Since it began in 1988, the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival has become the leading venue for films from around the world that open our eyes to a variety of human rights themes and concerns. Several of the films in this year's festival focus on quotidian factors that deeply impact the quality of life-access to electricity in post-Soviet Georgia, mobility on the West Bank, housing in the Philippines-while others examine the human toll of war in Cambodia and Colombia, and explore the meanings of freedom for Cuban refugees in the United States.
The festival is only one tool that Human Rights Watch uses to engage concerned individuals and encourage action on human rights issues. The organization is of course best known for its timely investigations, informed policy recommendations, and ability to generate intense pressure to confront human rights abusers and defend basic freedoms for the past twenty-five years. For...