Asia

In 2019, protests broke out after the Indian government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act, which overtly discriminates against Muslims. Nausheen Khan follows the women at the forefront of the resistance.

Controversial Afghan pop star and activist Aryana Sayeed mentors young hopefuls as they prepare to appear on their country’s hit TV show Afghan Star. With two young women on the verge of being named the show’s first ever female winners, the Taliban take over and their lifelong dreams of becoming pop stars are suddenly under threat.

In Delikado, three environmental defenders are tested like never before in their battle to save their home, Palawan, an island in the Philippines, from the illegal destruction of its forests, fisheries, and mountains.

In August 2021, staff at the most widely read newspaper in Kabul, ‘Etilaat Roz’, are left with an impossible choice after the Taliban seize power: stay and continue reporting—risking torture, imprisonment, and death—or join thousands of others attempting to flee the country. ‘Etilaat Roz’ staff member Abbas Rezaie films his colleagues as they navigate the days that changed their lives and the direction of the country.   

Shobe, Aisha and Suma from are poised to make history as Bangladesh’s first women surfers in an international surf competition. But society and poverty pose major hurdles.

When members of Falun Gong hack China's state TV to expose brutal repression - lives are changed forever. Award winning filmmaker Jason Loftus and celebrated comic book artist Daxiong tell the resilient story of those fighting for religious freedom.

In Midwives, amid an environment of ever-increasing chaos and violence against the Muslim Rohingya population in Myanmar, two midwives, one Buddhist and one Muslim, work side by side in a makeshift clinic in western Myanmar, providing medical services to the Rohingya of Rakhine State.

Myanmar Diaries by the Myanmar Film Collective, an anonymous group of filmmakers, reveals the realities of life since February 1, 2021, when the country’s military overthrew the civilian government. 

With continuing women's abuses and a high incident of sexual assault and domestic abuse taking place, Karachi’s feminists organize a women’s march, facing down threats from Pakistan’s state, media and radical religious right.

This Stained Dawn is not just about one protest, but about the often times revolutionary act of political organizing in itself.

Rappler, a major Philippines online news site, investigates and uncovers countless government-sanctioned murders under President Rodrigo Duterte

In The Same Breath, directed by Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation), explores the parallel campaigns of misinformation waged by the Chinese and US leadership and their devastating impact on millions of lives since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Join us for a special viewing of the Academy Award winning film, Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl), which follows a class navigating the disadvantages young girls face in Afghanistan today – gaining an education and skateboarding.

Compared to Russian musician-activists Pussy Riot and dubbed “Vietnam’s Lady Gaga,” Khôi must go to great lengths to disseminate her music as she fights to champion women’s rights, LGBT rights, and free speech.

This eye-opening documentary follows three women in their gruelling quest to find a husband, weighing the cost of family and society’s approval against their own chances of happiness.

Centered on the indomitable character of Imelda Marcos, The Kingmaker examines, with intimate access, the Marcos family’s improbable return to power in the Philippines. 

 After China banned her film, an exiled filmmaker, with husband and child in tow, stalks a tour bus through Taiwan for the only chance to see her mother, who is visiting from mainland China. 

What lengths would you go to in order to ride a bicycle? Afghan Cycles follows a new generation of young Afghan women cyclists.

Bangkok-based Patima Tungpuchayakul has committed her life to rescuing and returning home men from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian nations who have been sold to Thai fishing companies by human traffickers. 

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.

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 explores China's One Child Policy, which made it illegal in most circumstances for couples to have more than one child.

At age eight, Dolkar and her father fled their home, escaping Chinese armed forces in an arduous journey across the Himalayas. Now 26, she lives in a Tibetan refugee colony in India, where an encounter with a man from her past propells Dolkar on an obsessive search for the truth.

Buddhist monk and award-winning activist Venerable Luon Sovath is harassed, censored, and evicted by his own religious leaders when he becomes a key figure in the land-rights protests that led up to the “Cambodian Spring”.

When Khatera, a 23-year-old Afghan woman, forces her father to stand trial after a lifetime of sexual abuse, she risks her family, freedom, and personal safety.

Khonsaly Hay returns to his lush, serene village in Cambodia after over 40 years living in France and comes face-to-face with his former Khmer Rouge persecutors.

In this master class featuring a variety of imagery from the Rohingya crisis in Burma, we will explore the use of photography and satellite imagery.

Afghan-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi joins two awe-inspiring women on the front lines.

Filmmaker Mo Naqvi will vote for the first time during Pakistan's elections. But Mo has a tough choice.

<p>Sixteen-year-old Nisha lives a double life.</p>

What can photographs do, and what do we want them to do, in visualizing human rights issues?

Shot below the radar, Complicit follows the journey of Chinese migrant worker-turned-activist Yi Yeting, a Foxconn factory worker who takes his fight against the global electronic industry from his hospital bed to the international stage.

“I want to tell girls, fear is taught; that you are born free and you are born brave.” - Maria Toorpakai, film subject, Girl Unbound

Rallying thousands of students to skip school and occupy the streets of Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong becomes one of the autonomous territory’s most notorious dissidents.

Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines were amongst thousands of girls and young women who were sexually exploited by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

What Tomorrow Brings follows one year in the life of the first all-girls school in a remote, conservative Afghan village.

An unsettling and eye-opening exploration into the spread of the radical ideology of the Red Mosque Islamic school in Pakistan, which trains children to devote their lives to jihad, or holy war, from a very young age.

A group of activists protesting the alleged rape of six girls by a school headmaster and a government official quickly become fugitives. 

Since fleeing his native North Korea to defect to the south, the artist Sun Mu has worked under a defiant alias meaning “no boundaries” to criticize the repressive regime of Kim Jong-un.

Inside the Chinese Closet exposes the difficult decisions young LGBT individuals must make when forced to balance their quest for love with parental and cultural expectations. 

Drawing the Tiger tells the story of a rural Nepalese family that has lived for generations as subsistence farmers, today surviving on less than a dollar per day.

<p>The<em> Look of Silence</em> is Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful companion piece to the Oscar®-nominated <em>The Act of Killing</em> This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.</p>

In New Delhi, 12-year-old Siddharth is sent by his father Mahendra to work in a factory in another province to help support their family. Siddharth is supposed to come home in one month for the Diwali festival. When he fails to return or call, his dist

Director Rithy Panh won the Un Certain Regard prize at last year's Cannes for this startlingly original work, which uses handmade clay figurines and detailed dioramas to recount the suffering of Panh's family at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime foll