Projects in genres: Human Rights

Synopsis

When a robotic rover starts drilling for signs of life on Mars, the race is on for one tiny rock-beast to save her native community from the invader from Earth.

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Does school prepare you for adult life? Does hardship build character? A personal and unconventional documentary about a teacher who left deep scars on the psyche of his former pupils.

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A documentary exploring the Norfolk Mental Health service through the experience of 10 patients impacted by waiting lists that can run for years.

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A series of sketches about the miseries of life in the 21st century and its effects on the human condition. During the course of the series the negativity is gradually replaced by positivity, turning misery into a mere passing necessity thus providing a guide to surviving the unexpected.

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An investigation into the truth behind the murder of Guatemalan cleric and human rights activist Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was killed in 1998 just days after trying to hold the country's military accountable for the atrocities committed during its civil war.
The shocking murder of Gerardi in the aftermath of the Guatemalan Civil War sets the ground for a powerful battle between justice and corruption in this political crime thriller
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2020 - Spotlight Documentary - World premiere

Synopsis

An aspiring teenage rapper from Afghanistan, finds himself stuck in Athens with a group of friends. Through music and poetry he tries to make sense of the world around him.
Official Selection Aspen Shortfest 2020 - Winner Best Documentary
Official Selection HotDocs 2020

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A gritty Northern LGBTQ comedy-drama. Set in Blackpool in 1953, two young gay Yorkshire miners, Eddy and Tommy, are holidaying there and meet transvestite, James Elbridge, who is summoning up the courage to do the fabled walk from pier to pier.

Synopsis

Edgar Combrink, a perpetual re-offender, is released back to the gang ridden Cape Flats to a family he hardly knows. To a forgotten suburb rife with unemployment and social decay in one of the most unequal cities in the world; Cape Town. Now that his daughter is starting high school, he needs to resist the ever present pull of crime, if he wants to see her graduate.

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Former Guantánamo detainee, Mohamedou Ould Salahi, and his guard, Steve Wood, reunite in Mauritania 13 years after last seeing each other, rekindling an unlikely relationship that profoundly changed their lives.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2020 - World premiere
Official Selection Camerimage 2020

Synopsis

Three-time Academy Award® nominee Johnny Depp plays celebrated war photographer W. Eugene Smith in a real life David vs Goliath story, pitting Smith against a powerful corporation responsible for poisoning the people of Minamata, Japan in 1971.
New York, 1971. W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp) is a celebrated photo-journalist and photo-essayist, but he feels devoid of inspiration. He is at such a low ebb he even considers suicide. Then a Japanese-American woman Aileen (Minami) shows up to convince him to come to the Japanese coastal city of Minamata, whose community has been ravaged by mercury poisoning, the result of decades of gross industrial negligence by Japan’s Chisso Corporation.
Eugene eventually agrees to go, with the reluctant and secret support of Life Magazine head Robert Hayes (Bill Nighy). With Aileen, Smith immerses himself in the community, documenting the people’s efforts to live with Minamata Disease and their passionate fight to achieve recognition and compensation from Chisso. It is a life-changing experience — one which brings Eugene redemption, love, new purpose and his greatest-ever photograph. A photograph that will change the world and provide desperately needed fuel to the fledgling environmental protection movement.
'Minamata' is a moving redemptive story of how one man’s powerful photograph impacted the world, yet in order to find it he had to open his heart.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Berlinale Special - World premiere

Synopsis

Forensic Architecture meticulously reconstruct an accident involving a boat full of migrants close to the European coast. The work is based on video material recorded by artist and survivor Amel Alzakout as the boat was sinking.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy is it to go shopping?
BAFTA Film Awards 2021 - Winner - Best British Short Film
Academy Awards 2021 - Nomination - Best Short Film (Live Action)