Document Human Rights Film Festival 2015: Preview

Document Human Rights Film Festival is back with a busy line-up of diverse films and community-led events

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 07 Oct 2015

Document HRFF is Scotland’s only dedicated international human rights festival. If you haven’t guessed from its title, documentaries are its bag. This 13th outing kicks off with Alessandra Zeka and Holen Sabrina Kahn’s A Quiet Inquisition (16 Oct), which gives a peek inside the medical world of Nicaragua. The film follows a doctor struggling with her conscience as she contends with the harrowing implications of a new law that prevents the termination of any pregnancy, even when a woman’s life is at stake.

The speed at which digital technology allows documentaries to be made means the films in the Document programme often feel ripped from the headlines. For example, Exile: Diaries of Child Refugees (18 Oct), a heartbreaking portrait of children forced to flee from the violence of Syria’s civil war to neighbouring Lebanon, should be a particularly intense experience given the images we’ve seen in the news over the last few months.

We also like the look of Canadian film Line in the Sand (17 Oct), from Tomas Borsa and Jean Philippe Marquis. Filmed over the course of two years, the film follows in the tracks of the Northern Gateway, one of the most contested oil pipelines in the world, and explores its environmental impact but also its human toll. Another highlight is Shirley Clarke’s too little-seen Portrait of Jason (18 Oct), from 1966. One of the great films of the verité movement, it's an intense study of black male prostitute Jason Holliday. Taking the form of an extended confessional of the agonies and ecstasies of being an African-American hustler in 60s New York, it’s a bracing watch. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody rightly called it “a masterwork of grand-scale intimacy.”

Document’s chief aim is to bring people together to discuss the issues addressed in each film, so most screenings will end with a discussion – many of which get heated. Get informed and join the debate. 



Document HRFF runs 16-18 Oct at CCA, Glasgow. Admission to screenings is free for refugees and asylum seekers

For full programme details, go to documentfilmfestival.org