We take a look at six exceptional films playing at this year's Human Rights Watch Film Festival, starting tonight at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, designed to shine a light on societal problems around the world and to foster necessary dialogues, discussions, and hopefully change for the future.
Valentine Road Discrimination is universal and some of the most horrible examples of it are happening in our very own schools. Valentine Road is an emotional gut punch of a film, keeping manipulation at bay and letting the story of its sadly departed victim of high school violence and those affected by it speak for […]
Saving Face Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2012, Saving Face addresses one of Pakistan’s most horrific societal issues— the alarmingly frequent acid attacks on women. The shocking truth is that most of these attacks are being perpetrated by spouses or other close family members. The film follows the lives of acid-attack […]
The Missing Picture Nominated this year for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (but strangely not for Best Documentary, where it also could have been a contender) and winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year, Rithy Panh’s multimedia look at the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge during the Kampuchea Revolution […]
In the Shadow of the Sun In the African nation of Tanzania, home to approximately 170,000 people who could be classified as albino, having an off colour pigment could be deadly. Not only do these people have to deal with the kind of teasing and potential for bodily harm that goes hand in hand with […]
Highway of Tears Aside from the victims of high profile serial killer trial of Robert Pickton, more than 40 women and possibly hundreds more have gone missing along the tragically monikered Highway of Tears in Vancouver. Home to a large First Nations population still scarred from years of residential schooling abuse and a constantly acrimonious […]
