Screened as part of NZIFF 2014

E-Team 2014

Directed by Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman

When atrocities are committed in countries held hostage by ruthless dictators, Human Rights Watch sends in the E-Team, a collection of brave individuals who document war crimes and report them to the rest of the world.

USA In Arabic, English, French, German and Russian with English subtitles
88 minutes DCP

Producers

Katy Chevigny
,
Ross Kauffman
,
Marilyn Ness

Screenplay

Katy Chevigny
,
Ross Kauffman
,
David Teague

Photography

Ross Kauffman

Editor

David Teague

Music

T. Griffin

With

Anna Neistat
,
Ole Solvang
,
Peter Bouckaert
,
Fred Abrahams

Festivals

Sundance 2014

Awards

Cinematography Award (Documentary)
,
Sundance Film Festival 2014

Much of what we know about crimes against humanity is due to the on-the-ground investigative work of the Human Rights Watch Emergencies Team. This inspiring account of self-effacing heroism provides engagingly personal encounters with four E-Team operatives – and with some of the firsthand witnesses whose testimony they take such risks to document. The formidable Russian Anna Neistat and the laid-back Norwegian Ole Solvang are investigators who met when detained in Georgia in 2008 and eventually married. The laconic Peter Bouckaert is well known for his vast forensic knowledge of weaponry. And founding member Fred Abrahams is a droll New Yorker; his courtroom testimony against Slobodan Miloševic is one of the film’s most galvanising sequences. In the film’s present tense we join their forays into Libya and Syria. Without significant strategic support, they are amazingly offhand about the dangers staring them in the face. Seeing Neistat at home in Paris is perhaps just as telling. She’s fixing dinner for Ole and her teenage son, all the while on and off the phone as she orchestrates a Moscow press conference to denounce Putin’s stance on Syria.