The 7th annual Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival opens Wednesday, February 24, 2010 with Last Train Home winner of the “Best Feature” Award at the 2009 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam.
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HRWFF Opening Night
Opening Gala: 7th Annual Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival
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Opening Night Gala
Some tickets still remain for the Opening Night Gala of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival on February 24, 2009. Cost is $100 per person, which includes a reception and film ticket.
Plus tard, tu comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand) is this year’s opening night film. It screens at 8 PM at the Isabel Bader Theatre and will be preceded by a 6 PM reception at McKinsey & Co., 110 Charles Street West.
For tickets, please call (416) 322-8448 or e-mail marijke.anbeek@hrw.org by February 17, 2009.
Plus tard, tu comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand) stars Jeanne Moreau in the role of Madame Gornick, an aged woman who prowls around her apartment listening to her television set, which is tuned to the Klaus Barbie trial of 1987. Meanwhile, her son Victor is trying to assemble the bits and pieces of their family legacy through photographs, letters and memorabilia.
The film was adapted by Amos Gitai from Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical novel of the same name. Guest speaker for the evening is Erna Paris author Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair and seven other books.
Tagged amos gitaï
Media Release: Compelling, Diverse Tales of Campaigns to Win Rights
The sixth annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, co-presented with Cinematheque Ontario, opens on February 24 with Amos Gitaï’s Plus tard, tu comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand). Starring Jeanne Moreau, Gitaï’s latest film is an exploration of the Holocaust, memory and loss that makes deep emotional connections.
This year’s festival, continuing through March 5, brings together eight powerful films that address major global issues and show personal struggles against difficult odds.
“This is an exceptional lineup of films that from diverse angles reaffirm the importance of historical memory and recognize the enormous courage of people fighting for justice around the world,” said Helga Stephenson, chairperson of the festival. “The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival continues to be a vital meeting place for Torontonians with an interest in and commitment to human rights.”
The programme includes Malcolm Rogge’s Under Rich Earth, an account of Ecuadorian farmers fighting against the forces of globalization; the Canadian premiere of Jawad Metni’s Remnants of a War, a documentary about leftover cluster-bomb munitions that continue to cause carnage in Lebanon; and Julie Bridgham’s The Sari Soldiers, the story of six women’s efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the violent wake of the royal coup in 2005. These three directors will be at the screenings of their films.
Plus tard, tu comprendras will open the festival, which features strong female characters, such as the grieving mother and the courageous activists in The Sari Soldiers, the anti-heroine who exploits illegal immigrant labourers in Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World…, and the women grappling with recent atrocities in the Balkans in Aida Begi?’s Snow.
Both Lee Isaac Chung’s debut feature, Munyurangabo, a drama about vengeance and redemption in Rwanda, and Patricio Guzmán’s documentary The Battle of Chile, a chronicle of the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government, compel viewers to engage with issues of historical memory and moral responsibility.
The Opening Reception will be held at McKinsey & Co., 110 Charles Street West, 6 pm on Tuesday, February 24. Tickets are $100. The Closing Reception will take place on Thursday, March 5 at the Moose Factory Gallery, 22 Grange Avenue at 6 pm. Tickets are $30. To purchase tickets for either reception, please call the Human Rights Watch office at 416-322-8448.
The opening-night screening will take place at the Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West, Toronto at 8:00 pm. All other films will be shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario‘s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (McCaul Street entrance). Advance tickets for the sixth Annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival can be purchased online at cinemathequeontario.ca, by phone at 416-968-FILM (toll-free at 1-877-968-FILM) or in person at the TIFFG Box Office, located at 2 Carlton Street, West Mezzanine level (College subway station). Hours of operation are Monday to Friday, 10 am to 7 pm.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s largest independent research and advocacy organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. It conducts fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses in more than 90 countries around the world and publishes those findings in numerous reports each year. By generating press reporting and advocacy, Human Rights Watch seeks to shame abusive governments, change policies and practices, and inform the public about important human rights issues. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. Human Rights Watch Canada thanks its supporters McKinsey & Co. Hero Ventures Ltd., Sonia and Arthur Labatt and Deluxe.
The Canada Committee
The Human Rights Watch Canada Committee was formed in 2002 and is part of a network of committees across 13 cities in Europe, Canada and the United States. These committees seek to increase awareness of local and global human rights issues, and enlist the public and influence governments to support basic rights for all. Composed of opinion leaders and activists from a variety of backgrounds, the committee was formed out of the belief that an engaged constituency is essential for the defense of human rights. Canada Committee members are regularly briefed by Human Rights Watch investigators, senior government officials and informed observers. The committee strengthens Human Rights Watch and its global defense of essential liberties by contributing financially, attracting potential supporters and promoting the organization’s message.
Cinematheque Ontario
Cinematheque Ontario is a year-round screening programme dedicated to presenting transformative world cinema through thoughtfully curated retrospectives, filmmaker monographs, and international programme tours. Cinematheque Ontario presents an ambitious selection of more than 300 films annually, including acclaimed directors’ retrospectives, national and regional cinema spotlights, thematic programmes, exclusive limited runs, and classic and contemporary Canadian and international cinema, including many new and rare archival prints.
Cinematheque Ontario thanks its supporters Bell, RBC, Ontario Media Development Corporation, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Toronto Economic Development Office, Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council.
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For more information and/or press interviews, please contact:
Cinematheque Ontario/Toronto International Film Festival Group Communications Department:
Tel: 1-416-934-3200
E-mail: proffice@tiffg.ca
Human Rights Watch:
Lija Skobe: 416-322-8448 or skobel@hrw.org
Karin Lippert: 416-923-4707 or klippert26@aol.com
Plus tard, tu comprendras – Program Notes
“[A] subtle, contemplative exploration of memory and loss. . . [Moreau] is, of course, a goddess of French film, and here she gives a master class in how to be regal without vanity” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times).
Memory is a double-edged sword, and in Plus tard, tu comprendras, Amos Gitaï explores this truism in the most subtle and emotionally powerful manner. This most talented director has found a perfect subject for his increasingly spare and formal style, and the final result is masterly.
The film stars the venerable Jeanne Moreau in the role of Madame Gornick, an aged woman who prowls around her apartment listening to her television set. It is tuned to the Klaus Barbie trial of 1987, in which testimonies about arrests, incarcerations and deportations that took place during the Holocaust were recounted. Meanwhile, her son Victor is trying to assemble the bits and pieces of their family legacy through photographs, letters and memorabilia. The documents he discovers tell of the fate that befell his parents during the war, and he is quick to rush to judgment.
Plus tard, tu comprendras touches the deepest wellsprings of emotion, and by being suggestive rather than explicit, allows us all to share in its imaginative universe. This is perhaps the film Gitaï was born to make, a masterpiece of Holocaust memory that uses not one frame of footage from the disaster.
– Piers Handling, 2008 Toronto International Film Festival Programme Book
Rated 14A.
Tagged amos gitaï, france, germany, jeanne moreau
Atom Egoyan Opens Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Director Atom Egoyan opened the 5th Annual Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival, introducing Hana Makhlmalbaf’s Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame and talking of his own experience screening Ararat, which focused on the 1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey, at the same theatre some six years ago.
Egoyan has been a member of the Toronto Committee of Human Rights Watch for several years. He is the latest recipient of the Dan David Prize for “creative rendering of the past” in literature, theatre or film, joining playwright Tom Stoppard and novelist Amos Oz in sharing the $1 million prize.
Egoyan spoke to the artistic merits of Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame and the legacy passed down to the director from her father – Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A major figure in Iranian cinema, Mohsen established the Makhmalbaf Film House in which he taught film to a select group of pupils including his own three children. Makhmalbaf traveled secretly to Afghanistan during the Taliban rule and was one of the first filmmakers to shoot in the country after the group’s fall. He also founded a non-governmental organization for enabling Afghan children to go to school in Iran.
His elder daughter Samira directed a movie while living in Kabul called At Five in the Afternoon. Her latest film, Two-Legged Horse, from a script by her father, was also shot in Afghanistan. Hana’s directorial debut was at age 14 when she made a behind-the-scenes documentary of her sister Samira’s film, called Joy of Madness.
The Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival continues tomorrow night with El Ejido, The Law of Profit. Consuelo Rubio, Community Legal Worker for the Center for Spanish Speaking People, will introduce the film. Screening time is 7:30 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario.
Tagged adam egoyan, afghanistan, consuelo rubio, hana makhmalbaf
