UH Hilo hosts Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival

The University of Hawaiʻi at Hiloinvites the public to this year’s Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival, which is hosted by the University. Each year’s highlights of the prestigious Human Rights Watch London and New York festivals are presented in selected cities throughout the world. The film festival will be held on the UH Hilo campus on February 25 and 26 in University Classroom Building (UCB) Room 127. Admission is free.

On February 25 the festival begins with “Return to Homs” at 5:30 pm. “Return to Homs” is an intimate portrait of a group of young revolutionaries in the city of Homs in Syria. The film won the World Cinema Grant Jury Prize for Documentary Film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. “Big Men” follows at 7 pm. A cautionary tale about the toll of American oil investment in West Africa, “Big Men” reveals the secretive worlds of both corporations and local communities in Nigeria and Ghana.

The festival concludes with two films on February 26. “Scheherazade’s Diary” will be shown at 5:30 pm. This tragicomic documentary follows women inmates through a 10-month drama therapy/theater project set up in a prison in Lebanon. At 7 p.m., “Sepideh: Reaching for the Stars” will be shown. This is a film featuring a young Iranian women who dares to dream of a future as an astronaut.

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.

The film festival is sponsored by the UH Hilo International Student Services and Intercultural Education program and made possible through a grant from the University of Hawaiʻi Diversity and Equity Initiative.

For more information, visit //hilo.hawaii.edu/international or call 932-7467.