Do Not Resist | Craig Atkinson The opening scenes of Craig Atkinson’s Do Not Resist are confronting in their similarity to scenes of war. Heavy military grade transportation – Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles – roll down streets. Police wearing what appears to be military-issued gear fire tear gas into a crowd of protesters where…
Constance on the Edge | Belinda Mason In 2005 Constance and her family, refugees from war torn South Sudan’s Agoro, settled in Wagga Wagga, regional New South Wales, on a humanitarian visa. Belinda Mason’s Constance on the Edge follows Constance and her family as they settle into life in Wagga. Confronting racism, depression, drug addiction,…
Irrawaddy Mon Amour | Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani & Andrea Zambell What do you do if your love for your partner is illegal in your country? The village of Kyauk Myaung, on the Irrawaddy River, sits outside of Mandalay – the largest city in Myanmar after Yangon. It has a unique acceptance of the LGBTIQ…
Drone | Tonje Hessen Schei Imaging living under the threat of being killed by an unmanned aircraft at any moment. This is the reality of villagers living in Pakistan or Yemen who face extrajudicial killings from the United States, whose use of drones is highly questionable in the continued War on Terror. While the hunt for…
In West Virginia, an entire community has united to fight against a mining corporation that wants to destroy Coal River Mountain to mine coal. The alternative is a wind farm that will power the region; however political support is thin and the coal company has resources to fight the community. Chad A. Steven’s Overburden is…
Film review by Samaya Borom Camp 32 | Hom Chhorn Known colloquially as the Land of Smiles, Cambodia is a place deeply affected by its dark past. Hidden behind the friendly facade are generations struggling to come to terms with the atrocities that the Khmer Rouge committed indiscriminately against its own population. During the late…
Originally published at Right Now’s Top 10 HRAFF 2015 Picks The Ground Beneath Their Feet | Nausheen Dadabhoy Film review by Samaya Borom On the morning of 8 October, 2005, Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir suffered an earthquake which killed 82 thousand people, injured a further 100 thousand and rendered 3.5 million people homeless. Nausheen…
Film review by Samaya Borom Disruption | Transitions Film Festival Financial literacy is not usually something that people would readily associate with human rights and gender equality. Yet across Latin America, a group of economic activists are working to ensure these work in tandem, raising the socio-economic profile of women and families in the poorest…
Point and Shoot | Marshall Curry Filmmaker Marshall Curry’s documentary about ex-Gaddafi prisoner and self-styled freedom fighter Matthew VanDyke is both mesmerising and disturbing. VanDkye is well known for being captured by Gaddafi forces during the Libyan civil war and for his choice to remain in Libya and re-join the National Liberation Army rather than return back…
This article was originally published at Right Now: Human Rights in Australia, an edited version is below. HRAFF movie reviews by Sonia Nair, Maya Borom and Sam Ryan. With the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival just days away, the Right Now review team pick out some of the most intriguing films from the extensive 2014 HRAFF…
