Shameela
Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2019 Through A Woman’s Eye
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival showcased some exceptional documentary and feature films in London, from March 13th to 22nd, 2019.
The international listing included poignant stories from across the world: from Venezuela to Afghanistan and Thailand to Palestine. The films offered a detailed insight into issues affecting the global human rights of susceptible communities.
15 award-winning films were staged, awakening our consciousness to the darker corners of the world we live in.
We are delighted to feature some of the outstanding films presented in The Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2019 through FemAsia for our readers.
Facing The Dragon 2018
Filmmaker: Sedika Mojadidi
Sedika Mojadidi is an Afghan-American filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. She works as an independent producer and camera person for television and film. Her films include Motherland Afghanistan, and Condoms and Conflict.
As the US retracts its forces and aid from Afghanistan, the country is wrecked. Eventually, the Taliban regains its power, and the country’s political and social stability is on edge. Sedika Mojadidi follows two remarkable women on their journeys.
Nilofar, a successful medical doctor turned politician, committed to empowering women and secure peace in the region; and Shakila an investigative journalist working for local TV, driven by her quest to expose the raw truth about what is happening in her unsettled homeland. Under swelling intimidations of violence and misogyny, these two women are soon forced to choose between their passion for their mission and the security of their families.
Winner of the 2018 Human Rights Watch Film Festival Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking.
Ghost Fleet 2019
Filmmakers: Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron
Shannon Service is an American journalist and filmmaker. She has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Slate. Ghost Fleet is her first documentary feature.
Jeffrey Waldron was born in Houston and studied film at USC and the American Film Institute Conservatory. As a cinematographer, his credits include Cement Suitcase We Go On and the TV series Dear White People Ghost Fleet is his first feature film.
Ghost Fleet narrates the modern-day slavery and human trafficking labour behind the booming seafood industry. Bangkok-based activist Patima Tungpuchayakul goes beyond measures of personal safety to rescue the men who have been sold to Thai Fishing companies by human traffickers.
These men, who come from underprivileged southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, toil day and night and sometimes without setting their foot on land for years, earning meagre pay. They are forced to endure life-threatening working conditions and extreme forms of slavery.
Patima endangers her life, along with those of some other activists on faraway Indonesian islands, to locate these men and fight for their liberation.
The poignant stories reveal the mafia behind the global seafood industry. Patima’s call for the world to wake up amidst the chaos of death-threats and bribery shows her fortitude.
The Sweet Requiem 2018
Filmmakers: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam
Indian-Tibetan filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam have been working together for more than 30 years. They have made award-winning documentaries, video installations and two feature films. Their documentary, The Sun Behind the Clouds, won the Vaclav Havel Award at the One World Film Festival in Prague in 2010. Their feature films, Dreaming Lhasa and The Sweet Requiem both premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ritu and Tenzing are also the directors of the Dharamshala International Film Festival, which they founded in 2012, and is now one of India’s leading independent film festivals
At the tender age of eight, Dolkar and her father abandon their home, and they find themselves in the gruelling voyage across the deadly Himalayas. Dolkar settles in the Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi, India. 18 years later, feelings of revenge float up when she encounters the guide who abandoned them during that fateful journey of escaping the Chinese armed forces. She is tortured by nightmares of the past, driving her on a fanatical search for personal meaning. The Sweet Requiem is a haunting echo of the contemporary refugee crisis.
The Feeling of Being Watched 2018
Filmmaker: Assia Boundaoui
Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, VICE, and CNN. She directed a short film on hijabi hair salons, which premiered as an official selection of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Assia has a Masters degree in journalism. The Feeling of Being Watched is her directorial debut.
“It is in the act of looking back and talking out loud that we become less alienated, less petrified by our paranoia. Perhaps the only way to disrupt surveillance is to make sure that those who do the watching are also being watched.”- Assia Boundaoui
The Feeling of Being Watched is a documentary film which narrates the implications of the War on Terror from the perspective of Arab-American communities in the USA.
The War on Terror altered a lot of things in Assia’s locality like it has for many Muslims around the world. They were all of a sudden looked at through a different lens: as Other.
More than anything else, what really affected them was the surveillance. Strange cars parked up on their blocks, clicking sounds on their phones, random visits from official-looking men in suits confirm they were under strict surveillance.
The government surveillance starts long before 9/11 and has a lasting impact on Assia’s family and their neighbours’ normal lives in the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois.
Assia sets up her own investigation, and to her shock, her findings were more than what is on the outside. Her inquiries provided proof that her Arab-American hometown was indeed the subject of one of the most extensive counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the US, pre-9/11. Through The Feeling of Being Watched, Assia explores her life, her country and her own sense of identity and safety.
SAF
Filmmaker: Ali Vatansever
Ali Vatansever was born in Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently pursuing his directing career with Terminal Film, a production company he co-founded. His debut feature, El Yazısı One Day or Another, has been screened at various international festivals and distributed in movie theatres throughout Turkey. Aside from filmmaking, Ali teaches film at Koç University and works closely with NGOs on local democracy and governance.
Located on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, Fikirtepe is one of the oldest settlements of Istanbul. The most massive Istanbul urban transformation project was begun in Fikirtepe in 2010, and it said to date, more than 90% of its original marginalised population has been displaced.
Saf articulates the story of a couple living in a shelter, amidst a massive urban remodelling. Kamil, a compassionate worker, and his wife were on the verge of losing their house. He was forced to take a job at a construction site against his moralistic principles of opposing urban transformation. Accepting the opportunity to work for the very company taking over their neighbourhood, and displacing a Syrian refugee from the position he now holds, Kamil struggles between his conscience and survivalism.
His wife Remziye is left to face the upshot of her husband’s uncharacteristic actions. The film speaks about the universal truth of the politics behind the re-establishment of the city and the anguish of the common man.
