REEL AWARENESS FILM FESTIVAL from tonight (Thursday, November 24) to Sunday (November 27), at the National Film Board. See listings. aito.ca/reelawareness.
Amnesty International’s Reel Awareness Film Festival takes over the NFB cinema tonight through Sunday, screening documentaries about human rights issues around the world.
One standout is Barry Stevens’s Prosecutor (Saturday, 2 pm rating: NNNN), a profile of Argentine attorney Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague, who negotiates with governments and NGOs to bring legal action against the individuals who order and orchestrate atrocities.
Framed around the 2009 war crimes trial of Congo’s Thomas Lubanga, Prosecutor flashes back on the creation of the ICC and Moreno Ocampo’s never-ending efforts to overcome political and ideological opposition. (The United States infamously refuses to endorse the ICC.) Though not exactly a fun afternoon at the movies, it’s a solid, unflinching look at a good man doing a miserable job.
Ali Samadi Ahadi’s The Green Wave (Saturday, 8 pm rating: NNN) looks at the 2009 Iran election and that moment when it appeared Iranians might be able to get rid of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, only to see their democratic revolution crushed by militias bent on repressing every sign of dissent.
Ahadi tells the Iranian people’s story by combining sorrowful talking-head interviews with animated re-enactments of events, a technique applied with greater impact in Ari Folman’s 2008 Waltz With Bashir.
Q&As will follow each screening guests were still being determined at press time.
