú.

You Don’t Like the Truth – 4 Days Inside Guantanamo

Luc Côté, Patricio Henríquez, 2010

Buy Tickets: Fri Jun 24: 6:30 pm |

This stunning documentary is based on security camera footage from an encounter in Guantanamo Bay between Canadian intelligence agents and 16-year-old Canadian detainee Omar Khadr.