Browse previous selections from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival

The Return: Life After ISIS
The Return: Life After ISIS is a unique portrait of a group of Western women who pledged their lives to ISIS, but now want to return home to restart their lives.

Up to G-Cup
Northern Iraq's first lingerie store not only sells underwear, but also acts as a meeting place where women connect to their bodies and sensuality after overcoming the traumas of oppression, war, and conservative morality. With brave honesty a group of Kurdish and Yazidi women chat candidly, revealing the challenges they face in a male-dominated society.

200 Meters
Mustafa lives on the Palestinian-controlled side of the wall, and Salwa and their children on the Israeli side. One day he gets the call every parent dreads: his son has been in an accident and is in the hospital. He will do anything to reach his son, and after being denied access through the checkpoint on a technicality, Mustafa embarks upon a journey to cross the border illegally.

Born in Evin
When she was 12 years old, actress and filmmaker Maryam Zaree found out that she was one of a number of babies born inside Evin, Iran’s most notorious political prison.

Advocate
Jewish Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel and her Palestinian colleagues have been working for decades representing their clients in an increasingly conservative Israel. To many, Lea is a traitor who defends the indefensible. For others, she's more than an attorney – she’s a true ally.

Love Child


Screwdriver (Mafak)
After spending more than a decade in prison for an attack on an Israeli settler, Ziad struggles to readjust to life in Ramallah, lost in a world he barely recognizes.


Amal
Within a constant political turmoil, Amal searches for her place, identity and sexuality in a patriarchal society.

Ava
This timely, coming of age story follows Ava, a teenage girl whose life is dictated by the constraints of her conservative, patriarchal community in Tehran.
Muhi - Generally Temporary
For the past eight years Muhi, a young boy from Gaza, has been trapped in an Israeli hospital.