HRWIFF, 6/20.

Briefly previewing a slew of films screening at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival for the New York Press, Jennifer Merin notes that, in effect, all 24 "put human faces on pressing current social and political issues."

"The recipient of this year's HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize (as well as the Grand Jury World Cinema Prize for Documentary at Sundance Film Festival), Eva Mulvad and Anja Al-Erhayem's Enemies of Happiness [site] is not only a remarkable portrait of Malalai Joya, but also a bracing and illuminating glimpse into the fragile democracy and uncertain peace that now shape everyday life in Afghanistan," writes acquarello.

Also: "Shot in stark, elegantly composed black and white images, The Violin [site]tonally evokes Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear in its creation of tension through the performance of the mundane." And James Longley's Sari's Mother is "an impassioned and potent reminder that, even in its resigned inevitability, dying with dignity is still a fundamental human right."

"Directed by Jennifer Baichwal and sensitively shot in 16-millimeter film by Peter Mettler, Manufactured Landscapes [site] (which is also the name of a 2003 book of [Edward] Burtynsky's photographs) is partly a Great Man documentary, a record of an artist immortalized at the moment of creation: point, shoot, voilà!" writes Manohla Dargis. "Rather more interestingly, at times, it also appears to be a rather tentative, perhaps even unconscious, critique of that same artist and his vision." More from Gerald Peary in the Boston Phoenix, Jason Bogdaneris in the L Magazine and Jim Ridley in Voice.

The festival runs on in New York through June 28.

Posted by dwhudson at June 20, 2007 8:49 AM