Film Year: 2017

Walls, especially those placed along national borders and boundaries, are essentially contradictory structures, fortifying the (imagined) integrity of nation-states while severing communities, constraining movement, and fueling mistrust. They are sites of inclusion and exclusion, dividing yet connecting people who conceive of their own identities partly in relation to which side…

“The war is finished. But for us, the victims, it continues.” The war being alluded to by a still-grieving woman in director Samir Mehanovic’s The Fog of Srebrenica is the one that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Specifically, though, she and the other interviewees from…

“Exile has killed us.” These words, spoken by one of the many children featured in Mani Benchelah’s devastating documentary about the Syrian refugee crisis, indicate how dire the situation has become for the most vulnerable members of a displaced and dispersed community now numbering in the millions. Indeed, another preadolescent…

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck is among the most accomplished and consistently brilliant auteurs in the emerging arena of human rights cinema. In 2000 he directed the film Lumumba, about the Republic of Congo’s postwar independence movement, and five years later helmed the made-for-TV historical drama Sometimes in April, about the…

Although popularly known as the voice that brought the “The Banana Boat Song” (“Day-O”) and other calypso numbers to mainstream America in the 1950s, Hollywood actor and singer Harry Belafonte has done more than nearly anyone else in the film and recording industries to fight for civil rights in the…

Fans of director Abderrahmane Sissako’s award-winning Timbuktu, a 2014 film about the violent clampdown on cultural activities (including musical performances) in Mali after the rise to power of Islamic extremists, will find much to appreciate in Johanna Schwartz’s provocatively titled debut They Will Have to Kill Us First. Likewise concerned…

Winner of the “Best Human Rights Film” Award at the 2016 Verzio Film Festival in Budapest and similar honors throughout the world, director Daniel Abma’s Transit Havana is an eye-opening look at Cuba’s LGBTQ community and the long history of homophobia that has begun to melt away in the light…

Panti Bliss, the titular “queen” in director Conor Horgan’s crowd-pleasing, uplifting documentary, was on the frontlines of Ireland’s recent push for same-sex marriage rights, which culminated with a 2015 referendum that amended the country’s Constitution. Also known as Rory O’Neill, this well-known drag queen and social activist has devoted her…

As the founder of Eyesfull, an independent documentary production company based in Toronto, Canadian filmmaker Elisa Paloschi has long demonstrated a commitment to social justice issues and to bringing largely underrepresented or silent voices to the screen. Her recent film, Driving with Selvi, is further evidence of this — an…