Preview of the 12th Human Rights Film Festival

Friday, 14 March 2014

Here you'll find some of the movies that will be screened at the 12th San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival, that will take place between April 4 and 11.

SQUATTING MOVEMENT IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY

ATEAK ZABALDUZ / ABRIENDO PUERTAS (2014). Juanmi Gutiérrez. Basque Country

Doors kicked in, squats, police attacks, street violence... these are some of the stereotypes commonly associated with the squatting movement. But hidden beneath the surface of these prejudices there is nevertheless a complex reality of a wealth that points us back towards ideologies and living choices that we believed had been shelved over the course of history.

PATRIARCHY, ROLES AND GENDER IDENTITY

EL BUMBÚN (2013). Fernando Bermúdez. Argentina

In an inhospitable rural area in North-East Argentina, machismo, destitution and the repression meted out under the military dictatorship sees the birth of the latest daughter born to Antonio, an tyrannical alcoholic woodcutter who anxiously wanted his first boy child. After the three daughters farmed out to families in better financial position, he christens the latest one with the name of José, nicknamed Bumbún, and forces her to take on the identity of a boy.

ECHOES OF VIOLENCE

ECHEVARRIATIK ETXEBERRIARA (2014). Ander Iriarte. Basque Country-Catalonia

Taking part only people who was born or lives in Oiartzun, the documentary investigates the importance that violence has had in the Left Basque Nationalists (understanding this as a big and heterogenous group). Violence expressed in it's different ways (violence from ETA, police, politicians, State, psicological...). In orther to do so, Ander Iriarte, the director of this documentary, has the intention to use the environment he knows the most to use it as a reflection of something bigger.

DRUG PATENTS: MONOPOLY ON LIFE OR DEATH

FIRE IN THE BLOOD (2013). Dylan Mohan Gray. India

A tale of medicine, monopoly and malice, Fire in the Blood tells the story of how Western pharmaceutical companies aggressively blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the countries of Africa and the south in the years after 1996 –causing some 10 million unnecessary deaths– and the improbable group of people who decided to fight back.

THE RIGHT TO DIE WITH DIGNITY

HONEY (2013). Valeria Golino. Italy-France

Irene is 32 and lives alone. For some time she has been working to help suffering human beings: people who are terminally ill and want to end their agony and people whose lives are nothing but one long painful experience who want someone to help them to die. Her nickname is Honey. One day she comes across a man who has nothing wrong with him but who wants to die as he tired, bored and feels that his life has gone on long enough.

SANDINISTA GUERRILLAS AND REVOLUTION

RED PRINCESSES (2013). Laura Astorga Carrera. Costa Rica-Venezuela

Mid-80s in Nicaragua. Claudia is eleven. She and her younger sister are the daughters of two Sandinista activists, meaning that from a very early age they have been familiar with terms such as clandestine struggle, socialism, revolution... and with the culture and iconography of Cuba and the Soviet Union. Now they must return with their parents to their home, Costa Rica, where their parents continue to work under cover in support of the revolution. Claudia starts going to a new school, where she dreams of establishing a secret revolutionary movement in the conservative San José, recruiting some of her classmates with pins and badges of Lenin.

THOUGHT, ART AND POLITICS FROM A FEMINIST SLANT

PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER (2013). Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin. Russia-United Kingdom

The incredible tale of three young girls (Nadia, Masha and Katia), members of a music group who played a "punk prayer" inside Russia's most important cathedral. Their arrest and subsequent trial was watched all over the world and forever changed Russian society. Following the unexpected twists in the trial, the documentary shows us the real people while witnessing the transformation of political activists into the icons of modernity.

BLACK MARKET FOR HUMAN ORGANS

TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE (2013). Ric Esther Bienstock. Canada

A gritty and unflinching descent into the shadowy world of black-market organ trafficking: the street-level brokers, the rogue surgeons, the impoverished men and women who are willing to sacrifice a slice of their own bodies for a quick payday, and the desperate patients who face the agonizing choice of obeying the law or saving their lives.

CONSTRUCTION OF UNION AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIPS

WAŁĘSA. MAN OF HOPE (2013). Andrzej Wajda. Poland

This is the story of Lech Wałęsa, one of the most influential men of late 20th century Europe. From his participation in 1970 in the workers' protests at the Gdansk shipyards that would end in bloody repression and a stint in prison for him, to the 1980 strike where he became the workers' leader at the head of the Solidarity Trade Union, the film follows his political moves and shows us his life as a family man with his wife Danuta and his children. While they apparently live a normal life in their Gdansk flat, they are surrounded by political occurrences of enormous importance for the future of the world.