Browse previous selections from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival
In Search...
Director Beryl Magoko is embarking on a personal journey to courageously face her past, to accept and love herself and her own body as she considers reconstructive surgery for the female genital mutilation she underwent as a young girl.
Life Without Basketball
When a controversial ruling on religious headgear ends star athlete Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir's chances at playing professionally, she re-examines her faith and identity as a Muslim American.
Love Child
Made in Bangladesh
Channeling real-life stories that Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain encountered as a women's rights activist, this empowering, layered drama shines a light on an oppressive industry, and demands our attention.
Midnight Traveler
When the Taliban forces filmmakers and married couple Hassan Fazili and Fatima Hussaini to flee Afghanistan with their two daughters, they begin filming their time on the road, which includes running across borders, sleeping on roadsides, interacting with smugglers, and staying at multiple refugee camps along the way.
Minding The Gap
Minding the Gap tells the coming-of-age story of three young men, bonded by their love of skateboarding and desire to escape volatile family life.
No Box for Me. An Intersex Story (Ni d'Eve ni d'Adam. Une histoire intersexe)
This beautifully crafted, poetic documentary joins brave young people as they seek to re-appropriate their bodies and explore their identities, revealing both the limits of binary visions of sex and gender, and the irreversible physical and psychological impact of non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants.
On the President's Orders
In 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte announced a “war on drugs” in the Philippines, launching a wave of violence and murder targeting thousands of suspected drug dealers and users.
One Child Nation
One Child Nation explores China's One Child Policy, which made it illegal in most circumstances for couples to have more than one child.
Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary world of Ben Ferencz
The fascinating story of Ben Ferencz—the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor and lifelong advocate of “law not war.” After witnessing Nazi concentration camps shortly after liberation, Ferencz became lead prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg, which has been called the biggest murder trial in history.