A section also on films highlighting the Arab Spring.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: The lineup for the 2014 Human Rights Watch Film Festival has been announced, featuring a slew of films telling stories from all corners of the world, including India.
Indo-Canadian director Richie Mehta’s 2013 drama, Siddharth, will feature as one of the 22 films selected for the festival. The film tells the story of a father, played by Rajesh Tailang, who travels across India to track down his eponymously named son after the child is sent away to work at a factory. The father begins to fear that the factory job was a ruse, and that his son may have actual been sold to sex traffickers.
The film was nominated for the Grand Prix prize at the 2014 Fribourg International Film Festival, and won a Special Mention prize at the 2014 Hong Kong International Film Festival. Mehta and Tailang were nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Actor, respectively, at this year’s Genie Awards, too.
The film will be part of the Women’s Rights and Children’s Rights category of the festival, alongside seven other films. These include the festival’s opening film, Private Violence, and its closing night film, Scheherazade’s Diary. Other films in the category are For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, about an Australian in Bosnia and Serbia, and The Homestretch, about homeless teenagers in Chicago.
The Migrants’ Rights category will feature The Beekeeper, a film about a Turkish man assimilating to Swiss culture, by director Mano Khalil. It will also showcase Evaporating Borders, a five-part visual essay about Cyprus and the immigrants that pass through its borders.
An entire category is devoted to Armed Conflict and the Arab Spring, which will see the screenings of Abounaddara Collective Shorts from Syria, Canadian-Libyan film First to Fall, Scottish-Yemeni film The Mulberry House, and Return to Home, which won the World Documentary Grand Prize award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
LGBT Rights will be covered, in part, by a film called To Be Takei, a self-led examination of the life of actor George Takei. Best known for his iconic portrayal of Hikaru Sulu in the original 1960s “Star Trek” program, Takei is famous homosexual, and has been a long-time crusader for LGBT rights in the US.
A documentary biography of late South African leader Nelson Mandela will also screen, entitled Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me. Also to be shown is the HBO documentary Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus, which is about the actors of the Belarus Free Theatre as they stood up to dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in this year’s iteration of the event. In a statement, festival director John Biaggi expressed his gratitude to audiences for helping the festival reach this milestone, and said that this year’s lineup was one of the best they’ve ever had.
“Twenty-five years is quite a milestone and we would like to acknowledge the enthusiastic support of our audience, which has allowed the festival to grow into what it is today,” John Biaggi. “This anniversary is also an opportunity to reflect on the fact that human rights concerns have only increased. One look at the breadth of this year’s program confirms that the festival is even more crucial today.”
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the IFC Center, and will screen from June 12-22. Those interested in attending can find more information on the festival’s official website.