There is a scene in Socheata Poeuv's documentary New Year Baby that could wring tears from the most jaded of viewers. It happens three-quarters of the way through the film, which documents Poeuv's journey from Austin, Texas, to Cambodia with her former-refugee parents. Poeuv and her father have been traipsing through the Cambodian countryside–revisiting the forced-labour camps in which he toiled under the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime–and have reached the site of the refugee camp where she was born. Poeuv's father, who has until now kept a stiff upper lip and a stony face, crumbles when asked if he had been able to give the traditional Buddhist blessing to his newborn daughter. It's as though, for the first time, he's given himself permission to feel the emotional scars of the genocide that, under the rule of Pol Pot, claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people.

"It was very, very emotional, and it's not something that I was really prepared for," Poeuv, 27, in a phone conversation with the Georgia Straight from her office in New Haven, Connecticut, says of the experience of making the film. "I think what I learned is that what it really takes to heal is to open up these wounds and reexamine the past. Going through that again, walking through the pain again”¦helps you come to the other side."

New Year Baby , filmed between 2003 and 2006, is distressing, compelling, and ultimately uplifting, which is why it is being screened along with 20 other documentaries at the Vancity Theatre for the 12th annual Amnesty International Film Festival.

"We're looking for films that tell compelling stories about some human-rights issue," says Don Wright, Amnesty International's regional development coordinator for B.C./Yukon. "We do get films submitted that go into a lot of very graphic detail”¦and we kind of steer away from those. The idea isn't to completely disempower our audience. We look for films that have some message of hope in them."

Among the films being shown alongside Poeuv's award-winning doc are Shame , by Mohammed Naqvi, which tells the story of a young Pakistani woman who, gang-raped as revenge against her brother, went public and pressed charges against her attackers; Radio Okapi , by Pierre Guyot, about Rwandan journalists who are transforming radio from an instrument of propaganda into one of peace; and Tambogrande, Mangos, Mining, Murder by Ernesto Cabellos and Stephanie Boyd, which documents the successful fight by Peruvian mango farmers in stopping a Canadian gold-mining company from digging up their fields.

These films aren't exactly easy to watch, and many raise as many questions as they answer.

For Sunday's 7:35 p.m. screening of New Year Baby , Poeuv, who is now working on a project to videotape survivors of the Cambodian genocide being interviewed by their children, will be on hand to answer some of those difficult questions.

Links: The Amnesty International Film Festival runs Thursday to Sunday (November 8 to 11) at the Vancity Theatre; see www.amnesty.ca/filmfest/ . Tickets at www.ticketstonight.ca/ or at the door.