Human Rights Watch film festival: The most sexist men on earth?

The men of Tamil Nadu, Casablanca and the Bedouin communities of Jordan are all vying for that title if three new documentaries at the Human Rights Watch film Festival are anything to go by. Nisha Lilia Diu looks at some of the films being shown at the festival this week.


Maybe it’s wishful thinking but it seems to me there’s something in the air when it comes to the miserable treatment of women in much of the developing world.

The reaction to the Delhi gang rape in December and the shooting of Malala Yousafzai earlier in the year represents something quite new.

Not so long ago, stories such as this felt like white noise - the kind of thing even smart, kind people would shrug their shoulders at regretfully: ‘What can you do?’ But something has tipped the scales.

In recognition of this, almost half the features at this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival (in London from 13 to 22 March) put women centre-stage. ‘To a very large extent human rights are women’s rights,’ says John Biaggi, the festival director.

There are a handful of dramas showing at the festival. Wadjda (cert. PG, dir: Haifaa Al Mansour), the closing night screening, is a sweet film about a 10-year-old girl in Riyadh who is determined to have a bicycle.

(2013-03-17/telegraph)