The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court (2009) via Kanopy
A David and Goliath battle of titanic proportions unfolds as International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo faces down warlords, genocidal dictators and world superpowers in his struggle to tame the Wild West of global conflict zones and bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice.
The Last Thing Lost (2023) via Kanopy
Sarith Ou's narrow escape from the Khmer Rouge genocide took him on an improbable journey to small-town Wisconsin. Safe in America, his past still haunted him. With his new friend Roger, a Vietnam veteran turned psychologist, they set out to bring hope to rural Cambodia, while healing their own decades-old wounds.
When the Mountains Tremble: War and Revolution in Guatemala (1983) via Kanopy
A classic documentary on war and social revolution in Guatemala, which vigorously and persuasively describes the struggle of the largely Indigenous peasantry against a legacy of state and foreign oppression. Centered on the experiences of Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchú, a Maya K’iche Indigenous leader, the film interweaves interviews, re-enactments, and stunning footage shot at great hazard into a wide-ranging yet cohesive epic canvas of the Guatemalan struggle.
* Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Rwanda Series (1996) via NFB
In April 1994, the international community sat by and watched while a million Tutsi men, women and children were massacred in the central African nation of Rwanda. The Rwanda Series, featuring Hand of God, Hand of the Devil (1996), the three-part Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold (1996) and Sitting on a Volcano (1996), offers a record of a horrifying crime that could have been prevented by the global community and international law. These important films follow several Rwandans before, during and after the genocide.
My Son Shall Be Armenian (2004) via NFB
Exploring the question of Armenian identity, My Son Shall Be Armenian follows filmmaker Hagop Goudsouzian, who travels with five Montreal men and women of Armenian descent to the land of his ancestors in search of survivors of the 1915 genocide. Through interviews with elders and the touching accounts of his fellow travellers, Goudsouzian has crafted a dignified and poignant film on the need to make peace with the past in order to turn toward the future. In French with English subtitles.
The Look of Silence: Confronting a Murderer (2014) via Kanopy
Through Joshua Oppenheimer's work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered and the identity of the men who killed him. The youngest brother is determined to break the spell of silence and fear under which the survivors live, and so confronts the men responsible for his brother's murder - something unimaginable in a country where killers remain in power.
* Nominated for Best Feature Documentary at the Academy Awards.
* Winner of Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
* Audience Award Winner at the SXSW Film Festival.
PBS Frontline: Myanmar's Killing Fields (2018) via Academic Video Online (AVON)
Secret footage going back years shows the effort to kill and expel Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar. With accounts from victims and witnesses, the film examines evidence that security forces committed crimes against humanity.
Return to Bosnia (2016) via Academic Video Online (AVON)
25 years after fleeing the civil war in Bosnia (1992-1995), Damir Mitric returns to uncover this trauma. He meets with family, friends, and those working to rebuild a nation borne of ethnic and religious divisions. From Sarajevo, his childhood home where Serbians established a siege to a former concentration camp and to mass graves unveiling the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians by Serbians, Mitric confronts the incomprehensible: How could your neighbours turn into killers? How can you rebuild lives and communities devastated by violence?
