The strongest documentaries in this year’s edition of the annual event are also the most heartbreaking.
One of the defining features of a good movie is its ability to whisk us away from our everyday lives.
Several selections at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which opened this week, do just that. But the stories are far from fantasy — they’re invitations into the worlds of real, heroic people who persevere when all hope is lost.
The annual festival, which in New York will play the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the IFC Center, screens in more than 20 cities worldwide. It presents titles that humanize victims of rights abuses in hopes of cultivating empathy and action.
This year’s edition rides the #MeToo wave: Twelve of the 15 selections are directed or co-directed by women, and several of them focus on women’s rights. The others tackle issues that are just as pressing.
After watching most of the movies, I found the ones that stood out most were documentaries that haunted me for days afterward. Such is the case with the opening film, “On Her Shoulders.” It follows the young activist Nadia Murad, who survived genocide and sexual slavery when the Islamic State took over the homeland of the Yazidi, an ethnic minority in northern Iraq, in 2014.
Ms. Murad, spearheading a campaign to bring justice to fellow Yazidi victims, travels the world sharing her story in an effort to enlist global leaders to her cause. But the work takes a toll on her; she relives the trauma every time someone apologetically asks her to describe what she endured. Even though Ms. Murad says she just wants to return to her past life as a “village girl,” she persists because she sees nothing being done about the plight of her community.
Khatera, the 23-year-old woman at the center of “A Thousand Girls Like Me,” shows the same resoluteness. Khatera’s father physically and sexually abused her for more than 13 years. After several aborted pregnancies, she is raising a daughter and a son.
Despite several attempts to file charges, Khatera is only taken seriously when she tells her harrowing story on national television. Her father lands in prison awaiting trial, but she and her mother are still threatened by his relatives for “tarnishing their reputation.” The raw, heartbreaking film, directed by the Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, shows the double threat of a broken judicial system and ingrained oppressive and sexist attitudes. But the uplifting ending (no spoilers here) offers a glimmer of hope.
In “Naila and the Uprising,” hope ebbs and flows. As the Israeli army imprisoned thousands of Palestinian men during the First Intifada, or uprising, in the late 1980s, Palestinian women stepped in. In traditional oral history fashion, “Naila and the Uprising” chronicles the network of female activists, who, through their grass-roots opposition to Israel, gained independence as equals in a patriarchal Palestinian society.
One of their leaders was Naila Ayesh. After two detentions, a miscarriage and the birth of her son, Ms. Ayesh carried on to organize nonviolent demonstrations and strikes. But her husband’s deportation to Egypt forced her to choose between defending her homeland and reuniting her family.
A handful of eye-opening documentaries stray from the theme of women’s empowerment and tackle other newsworthy issues with nuance. The sobering “Anote’s Ark” concerns Kiribati, a low-lying Pacific nation that will be swallowed by the sea within the century. The movie weaves two stories, that of Anote Tong, the former president who calls on world leaders to help save his people, and that of Sermery, a coolheaded mother of six who reluctantly emigrates to New Zealand.
The director Matthieu Rytz portrays both struggles with respect and intimacy. The Kiribati islands, captured with awe-inspiring drone footage, are sacred to the residents. Leaving your country behind means losing part of your identity.
The dark and unsettling film “The Cleaners” spotlights an issue that merits more attention than it’s been given. The title refers to employees of a company in the Philippines who moderate content for internet behemoths like Google and Twitter. Five anonymous “cleaners” describe the appalling aspects of their jobs — like sifting through 25,000 images a day that can include repellent content like child pornography — while researchers and former social media executives emphasize the serious consequences of virtual lawlessness.
Another timely topic is dissected in the closing film, “The Unafraid.” Set in Georgia, it follows three Dreamers, high school seniors brought to the country illegally as children, but shielded, for now, by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They jump through multiple hoops to move on to college, but they’re ineligible for in-state tuition and cannot afford the full cost. That motivates them to take up activism and demand a change, but mounting obstacles get in their way. Their tenacity is inspiring; their struggles disheartening. When the students occasionally break down, we’re reminded that beneath their hard exterior, they’re still so young.
The most gripping documentary in the lineup is “Charm City,” by the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Marilyn Ness ( “Cameraperson”). It focuses on Baltimore and a handful of community members, local officials and law enforcement personnel who work to stem escalating violence there, a seemingly insurmountable task.
Clayton Guyton, the founder of a community center, and his protégé, Alex Long, are especially admirable. Both men encourage dialogue and understanding, and they work tirelessly to keep their neighbors out of trouble. The film eloquently grasps the pain and frustration they feel whenever another death or shooting is reported.
Yet the harsher reality gets, the more they’re determined to change it. The same could be said for the subjects of all the films here. Regardless of what it takes, they just want to live free.
