The Georgia Straight proudly sponsors the Amnesty International Film Festival

Amnesty International Canada presents the 17th annual Amnesty International Film Festival from November 2 to 4 at Pacific Cinémathèque (1131 Howe Street).This year’s festival features nine films highlighting a variety of human-rights issues, including children living in the slums in the Philippines, indigenous communities in South America, recent events in Egypt, and the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

The Amnesty International Film Festival will open with a double feature starting at 12:30 p.m. on Friday (November 2): Meagan Kelly’s Grace about a teen’s attempt to escape poverty in Cebu, Philippines, and Frank Wolf’s On the Line about the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project. That evening, On the Line will be shown again at 6:45 p.m., followed by Fredrik Gertten’s Big Boys Gone Bananas, which documents the filmmaker’s experience with Dole Food Company when trying to release his last documentary detailing the banana producer’s legal troubles.

On Saturday (November 3), Alison Klaman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which looks at how artist Ai Weiwei deals with China’s strict censorship rules, will be screened at 6:30 p.m. At 8:30 p.m., Iciar Bollain’s Ever the Rain, which spans a timeline from Christopher Columbus to the Bolivian Water War, will be shown.

The final day of the festival will start with Tamer Ezzat, Ayten Amin, and Amr Salama’s Tahir: The Good, The Bad and The Politician at 12:45 p.m. The documentary recounts events that lead to Egypt’s political revolution in 2011. At 3:15 p.m., Malcolm Rogge’s Under Rich Earth, which tells the story of Ecuadorean coffee and sugarcane farmers who face being run off of their land by a mining project, will be screened. The festival will close with a double feature beginning at 5:15 p.m.: Hans-Christian Schmid’s The Storm, about a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague who puts her own life at risk during a trial against a former commander of the Yugoslavian National Army, and Elizabeth Tadic’s Umoja: No Men Allowe, which documents the courageous story of a group of women in Northern Kenya who set up a women-only village.

Tickets for films are $8 and can be purchased online or at the door.