Human Rights Watch Film Festival Digital Edition
February 2-8, 2022
The lineup of this year’s San Diego edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is available to audience members located in the United States between February 2 - February 8, 2022. We hope you will join us for the live (and globally available) Q&A events with filmmakers and human rights advocates. See our festival Q&A page for more information and to RSVP.
The U.S. Latinx films are co-presented by Cinema Tropical.
Tickets: $9
FRUITS OF LABOR
A film by Emily Cohen Ibáñez
(USA, 2020, 77 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Ashley Solis is a high school senior who must divide her time between school and supporting her family as a second-generation Mexican American. Located in a California working class town, the harshness of agricultural labor in the strawberry fields shares a stark contrast with the beautiful nature and relationship to her spiritual ancestral upbringing. Director Emily Cohen Ibáñez documents Ashley’s life guided by the spirit world through her hardships and joys in modern America.
ON THE DIVIDE
A film by Maya Cueva and Leah Galant
(USA, 2021, 79 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
McAllen, Texas is home to Whole Woman’s Health — the last abortion clinic in the US/Mexico border. Mercedes, a tattooed Latina woman in her thirties who used to be involved in gangs, is now part of the pro-life Church movement, embracing the support from the Christian pregnancy center located next door to the clinic. Denisse, a young mother of four, volunteers at Whole Woman’s Health of McAllen and helps guide women into the clinic, providing much-needed comfort and assistance. Protecting the entryway into the clinic is Rey, a Latino security guard in his late sixties who is fervent in his religious beliefs, but also deeply understands the plight of the women who arrive at the abortion clinic.
Their life decisions intertwine at this abortion clinic, as they grapple with how their devotion informs their role in fighting for or against abortion rights. The film chronicles their actions during the shadow of the Trump administration, the storytelling bolstered by an empathetic lens and an authentic concern for spotlighting the consistent assault on reproductive rights. Throughout On the Divide, filmmakers Maya Cueva and Leah Galant expertly bring the audience into the rising tensions—and humanity, at the center of this contentious issue.
