The Toronto International Film Festival, in conjunction with Human Rights Watch, is presenting the Human Rights Watch Film Festival from March 24 to April 2 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
There are eight films on the program, three of which I preview here.
Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is broadly the theme of The Wanted 18, which will be screened on Wednesday, April 1 at 6:30 p.m. Co-directed by Paul Cowan, a Canadian, and Amer Shomadi, a Palestinian who was raised in a refugee camp in Syria, it’s an inventive documentary that uses stop-motion animation and drawings to reinforce its theme — the Palestinians’ aspiration to free themselves of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank.
The film, which takes place in the predominantly Christian town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, tells an unlikely but instructive story.
Beit Sahur
In 1988, during the second year of the first Palestinian uprising, the residents of Beit Sahour purchased a herd of 18 cows from a kibbutz, Beit Hillel. The Palestinians wanted to wean themselves off Israeli milk and produce their own to further their cause of national self-sufficiency. If they could create an alternative economy as a stepping stone toward independence, their dream of Palestinian statehood would be closer to realization.
The Palestinians have lived under Israeli rule since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. Having grown weary of being economically dependent on Israel, Beit Sahour resolved to become a center of non-violent resistance to the occupation.
Since cattle are virtually alien to the sheep-and-goat culture of the Palestinians, Beit Sahur took a big chance with this gambit. “No one in town had ever even milked a cow,” says a Palestinian. “But we took this cow thing seriously.”
So much so that Beit Sahour sent one young man to the United States to learn the basics of dairy farming.
The cow shed, which became a focal point of the community, was not the only instrument in the Palestinians’ nationalist tool box. They planted “victory” vegetable gardens and refused to pay their taxes. And for good measure, women made the banned Palestinian flag and prominently displayed it.
The film unfolds, in part, in stop-motion animation
Beit Sahour’s defiance irked Israel. Fearing that more West Bank towns might emulate its model of self-sufficiency, thereby causing Israel to lose control of the West Bank, the Israeli military governor claimed that the 18 cows posed a security threat.
The Palestinians removed the herd from the barn and hid them, prompting the Israeli army to launch a search and impose a curfew. “It became a real joke that the Israelis were looking for intifada cows,” says a man who was there when these events occurred.
The incident was proof positive that the Palestinians are entirely capable of managing their own affairs.
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The One That Got Away, which will be screened on Tuesday, March 24 at 8 p.m. as the festival’s opening night movie, is a different kind of love story.
Thomas Beck, a resilient Holocaust survivor in his early 80s, is at the center of it. A bon vivant with a penchant for romance and adventure, Beck was born in Hungary, near the border with Czechoslovakia. In 1944, while imprisoned in a labor camp in Budapest, he met Edith Greiman and fell madly in love with her. They lost contact after the war, but unbeknownst to them, they both landed up in Australia.
Beck — a self-described optimist and hedonist — moved on after the war, going through six wives, including a German, before reestablishing ties with Greiman following the death of her husband. They corresponded by e-mail, reliving memories, and eventually began talking on the phone every day. It was just a matter of time before they met again.
Thomas Beck and Edith Greiman (dailymail.co)
On the face of it, they appear mismatched. Beck is outgoing and vital. Greiman is introverted and seemingly frail. Nonetheless, they enjoy each other’s company. “He’s a darling, except for a few funny habits,” she says, referring to his drinking and smoking and his tendency to wake up late in the morning.
The film, directed by Sam Lawlor and Lindsay Pollock, is an affectionate portrait of two survivors who haven’t given up on life.
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Burden of Peace, which will be screened on Tuesday, March 31 at 6:30 p.m., is about a woman of valor who paid a heavy price for her devotion to human rights.
When Claudia Paz y Paz was elected Guatemala’s attorney general in 2010, the Central American republic was, as usual, embroiled in rampant violence and mired in endemic corruption. The long and bloody Guatemalan civil war — which claimed the lives of 200,000 — had ended in 1996 with the military government and the guerrillas having signed a peace agreement. But even as the combatants laid down their arms, the country was wracked by violent crime and a culture of impunity that enabled criminals to evade punishment.
Claudia Paz y Paz
Paz, a self-effacing criminal lawyer and former judge, entered office with a burning determination to bring peace, justice and stability to Guatemala, one of the poorest nations in the Americas. She knew she had assumed one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, given the fierce resistance she was bound to encounter from Guatemala’s venal elite during her four-year term. But Paz, as this sympathetic film points out, was made of steel and would not be deterred by tacit or explicit threats. “There is so much to be done,” she said.
In a bid to reform a system weighed down by corruption, Paz — Guatamala’s first female attorney general — promoted honest police officers. And she went after criminals — drug traffickers, money launderers and gang members — living off the fat of the land.
During her second year in office, she opened an investigation into the crimes the military regime had committed during the civil war. Critics accused her of being a subversive, a Marxist trying to divide society. She soldiered on. In 2013, during her third year, she surprised everyone by charging one of Guatemala’s former strongmen, Efrain Rios Montt, with genocide and crimes against humanity.
Montt, who had enjoyed immunity until 2012, was handed a long prison sentence, but spent only one night in jail. The Constitutional Court, clearly representing the interests of the powerful elite, overturned Montt’s sentence and ordered his release.
To add injury to insult, the court ruled that Paz had to resign a full seven months before she was due to step down. The verdict, a travesty, personally endangered Paz and her family because it stripped her of the security detail that had protected her until then.
Burden of Peace is a story of hope and despair, but above all, it’s a portrait of a remarkably brave woman who wouldn’t buckle under to the forces of reaction.
