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Film Fests & Special Screenings Movies & TV

Human Rights Festival is heavy but sos reality

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FILM FESTIVAL at TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King West), from Wednesday (March 30) to April 7. ff.hrw.org/toronto. Rating: NNNN

Given that it consists almost entirely of documentaries about urgent, awful subjects, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival can weigh pretty heavily on a viewer. So, as I say every year, try to schedule some time to see a friend or hug a puppy between screenings.

It kicks off Wednesday (March 30) at 8 pm with Adam Sjobergs I Am Sun Mu, about the pseudonymous artist who fled North Korea for the South, where he makes art critical of Kim Jong-uns regime as he prepares for his first show in Beijing. Its remarkable how close Sjoberg makes us feel to the story without ever showing his subjects face.

Retrieved from the festival circuit are Patricio Guzmans The Pearl Button (March 31, 6:30 pm), in which the Chilean filmmaker recounts the history of the indigenous Kaweskar people, and Jacques Audiards Dheepan (April 2, 7 pm), a drama about a member of the Tamil Tigers (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) who enlists two other refugees to pose as his family in order to emigrate from Sri Lanka to France.

Sophia Luvaras Inside The Chinese Closet (April 6, 6:30 pm) looks at gay millennials finding ways to be true to themselves in a culture that would prefer they not be seen or heard. The reality of their situation is disquieting, but their ingenuity and good spirits are heartening.

The festival closes with Steve Hoovers Almost Holy (April 7, 7:30 pm), about the controversial efforts of a Ukrainian pastor, Gennadiy Mokhnenko, to rescue children from life on the street in Mariupol often locking them in his orphanage to keep them from returning to squalor. Is this the best way to help? Mokhnenko argues its the only way, but Hoover gives us the space to wonder.

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