Human Rights

Rachel Weisz is Hypatia, history's first recorded female philosopher, in Alejandro Amenábar's extravagantly mounted epic of the declining Roman Empire. “Fascinating… crammed with both stirring images and ideas." — LA Times

“Emotionally mesmerizing. Set in the multiethnic city of Jaffa, this Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film is like an Israeli Amores Perros crossed with City of God.” — Entertainment Weekly

A rookie prison guard finds himself trapped on the wrong side of a riot in this powerhouse prison drama that cleaned up at the Spanish Academy Awards. “Satisfyingly intense and suitably incendiary.” — Variety

This tense, atmospheric, true Cold War spy movie centres on a disillusioned KGB colonel who risked everything in the early 80s to let the West know just how thoroughly Soviet spies had infiltrated American security.

This horrifying indictment reveals the full hour of much-quoted footage shot and subsequently abandoned by SS cameramen in 1942 in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw – and encourages us to consider exactly why it was ever made.

Oscar-nominated doco about Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 handed the NY Times a 7000-page top secret dossier revealing the truth about US involvement in Vietnam. “A straight-ahead, enthralling story of moral courage.” — New York

Absorbing, challenging critique of the ‘War on Terror’ interweaves the stories of two brothers-in-law: one Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard (now driving a cab in Yemen), the other a Guantánamo Bay prisoner charged with war crimes.

Corruption in the Mexican justice system comes into vivid focus in this close-up account of a campaign to free a young breakdancer serving a 20-year sentence for a murder he could not possibly have committed.

The Russian-Georgian War in August 2008 is captured live from the front lines in astonishing first-hand coverage that counters the official version relayed by Russia and broadcast, unchallenged, by the Western media.

Women’s rugby in patriarchal Iran may sound strange to rugby-mad Kiwis, but this documentary proves that there is a will, if only a way can be found around the discouragement of hardline authorities.

A popular TV talk show host risks everything to unearth startling stories of women’s subjugation in contemporary Cairo. “Brilliantly provoking, fierce and audacious… a film that Egypt thoroughly needs.” — Daily News Egypt

A father’s world collapses when he loses his job as a pool attendant to his son, while his central African country is torn apart by civil war. Winner Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival.

Startling doco about academic views of tribal life in the Amazon. “The field of anthropology goes under the magnifying glass in this fiery investigation of the seminal research on Yanomami Indians.” — Sundance Film Festival

West Papuans speak (and sing) of years of persecution in this potent activist film by a white Australian who first travelled to West Papua as a tourist in 1999 and found himself caught up in the independence cause.

A deadpan black comedy memoir of growing up Palestinian in Israel. “Suleiman is turning the political into something extremely hysterical.” — Time Out NY

Brazilian art star Vik Muniz recycles garbage to make gigantic portraits of Rio’s amazingly upbeat garbage recyclers in this inspiring Sundance Audience Award-winning doco. Music by Moby. “A joy.” — Hollywood Reporter

In images of arresting purity and composure, expatriate Iranian photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat elaborates a haunting sense of women’s lives and options in Iran in 1953. Best Director, Venice Film Festival.