The Human Rights Watch Film Festival Canada goes digital with free online doc screenings this month

The 18th annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival Canada is going entirely digital this year, offering up five documentary films from across the globe that will be available to stream for free across Canada. Each screening will also be followed by a Q+A with the filmmakers, subjects, and/or Human Rights Watch researchers, providing in-depth context for each film.

Running from February 18-22, 2021, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival Canada has once again teamed up with Toronto’s Hot Docs festival for this year’s screenings, which encompass topics ranging from LGBTQ rights, environmental activism, protest marches, and the plight of refugees, from countries including Kenya, Venezuela, Sweden, Iran/Turkey, and Peru.

Free tickets for each screening are available to reserve as of February 11, 2021, via the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema site.

Read on for more information on this year’s slate, along with trailers for each film. The 18th annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival Canada runs from February 18-22, 2021.

A La Calle – OPENING NIGHT
Maxx Caicedo and Nelson G. Navarrete, 2020, Documentary, 110 min.
Spanish, Fully subtitled in English.
Official Selection DOC NYC.

A La Calle is a first-hand account of the extraordinary efforts of ordinary Venezuelans to reclaim their democracy from the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, whose policies have plunged the country into economic ruin. Working with a network of clandestine camera crews, the filmmakers spent three years recording exclusive interviews with key opposition figures, including Leopoldo López — whose arrest and imprisonment inspired a national movement — and the grassroots activist Nixon Leal, as well as a host of other Venezuelans. As acting interim president, Juan Guaidó works to rally international opposition to the Maduro government, which tightens its hold over a nation already crippled by hyperinflation, blocking life-saving humanitarian aid and repressing dissent. A La Calle captures the remarkable courage of the Venezuelan people as they unite to restore liberty to their country.
Live Zoom Discussion to follow screening.

I Am Samuel
Peter Murimi, 2020, Documentary, 68 min.
English, Swahili, Luhya, Fully subtitled in English
Official Selection London Film Festival, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Samuel grew up on a farm in the Kenyan countryside, where tradition is valued above all else. He moves to Nairobi in search of a new life, where he finds belonging in a community of fellow queer men and falls in love with Alex. Their love thrives even though Kenyan laws criminalize anyone who identifies as LGBTQ, and together they face threats of violence and rejection. Samuel’s father, a preacher at the local church, doesn’t understand why his son is not yet married and Samuel must navigate the very real risk that being truthful to who he is may cost him his family’s acceptance. Filmed over five years, I Am Samuel is an intimate portrait of a Kenyan man balancing pressures of family loyalty, love, and safety and questioning the concept of conflicting identities.
Q+A will follow screening.

Wake Up on Mars
Dea Gjinovci, 2020, Documentary, 75 min.
Albanian, Swedish, Fully subtitled in English.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival

Two teenage sisters, Ibadeta and Djeneta, lie in a vegetative state in the small Swedish home of their Kosovar family. Their mysterious illness is known as “resignation syndrome,” a condition that can affect asylum-seeking children, often following a threat of deportation. The tight-knit family is trying to rebuild a normal life far from their native Kosovo, where they were victims of persecution. As their devoted parents work to keep their daughters alive and await updates on their immigration status, their youngest brother, Furkhan, imagines a life beyond the snowy expanse of his temporary backyard—and into the far reaches of space. While their entire future hangs in the balance of a pending asylum request, the little boy dreams of building a spaceship to leave it all behind. Furkhan’s desire to build his dream ship to the stars, escaping the unimaginable reality of his sisters’ illness, serves as a powerful, visually arresting metaphor for the contemporary refugee experience.
Q+A will follow screening.

Love Child
Eva Mulvad, 2019, Documentary, 112 min.
Azerbaijani, English, Farsi, Turkish, Fully subtitled in English.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival.

An intimately filmed, epic love story introduces Leila and Sahand at the start of a turbulent five-year period beginning with their escape from Iran where, while married to other people, they fell in love. Since adultery is punishable by death, and divorce forbidden, they run for their lives and start over again as a family in Turkey with their young son, Mani, who doesn’t yet know that Sahand is his biological father. Suddenly living together in a strange new land, battling tightening asylum laws to find security after years in limbo, they are learning more about each other in the toughest of circumstances and facing hurdles that test the strength of their relationship.
Q+A will follow screening.

Maxima
Claudia Sparrow, 2019, Documentary, 88 min.
English, Spanish, Fully subtitled in English.
Official Selection Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival.

Maxima tells the incredible story of 2016 environmental Goldman Prize winner Máxima Acuña and her family, who own a small, remote plot in the Peruvian Highlands. The Acuñas rely solely on the environment for their livelihood, but their land sits directly in the path of a multi-billion dollar project run by one of the world’s largest gold-mining corporations. Faced with intimidation, violence, and criminal prosecution, we follow Máxima’s tireless fight for justice, taking her from the Peruvian Supreme Court to the doors of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Standing ever mighty, Máxima sings of her love of the land in the face of widespread oppression of indigenous people, and relentless attempts by corporation to exploit resources despite both the eradication of traditional lifestyles and widespread environmental destruction.
Q+A will follow screening.