Past Films | Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Embodying strength and stoicism, five Venezuelan women from diverse backgrounds each draw a portrait of their country as it suffers under the worst crisis in its history.

Mosul: a city in ruins, captured by IS for more than three years, is now facing new conflicts and a long, difficult way to overcome the aftermath.

A gripping courtroom drama, 500 Years documents the first trial in the history of the Americas to prosecute the genocide of an indigenous people.

Filmed over 5 years, A Syrian Love Story charts the incredible odyssey of comrades and lovers Amer and Raghda to political freedom.

Mainstream, corporate news outlets have successfully reduced the validity and trustworthiness of news reporting in recent times.

Two friends, in an attempt to put their haunting combat experiences behind them, embark on an epic 2,700-mile trek on foot across America seeking redemption and healing as a way to close the moral chasm opened by war.

A famous television personality struggles to restore science to its rightful place in a world hostile to evidence and reason.

Based on Ronald Deibert’s book of the same name, Nicholas de Pencier’s gripping Black Code follows “internet sleuths” - or cyber stewards - from the Toronto-based group Citizen Lab.

Chasing Asylum exposes the negative impact of Australia’s offshore detention policies and explores how Australia became a country where leaders choose detention over compassion.

“I was very sorry that I never had the chance to be a young, single woman who could marry whoever she wants, whenever she wants.”

With deeply personal access, this is the untold story of a brave group of citizen journalists forced to live undercover, on the run, and in exile—risking their lives to stand up against one of the most violent movements in the world today.

Shot below the radar, Complicit follows the journey of Chinese migrant worker-turned-activist Yi Yeting, a Foxconn factory worker who takes his fight against the global electronic industry from his hospital bed to the international stage.

Winner of Best Documentary Feature at Tribeca Film Festival,Do Not Resist opens with shocking scenes from Ferguson, Missouri, to introduce an array of stories that collectively detail the disturbing realities of American police culture.

For 17-year-old Wasiullah, who spent three years in asylum centres after arriving alone from Afghanistan, Denmark has become his home.

In October 1988, 14 men were murdered by the Venezuelan military in El Amparo, a village near the Arauca River.

“I want to tell girls, fear is taught; that you are born free and you are born brave.” - Maria Toorpakai, film subject, Girl Unbound

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.

Shot over the course of nine years, Home Truth chronicles one family’s incredible pursuit of justice, shedding light on how our society responds to domestic violence and how the trauma from domestic violence can linger through generations.

In I Am Not Your Negro filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.

Rallying thousands of students to skip school and occupy the streets of Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong becomes one of the autonomous territory’s most notorious dissidents.

Through a strikingly intimate and visually daring lens, Kiki offers a riveting, complex insight into a safe space created and governed by LGBTQ youths of color, who demand happiness and political power.

For 20 years, Lindy has lived with an unbearable feeling of guilt. Committed to fulfilling her civic duty, Lindy sat on a jury with 11 other jurors that handed down the death penalty to a Mississippi man convicted in a double homicide.

As the war threatens to leave a generation of young Syrians without education, health care or a state, Lost in Lebanon follows four Syrians who are building a community, sharing resources and attempting to advocate for themselves in their new land.

Víctor and Fernando, a devoted, unassuming couple from Mexicali, Mexico, find themselves in the center of a legal firestorm over their desire to get married.

When online tabloid Gawker posted a sex tape of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, a high-stakes legal battle pitting privacy rights against the First Amendment ensued.

The first person narrative in Nowhere to Hide allows an immersive and uncompromising insight into the resilience and fortitude of a male nurse in Jalawla, Iraq.

Will justice be served to a community that’s waited three decades long for it?

Today, ordinary people have the tools to hold power structures to account.

Murder, drug addiction, hijacking cars, running away from home: these are just a few of the crimes that the girls from the rehabilitation center for juvenile delinquents in Tehran have committed.

Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines were amongst thousands of girls and young women who were sexually exploited by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

A first-hand account of the perilous journey made by a group of Syrian refugees.

With surprising warmth, humour, and humanity, The Good Postman provides valuable insight into the root of a timely and internationally relevant discussion of refugees and asylum.

For almost their entire lives a group of forty-something classmates have grown up together and are reaching the age of 50 with varying degrees of frustration. Anita, Rita, Ricardo and Andrés feel that the school they attend for people with Down’s Syndrome is confining.

Welcome to the war-torn heart of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, where doctor Tom Catena selflessly and courageously serves the needs of a forgotten people.

The Settlers cracks open the world of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank: their daily lives, their worldviews, and their position within Israel.

Both a real-life courtroom thriller and a moving human drama, The Uncondemned tells the gripping story of a group of young international lawyers, activists, and Rwandan women who fought to have rape recognized as a war crime.

In this powerful documentary, Juan, Jarad and Antonio, ages 14 to 16, face decades in prison in California, where juveniles older than 14 can be tried as adults for violent crimes.

Dubbed, “The Egyptian Jon Stewart,” Bassem Youssef hosts the most popular television programme in the Middle East.

Watatu follows the story of three men whose lives become intertwined as one of them becomes radicalised.

The new film from celebrated documentarian Alanis Obomsawin chronicles the events following the filing of a human-rights complaint by a group of activists, which charged that the federal government's woefully inadequate funding of services for indigenous children constituted a discriminatory practice.

With immense sensitivity for its subjects We’ll Be Alright highlights just how arbitrary and abusive the Russian care system can be.

What Tomorrow Brings follows one year in the life of the first all-girls school in a remote, conservative Afghan village.

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.

What happens when the thirst for power and riches takes priority over human life?

(T)ERROR is the story of Saeed "Shariff" Torres, a 62-year-old former Black Panther-turned-counterterrorism informant for the FBI, and the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation.

Right now, more than 80,000 people are in solitary confinement in the US - locked in tiny concrete boxes where every element of their environment is controlled.

In our media-saturated world, victims of wars and mass violations of human rights are often depicted as bodies rather than as individuals.

In our hyper-mediatized world, victims of human rights violations are often depicted in terms of bodies rather than individuals.

Gennadiy Mokhnenko has won accolades for his work rescuing abused, drug- and alcohol-addicted kids from the streets of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, but his methods — including abduction and de facto imprisonment — have made him a figure of much controversy.

An unsettling and eye-opening exploration into the spread of the radical ideology of the Red Mosque Islamic school in Pakistan, which trains children to devote their lives to jihad, or holy war, from a very young age.

Multi-award winning filmmaker Andreas Koefoed intimately portrays ordinary children in extraordinary circumstances

The editor of The Sunday Times during the heyday of investigative journalism, Sir Harold Evans spent over a decade fighting for compensation for the victims of thalidomide, a Nazi-developed drug whose postwar exploitation by British drug companies led to tens of thousands of children being born with serious defects.

With unprecedented access, Cartel Land is a harrowing look at the journeys of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy – the murderous Mexican drug cartels.

After serving eight years in prison, reformed gang leader S. Lance Ingram re-enters society and struggles to adapt to a changed Harlem.

More than one million asylum seekers and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea.

Winner of the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes, this powerful drama from director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone) follows a former Tamil Tiger soldier as he flees from the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war to begin a new life in a Parisian suburb.

Dayne Pratzsky, also known as “The Frackman,” takes on the energy giants.

How far would you go to fight for your child’s rights? When Coy, a six-year-old transgender girl is banned from using the girls’ bathroom at school - her parents take a stand.

A group of activists protesting the alleged rape of six girls by a school headmaster and a government official quickly become fugitives.

Since fleeing his native North Korea to defect to the south, the artist Sun Mu has worked under a defiant alias meaning “no boundaries” to criticize the repressive regime of Kim Jong-un.

In August 2013, a military defector with the code name “Caesar” smuggled 53,275 photographs out of Syria.

Inside the Chinese Closet exposes the difficult decisions young LGBT individuals must make when forced to balance their quest for love with parental and cultural expectations.

What is life like in a place where the antiabortion movement has made access to legal abortion almost impossible?

Legendary author, activist, and playwright, Larry Kramer gave voice to the outrage and grief that inspired a generation of gay men and lesbians to fight for their lives

Violence is part of everyday life in Colombia, where the military, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and drug cartels have been fighting for decades, and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.

From its international premiere at Critics Week in Cannes comes Mediterranea, a riveting drama on migration.

Five sisters, driven by the same desire for freedom, rebel against the limitations imposed upon them.

A political thriller and a musical journey,No Land's Song never loses sight of its real center - the female voice.

In Out to Win gay and lesbian professional athletes discuss coming out, and the effect it had on their lives and sporting careers.

Riding at night through the streets of Eastside Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos are an unapologetic crew of women of color.

Danae Elon exposes a deep, complex, and painful portrait of Jerusalem today.

What does it take to operate safely in a conflict zone and return with material that succeeds on both an editorial and ethical level?

Salam Neighbor uncovers inspiring stories of individuals who find themselves in Jordan now living as refugees - rallying, against all odds, to rebuild their lives and those of their neighbors.

Solitary tells the stories of several inmates sent to Red Onion State Prison, one of over 40 supermax prisons across the US, which holds inmates in eight-by-ten foot solitary confinement cells, 23 hours a day.

Winner of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary and World Cinema Audience Award for Documentary, Sonita follows a determined and animated Afghan teen.

Suited tells the story of Bindle & Keep, a Brooklyn tailoring company that caters to a diverse LGBTQ community

Tempestad is an emotional, contemplative journey told through the voice-over of two women victimized by their country’s corruption and injustice.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is a feature documentary that includes eyewitness accounts from the first members who joined the organization to rank-and-file members in cities like Chicago, Oakland, Los Angeles, and NY.

THE DIPLOMAT tells the remarkable story of the life and legacy of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, whose singular career spans fifty years of American foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Virtual Reality (VR) is an expanding arena for immersive and interactive content.

In 2011, the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police sparked intense riots in London.

The High Sun shares three love stories, set in three consecutive decades, in two neighbouring Balkan villages with a long history of inter-ethnic hatred.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad directs this inspiring biopic about Mohammad Assaf, a singer from Gaza, who in 2013 won the TV talent show “Arab Idol,” entertaining and inspiring millions.

The great Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, Nostalgia for the Light) chronicles the history of the indigenous peoples of Chilean Patagonia, whose decimation by colonial conquest prefigured the brutality of the Pinochet regime.

The Return examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines—prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning on mass incarceration, what can California’s experiment teach the nation?

Director Joanna Lipper elegantly explores past and present as she tells the remarkable story of Hafsat Abiola, daughter of human rights heroine Kudirat Abiola, and Nigeria's President-elect M.K.O. Abiola, who won a historic vote in 1993 that promised t

Women were on the front lines of the uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2011.

During this unique masterclass, Human Rights Watch emergencies director Peter Bouckaert and leading photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale discuss the techniques and strategies of international crisis reporting and multimedia storytelling.

Through a clever mix of stop motion animation and interviews, The Wanted 18 recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army's pursuit of 18 cows.

Is there a crime worthy of punishment by death?

Searing and powerful with never-before-seen footage of the shooting in Aurora, Under the Gun ultimately gives a human face to a crisis that is scarring the conscience of a nation.

As the deaths of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner galvanize the public, the moving 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets brings the conversation back home—to the impact felt by families across the country for whom reform can’t come fast enough.

At a public hospital in Nicaragua, OBGYN Dr. Carla Cerrato must choose between following a law that bans all abortions and endangers her patients or taking a risk and providing the care that she knows can save a woman's life.

Representations of human suffering and injustice are not only aesthetic choices; they are political and ethical choices. In an era where images can be captured in one place and consumed instantly around the world, we examine the proposed concept of "a right to the image".

Abounaddara is a collective of filmmakers working towards providing an alternative image of Syrian society. It was founded in 2010 in opposition to the prevailing representations of Syria found in the Western media.

Over two years, Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka lived alongside farmers, herders, and rebels displaced to the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountain regions, filming their lives within hillside hide-outs and refugee camps.

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