Dir: James Rogan
Year: 2011
Dur: 69 min
UK

This independent and critical documentary brings together an extraordinary cast of interviewees, from Sting to Rowan Atkinson, from Sir Louis Blom Cooper, one of the founders, to Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary who released General Pinochet. They shed light on how Amnesty International has changed the world, and how the world has changed Amnesty International. Amnesty! When They Are All Free mixes contemporary events and Amnesty’s history to reveal how a ‘letter-writing organisation’ has developed into one of the world’s most influential NGOs. It portrays Amnesty’s successes and failures over the decades, and the challenges it now faces as a multinational movement that is trying to hold its ground in a shifting human rights landscape. Made with unprecedented access to Amnesty, the film journeys with Amnesty’s researchers into the devastation of Haiti and the tumult of Egypt’s elections and subsequent revolution. Amnesty! When They Are All Free poses the fundamental question: has the human rights movement been able to hold back mankind’s capacity for atrocity?

This is a complimentary screening, hosted by Amnesty International in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary.

This fly-on-the-wall documentary by German filmmaker Rahman Satti captures his personal journey from his German hometown, across America on the trail of Obama’s 2007/8 presidential campaign. Meeting and interacting with the ordinary people driving the campaign from the grass-roots, the film reveals how a local movement toward political change, community involvement, and empowerment culminated in the historical, international event of Obama’s election as the first black president of the USA. Through the film, the director interweaves complex cultural questions with his own biographical legacy as an Afro-German raised behind East Germany’s Iron Curtain.

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of former gang members who as community mediators try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence amongst urban American youth. The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for violence, besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student whose death was caught on videotape. The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, founded by an epidemiologist, Gary Slutkin, who believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar. This gut-wrenching film follows them as they go after the most infected to try to stop it at its source. While doing so the Interrupters’ own inspiring journeys of hope and redemption are revealed.

Awards

• Special Jury Award, Sheffield Doc/ Fest, 2011
• Special Jury Award, Full Frame, Documentary Film Festival, 2011
• Audience Award, Best Documentary Philadelphia Cinefest, 2011
• Best Documentary, Miami International Film Festival 2011
• Official Selection, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival 2011
• Official Selection, World Premiere, Sundance Film Festival, 2011

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002 to try individuals who commit the world’s most serious crimes: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Argentinean Moreno-Ocampo was unanimously elected as the first prosecutor of the ICC in 2003 for a term of nine years. Four situations have been publicly referred to the ICC: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur, Sudan. However, the fact that the ICC has thus far only investigated African countries and only indicted Africans has made some critical of the Court’s neutrality. Yet Moreno-Ocampo is a hero to genocide victims and explicit in his aim to prevent the repeat of atrocities that have occurred. Award winning Canadian filmmaker Barry Stevens gains unique and compelling access to Moreno-Ocampo during the first trials of the ICC in 2009, asking tough questions about whether the recently formed Court is a groundbreaking new weapon for global justice or just an idealistic dream?

Dir: Ali Samadi Ahadi
Year: 2010
Dur: 80 min
Germany/Iran
English and Persian, English subtitles

The Green Wave is an exceptional account of the mass protests that took place in Iran in early 2009. The documentary chronicles the mobilisation of Iranians, young and old, demanding change in June 2009, the massive protests that took place when President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was declared victor, and then the retaliation of Ahmedinijad’s government against the people of Iran with unprecedented violence, oppression and human rights violations that continue to this day. The Green Wave fuses animation, live-action footage, activists’ accounts involved in the protests who were forced to flee the country, as well as posts from Iranian bloggers at the time of the protests to form a moving documentary that offers insight into the revolution that was a precursor to the recent Arab Spring.

At the age of ten, Afghani girl, Sabere, was sold to a 55 year old man - a criminal known to have caused the deaths of his previous wives. After 7 years, Sabere escapes to a women’s shelter and faces the bittersweet re-union with her family. This simple, candid film tells Sabere’s story as she and her family flee from place to place to escape her murderous husband. Sabere’s 11-year old half- sister, Farzaneh, is to be sold for the price of 50 sheep to pay off the family’s debt. As Sabere fights with the courts to end her illegal marriage Farzaneh must face the possibility that hers will soon begin. I Was Worth 50 Sheep was filmed over a period of two years in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan by award-winning director Nima Sarvestani. This heart-rending and thought- provoking film brings the tragedy of Afghanistan’s child brides vividly to life.

Awards

• Reflecting Images – Panorama, IDFA 2010
• Best Film, Amnesty Human Rights Film Festival 2011
• Dragon Award, Göteborg IFF 2011
• Audience Award, One World Prague 2011
• Best Film, Special Mention, London IDFF 2011

Dir: Karin Steinberger, Marcus Vetter
Year: 2010
Dur: 90 min
Germany
English, French, Portuguese with English subtitles

Five communities around the world are given a chance to speak for themselves on the daily struggles they face just to survive on a day-to-day basis. Their interpretations of the causes of their poverty are accompanied by local experts and activists who share their analysis on this widespread injustice. In Haiti, we follow the plight of destitute farmers in the aftermath of the earthquake. In Mauritania, we follow the harsh realities many fishermen face as their livelihood has increasingly dwindled due to foreign fishing fleets and how thousands of Africans attempt the perilous and often fatal journey across the sea to Europe in search of a better life. We also see the other side of the coin as the sheer scale of food production is brought to the fore in Brazil, where the Amazon rainforest in being destroyed to supply tropical timber, beef, soybeans and biofuel to developed countries.

Dir: Linda Thorgren
Year: 2010
Dur: 97 min
Sweden
Swedish and Spanish with English subtitles

Director Linda Thorgren, whose mother is Cuban and father is Swedish, hears the “call of blood” and sets out for her mother’s hometown of Havana, where she falls in love with Alexis. After they marry their love story soon turns into a nightmare. Back in Europe and pregnant, Thorgren finds herself a victim of domestic violence. Taking an introspective journey, she discovers that her own mother Marta experienced just such an unhappy relationship, as did her grandmother and great-grandmother before her. Thorgren asks, ‘Is this what her blood has called her to?’ Through this highly personal, moving film she seeks to undo the pattern of violence that has been stitched into her family’s history for generations

Dir: Joao Ribeiro
Year: 2010
Dur: 90 min
Mozambique
Portuguese with English subtitles

In a small interior Mozambican town, shortly after the end of the civil war, five UN peacekeepers are caught in a bomb blast. All that remains of the soldiers is their sex organs and blue helmets. The film follows the ensuing enquiry by a UN foreign investigator and is based on the novel by Mia Couto.
Filmmaker in attendance

Awards

• Best feature at the Angola International Film Festival

Dir: Joel Haikali
Year: 2010
Dur: 82 min
Namibia
English, Afrikaans, Oshikwanyama with English subtitles

In a life crisis, Nghilifa, a successful Windhoek ‘city- zen’ decides to return to his home village after 21 years to free his little brother from his ‘backward’ life-style as a cattle herder and reconcile with his family. When he and his wife finally find Hangula, he does not show the slightest interest in going to the city with them. In a comic way My Fathers Son negotiates the sometimes absurd relations between the urban worlds of modern Africa and its traditional roots.

Dir: Lee Daniels
Year: 2009
Dur: 109 min
USA

n this critically acclaimed feature film, sixteen year old Claireece P. “Precious” Jones lives in Harlem, New York. She’s obese, illiterate and suffers long-term physical, sexual, and mental abuse at the hand of her unemployed mother. To escape the harsh conditions of her home life, Precious uses her vivid imagination to conjure up an opposite imaginary world where she is loved and admired. Speaking out about unspeakable family history might help Precious to cleanse her wounds. It’s a long and hard road that Precious must travel if she wants to end the cycle of pain, learn to love herself and to nurture her own children.
Filmmaker in attendance