Running until March 30 at Brixton Ritzy, Curzon Mayfair, Curzon Soho and ICA cinemas, the 16th Human Rights Watch Film Festival starts tomorrow with a fundraising preview of 5 Broken Cameras, Palestinian villager Emad Burnat’s first hand account of his community’s non-violent struggle against an Israeli separation barrier. This will be followed by a panel discussion involving the filmmakers plus speakers from Human Rights Watch and America’s Middle East Task Force.
Pakistan’s first Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and US co-director Daniel Junge are set to attend the debut UK screening of Saving Face, their lauded short about two women who survived acid attacks. Other domestic premieres include Black Block, Carlo Augusto Bachschmidt’s chronicle of police brutality at the 2001 G8 summit; Maggie Peren’s Canary Island refugee drama Colour Of The Ocean; Susan Youssef’s young love in Gaza tale Habibi; and Little Heaven, Lieven Corthouts’ portrait of an Ethiopian orphanage for children living with HIV.
Pleasingly, two of the pictures airing at the festival receive nationwide theatrical releases at the end of this month. Stay tuned for a Quietus interview with Jon Shenk about his enviro-political investigation The Island President, and also our review of Werner Herzog’s death row documentary Into The Abyss. A full programme of London HRWFF events can be found here.
