Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival

 
Minky Worden, Media Director, Human Rights Watch; Lixin Fan, Director of Last Train Home; Helga Stephenson, Chair Human Rights Watch Film Festival; Jasmine Herlt, Director, Human Rights Watch Canada.
 

 
Lixin Fan, director of Last Train Home, shares a laugh with photographer Edward Burtynsky.
 

 
Alfonso Vega, lawyer; Helga Stephenson, Chair, Human Rights Watch Film Festival; Gustavo Gutierrez, Former Chief of Police, Juarez City, Mexico.
 
Photos by Jacquie Labatt, Jacquie Labatt Photography
 

 
Professor Sean Hawkins (Professor of History, University of Toronto) introduces tonight’s film, My Neighbour, My Killer, a compassionate exploration into the open air hearings, which started as a social experiment in collective healing after the Rwandan genocide.
 
Award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion follows this process — called Gacaca — and the impact it has on a small hamlet over the period of a decade. The raw anger and emotional wounds that may never heal are visible and difficult to witness. It becomes clear that there is no simple solution to reconciliation. Both the victims and perpetrators understand that the path to co-existence will be long and difficult, and this gripping documentary follows this journey with compassion and conscience.
 
Professor Sean Hawkins, tonight’s special guest, is a specialist in the social and cultural history of sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work has focused on such topics as identity, political authority, religion, medicine, colonial law, and marriage; these were brought together in his recent book Writing and Colonialsim in North Ghana: The Encounter between the LoDagaa and “the World on Paper”, 1982-1992 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). He is also interested in the history of African identity, both on the continent and within the wider diaspora. This interest led to a collection of essays co-edited with Philip D. Morgan, The Black Experience of the Empire, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), which is a companion volume to the Oxford History of the British Empire. Finally, he is working on a set of pedagogical and publishing projects highlighting the African contribution to the Western idea and practice of freedom.
 
My Neighbor, My Killer screens at 8 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. For more information or to purchase tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque or in person at the theatre.
 

 
Samer Muscati, a researcher with Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa division, introduces tonight’s film, Welcome, writer-director Philippe Lioret’s dramatic chronicle of intersecting lives.
 
Set in Calais, Welcome stars Vincent Lindon as Simon, a local swimming instructor privately reeling in turmoil because he dreads an imminent divorce from his wife (Audrey Dana). Soon, his path unexpectedly crisscrosses with that of Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee with two aspirations: swim the English Channel, and join his girlfriend in England. The film has touched a nerve in France and resulted in an unexpected slam from Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
 
Guest Samer Muscati is a documentary photographer, lawyer and former journalist who has worked in Rwanda, Iraq and East Timor in the fields of human rights and development. His photographs have been published in Time Magazine and other publications in North America and Europe. Samer contributed to The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence (Douglas & MacIntyre publishers).
 
Welcome screens at 7 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. For more information or to order tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque and will be available at the theatre.
 

 
Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights Division at Human Rights Watch is tonight’s special guest at the screening of Be Like Others, an intimate documentary that reveals the restrictions and painful choices forced upon individuals confined to the fringes of Iranian society.
 
Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian, Be Like Others, follows the journeys of several young men (and one woman) at a sex-reassignment clinic in Tehran. These patients’ lives are fraught with physical and emotional turmoil. Many are shunned by their families; others have life-long physical pain from post-operation complications. Hope prevails in the idea that the operation will lead to a more public life without persecution.
 
Scott Long has documented and advocated against human rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and HIV status for many years. His work led to the United Nations human rights mechanisms agreeing publicly for the first time to take up gay and lesbian concerns. As program director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) for almost six years, he edited or co-authored reports on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender parenting, and on the use of sexuality to target women’s and feminist organizing. He is the researcher and author of Public Scandals: Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania, a report by Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC, and of More than a Name: State-Sponsored Homophobia and Its Consequences in Southern Africa, also for Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC. He also researched and authored In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct, Human Rights Watch’s detailed report on sexuality and Egyptian criminal justice.
 
Scott Long holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has taught at the University of Budapest, as well as holding a Fulbright lectureship at the University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania. He was a founding member of the Romanian gay and lesbian organization ACCEPT. His work spearheaded a European campaign and contributed strongly to Romania’s eventual repeal of Article 200 in 2001. While in the latter capacity shortly after the Romanian revolution, he began his career as a human rights activist, documenting and defending people imprisoned under Romania’s repressive sodomy law. He joined Human Rights Watch as a consultant in 2002 to develop a project on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and in March 2004 was hired as its director.
 
Be Like Others screens at 9 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. For more information or to order tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque and will be available at the theatre when doors open at eight.
 

 
Journalist and author Linden MacIntyre will introduce tonight’s film, Triage, Danis Tanovic’s latest exploration of how battle alters the human heart.
 
The film stars Colin Farrell as a war photographer. High in the arid mountains of Kurdistan pursuing a war without borders, Mark (Colin Farrell) and David (Jamie Sives) witness and capture horrendous images, from combatants pulverized by ammunition, to a doctor who works heroically to save the wounded but shoots dead those he knows he can’t help. The friends begin to disagree over whether to stay or flee the chaos. Eventually they separate and lose contact, and Mark must return home to Ireland alone.
 
Linden MacIntyre is the co-host of The Fifth Estate, CBC Television’s flagship investigative affairs program. He is the winner of nine Gemini Awards for broadcast journalism. His most recent book, The Bishop’s Man, won the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
 
Triage screens at 7 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. A limited number of tickets are still available.  For more information or to order tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque.