Human Rights Films

Life is wonderful until one day the sportsman is brutalized, falling a victim to a corrupt criminal justice system. Not giving up, he seeks justice at the European Court of Human Rights.

In a Chechen city recovering after the war, a man disappears. As daily life goes on, those in search are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal advisors, with the torturers and the tortured, with secret prisons and mythical lakes all become commonplace. Consolation and help only come from neighbours and relatives or accidentally met strangers people who themselves live with the loss or who are ones that have returned from where no one returns. The neighbour waits for her son and sees him in dreams almost every night even though more than five years have passed since the son was kidnapped. She does not have her son alive and she does not have him dead. The gray-haired man without an ear and with a burned hand still cannot think of life outside the prison cell. The adult son plays with the cloth rope and is dependent on his mother and sisters for most of his daily needs. What is then to live in a city where grand mosques lie next to torture prisons, where official statements are less valid than those heard at divination sessions, where pronouncements of death are occasions of joy, where streets are full of the ghostly presences of the dead and the missing; where the laughter of pain, a prayer, and a dream are the only solace? Barzakh, - a land between the living and the dead?

A city-lover tries to safeguard indigenous nature in the capital. He launches an NGO but the Ministry of Justice refuses to register it. A legal battle culminates at the European Court. It takes time but does it also waste the love?

A family settles in a picturesque place. Next, a living monster grows next to their house: a 60-meter-high burning slag-heap, an ecological bomb. The fight for their rights brings them to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, houses over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda, Africa.

When an American human rights lawyer is assassinated in Belfast, it remains for the man's girlfriend, as well as a tough, no nonsense, police detective to find the truth.

The NSA's illegal surveillance techniques are leaked to the public by one of the agency's employees, Edward Snowden, in the form of thousands of classified documents distributed to the press.

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

"Punishment Park" is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews's news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels' progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination. At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew's coverage is meant to insure that the military's intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60's counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scenes real tempers seem to flare as some of the "acting" got overaggressive. This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinéma vérité style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director - would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking - pushed some to the brink. The cast's emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater, where people stay trapped in their madness.

With 27 million victims worldwide, Stopping Traffic starts the conversation on a taboo topic through the eyes of survivors, activists, and front-line rescue teams to launch a movement to end modern-day slavery in the U.S. and abroad.

A film about the war crimes of the American diplomat, Henry Kissinger.

A documentary about Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, arrested by the Russian FSB in Crimea and sentenced to 20 years in prison on contrived charges.

The true story of Jean Dominique, a Haitian radio journalist and human rights activist.

When a teenager from a political family in the Philippines is accused of a double murder, the country's entire judicial system is put to the test after years of alleged corruption.

Alex Gibney exposes the haunting details of the USA's torture and interrogation practices during the War in Afghanistan.

Justice for Sale follows the young, courageous Congolese human rights lawyer Claudine who refuses to accept that justice is indeed 'For Sale' in her country. When Claudine investigates the case of a soldier convicted of rape, she discovers that his trial was unfair and that he was convicted on the basis of little evidence. In her journey to obtain justice, she uncovers a system where the basic principles of law are ignored. And when the system fails, everyone becomes a victim. The documentary not only provides a glimpse into the failings of the Congolese judicial system but also raises questions about the role of the international community and non-governmental organizations in reforming it.

An in-depth look into the lives of habitual drug users in Toronto's Regent Park.

Austrian United Nations Judge Claudia Fenz arrives in Kosovo to hear the case of a group of ethnic Albanian men accused of killing a Serbian woman. Whilst dealing with the peculiarities of the region, including rolling blackouts, she meets with prominent locals and learns of the traditional, somewhat radical, approach to justice in Kosovo, favoring reconciliation over punishment.

In one of the first films about the European Court of Human Rights, top human rights cases reflect human dramas which brought the applicants to the Court.

A motivational drama about the first candidate for the newly formed Anti-Corruption Court who returns to Ukraine, known as the most corrupt continental state in Europe, to probe himself and the system by participating in the contest.

Eye to Eye unveils the emotional journey of murder victims' families as they confront perpetrators, exploring restorative dialogue's healing power and offering a rare glimpse into lives touched by tragedy.

'Ukraine on Fire 2' is a daily one-minute, Ukrainian Oscar-winning docu-series of primarily witness videos showing the human toll of Russia's war on Ukraine.