Knowing Through Human Rights Films

Film is an increasingly important medium for communicating knowledge about human rights, and human rights film festivals are growing in number and scope. How do feature-length films produce knowledge about human rights? The analysis here is based on close readings of the narratives and cinematography of films associated with human rights, supplemented by fieldwork carried out at human rights film festivals, and readings of film reviews and published interviews with directors and curators. The article identifies three key cinematic strategies encoded in human rights films to produce knowledge as justified belief: authenticity, reflexivity and ambivalence.