Five Must-See Human Rights Films

Evidently, this is a highly subjective list. A more apt title might have been “Five Human Rights Films That We Like,” but with that header, would you have even made it this far?

So here are five films and why we think they merit two hours (or slightly more) of your time. We'll try not to give away too much of the story line, since we fully expect you will soon open a new window, head on over to Netflix, put them in your queue and watch them.

1. Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo, Director, 1966

This is the story of the Battle of Algiers (1955-1957), fought between the Algerian National Liberation Front and French paratroopers. This is at the top of our list for too many reasons to count. But here are a few that matter from the perspective of human rights. First, the film can be, and has been viewed and understood from at least three optics: revolutionary theory and practice, counter insurgency, and human rights. In the 1960s and 1970s, the film was a favorite of radical movements such as the Black Panthers and the IRA. For years in Latin America and elsewhere, it has been viewed by those studying and engaged in counterinsurgency; the Pentagon even screened the film after the invasion of Iraq. But the film does an excellent job of demonstrating the human cost of conflict, as well as the role of the everyday denial of rights in ways both banal and extreme, in the development and explosion of conflict. The film is perhaps most powerful in its communication of the universal (and equivalent) nature of human suffering, particularly through the musical score.

2. The Official Story
Luiz Puenzo, Director, 1985

Why is this film on the list? Because in most places at most times, some degree of human rights abuse is going on all around us. And what do we do? Well, sadly, most of us are indifferent or willfully ignorant. The Official Story focuses on one woman who, unwittingly at the center of a particularly horrible practice of the Argentine military during the Dirty War (1976-1983): the seizure of the infants from women who are disappeared, and their delivery to families deemed appropriate. The Official Story does a good job of explaining how ordinary people permit atrocity to occur while going about their daily lives. As the Edmund Burke quotation goes, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [people] do nothing.”

But at the same time, the film allows for the possibility of recognition of responsibility and change. As Norma Aleandro, the lead actress (who was exiled during the Dirty War), and who plays the film’s protagonist (Alicia) said, "Alicia's personal search is also my nation's search for the truth about our history. The film is positive in the way it demonstrates that she can change her life despite all she is losing."

3. Sometimes in April
Raoul Peck, Writer, Director, 2005

This film is much better, much more nuanced and powerful than the more popular Hotel Rwanda. The topic — genocide in Rwanda — is gripping. The film is dramatic, engaging but also helpful in understanding the dynamics of ethnic conflict, power battles and (to a lesser extent) the global geopolitics of international responses to genocide (both in real time and through the creation of after-the-fact tribunals). \The characters are well developed and the main story line gives a sense of the complexity of what is often portrayed in simplistic terms.

4. A Dry White Season
Euzhan Palcy, Director, 1989

This one enters with an asterisk. It is not a bad film — parts of it are very good. But this list should be balanced, right? The other films on this list are either local (national) productions or, if not, at least focus the better part of the narrative on those directly involved (as opposed to the external, Western heroes and villains). This one is a Hollywood production with all that implies.

So, with that disclaimer, why this film? Well, even if Manichean and constrained by the need to focus the narrative on the White protagonists (who just happen to be Hollywood stars Donald Sutherland, Susan Sarandon and Marlon Brando), the film does a reasonably good job on two important issues. First, it gives you a sense of the perspective of Black South Africans and, second, it examines the worldview of ordinary, everyday racists essential to the maintenance of apartheid. In the reading group that I teach on human rights and film (for law students), I like to show this film after the others. Students pick up on the differences in narrative and style between this film and, say, Battle of Algiers (which involved just one professional actor).

5. Moolaadé
Ousmane Sembene, Writer, Director 2004

(This one comes courtesy of Human Rights blogger Clara Long) This film is a powerful cinematographic exploration of the tensions that can develop between human rights and culture. Moolaadé tackles the sensitive issue of female genital circumcision, or in the parlance of many human rights organizations, mutilation. It’s hard to settle on the right words here: Human rights organizations strongly condemn the practice as mutilation, and are criticized in return for cultural imperialism.

As the film opens, director Ousmane Sembene, nothing less than the revered grandfather of African cinema, takes us into a remote village in Burkina Faso. Several young girls have fled a circumcision ceremony, running to a rebellious woman who refused to let her daughter be cut. This woman, Collé, phenomenally portrayed by actress and director Fatoumata Coulibaly, offers them moolaadé, magical protection inside her compound. What happens next is a chronicle of a conflict between modernity and traditional life as those in the village who would carry on the old tradition of cutting are countered in a traditional way –- through the enchantment of Collé’s compound. While the film takes a stand against genital cutting, it provocatively gives all sides their due and shows how not all struggles for justice have to be talked about in the language of rights.

Photo credit: markhillary