A much needed rejoinder to the often escapist miasma that is the mass media, this year's selection of Human Rights Watch films covers Azerbaijan and Iran, India and Ireland, Argentina and Chad, and includes the work of several masters of cinema, as well as many lesser-known, promising talents. Co-scripted by the renowned Costa Gavras, MON COLONEL delivers a searing and sadly apropos history lesson on the Algerian war of independence, serving double duty as disquieting allegory of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. DRY SEASON, directed by the acclaimed Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, is an absorbing drama about vengeance that fully explores the moral conundrum it proposes. Fernando E. Solanas, director of the epic call to revolution, HOUR OF THE FURNACES, continues to chronicle the plight of Argentina's dispossessed in THE DIGNITY OF THE NOBODIES. Raw and often emotionally overwhelming, DIGNITY captures the ongoing struggle and tragedy that inevitably erupts in this clash of classes. Unseen in Toronto since its screenings at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, Perry Ogden's accomplished debut film, PAVEE LACKEEN, documents the problems faced by Ireland's Traveller community - a maligned minority who live in crippling poverty - through the experiences of a ten-year-old “Traveller Girl,” Winnie. Perhaps the most disheartening of the stories unearthed by these films is that of JOHN & JANE, which puts faces to the ephemeral telemarketing voices living in a sort of warped ideological simulacra of American society, and aspiring to the questionable ideals espoused by dubious corporate interests in India. Jafar Panahi's OFFSIDE treats the issue of Iran's institutionalized discrimination against women with disarming, upbeat wit, and, if the microcosm of the film's setting can be extrapolated somewhat, offers the suggestion that even the most ingrained injustices can be surmounted through common cause. Many of these films share a commodity even more precious than the “liquid gold” wreaking havoc in Azerbaijan, as seen in the intrepid documentary, SOURCE - and that is an unwavering belief in the possibility of change through fearless resistance.
- George Kaltsounakis
For further information about the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, please visit www.hrw.org/iff .
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