The Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2022 screens movies from around the world that highlight the challenges we face as one planet and one people.
Human rights used to be a little on the fringe, but the climate, ecological and social issues that we face today make human rights a core issue. Somehow it is all tied together. In our Indigenous state, we have a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship with Mother Earth. But destroy the land and you destroy the people, destroy the people and you destroy the land.
Human Rights Watch is a New York City NGO that promotes and defends the basic rights of people around the world. hrw.org
Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2022
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2022 is at Film at Lincoln Center, IFC Center in Chelsea, and streaming; Fri, May 20-26, 2022. ff.hrw.org filmlinc.org 🇳🇬🇵🇭🇪🇸
This season features films about climate, living in the USA as a person of color, fighting the destruction of natural resources, religious and racial persecution, living under a dictatorship, migration, the challenges of being a woman, and how good people become radicalized by endless cycles of poverty and abuse.
Films
This season’s films include movies or filmmakers from Nigeria, Philippines, and Spain.
Rebellion
The opening night film, “Rebellion” is directed by Maia Kenworthy and Spanish filmmaker Elena Sánchez Bellot.
It’s a behind the scenes look at the efforts of the young people leading Extinction Rebellion to help the world realize that if we don’t take action, climate change is going to ruin the way we live today. Old people will soon be dead, but the young have to live with the choices we make today. Young people want to save the world. We should join them.
Screens with director Q&A on Fri, May 20 at 7pm. filmlinc.org 🇪🇸
Delikado
Delikado by Karl Malakunas, tells the story of how local people, often Indigenous, fight to protect their lands from exploitation by outsiders. This story is set in Palawan, Philippines, but it is pretty much the same story all around the world.
Indigenous peoples will never take the last mating pair of a species, but outsiders will. Then what are you left with: nothing. And the damage cannot be repaired.
Screens with director Q&As on Sun, May 22 at 8pm. filmlinc.org 🇵🇭
No U-Turn
No U-Turn is Ike Nnaebue’s 2022 documentary recalling his own experience migrating from Igbo lands in Nigeria to Europe twenty years ago. He got as far as Morocco before being turned back. Nnaebue is a rising star African filmmaker. He has been called one of the champions of the New African Cinema.
Nnaebue is a smart guy who speaks perfect English when he wants to, but he chooses to write in Creole English. We are struck by how his playful use of language is similar to the way a Reggae, Rap or Reggaeton singer in the Americas stretches words. This is Mother Africa speaking.
Humans have been migrating since we got two legs, and often make seemingly impossible journeys. But people don’t migrate just because they want a bigger television. People migrate when there is death behind from gangs, lack of water and lack of food. That means there is no u-turn. We shouldn’t be so mean to migrants. They are people too.
The New York premiere screens with director Q&As on May 24 at 6:15pm. filmlinc.org 🇳🇬
