She’s a survivor
Twenty-five-year-old Nadia Murad is the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking and a winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. She is a member of the Yazidi people, an Iraqi religious minority who experienced genocide in 2014, and the subject of On Her Shoulders, a documentary about Murad’s activism as the voice and face of women who have survived sexual violence and abduction by the Islamic State. On Her Shoulders is featured at the 10th annual Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, which takes place Wednesday, Oct. 17, through Oct. 21 at movie screens around town. The festival includes feature films, documentaries, experimental shorts, animation, and more, as well as master classes with filmmakers, a tribute to animator Bill Plympton, and plenty of panels and parties. On the cover and right are stills of Murad; courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Francisco Franco (1892-1975) ruled Spain in a military dictatorship from the general election of 1936 until his death, an era marked by the countless deaths and disappearances of his political opponents. No official death count has been determined, but in codirector Robert Bahar and Almudena Carracedo’s compelling documentary one commentator lists the number as more than 100,000. The film, executive-produced by filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, begins with María Martín, a frail old woman whose voice rarely rises above a whisper as she recounts the decades-ago death of her mother, who was executed as a foe of Franco’s regime along with several other women and dozens of men in a small Spanish village. Their mass grave now lies buried beneath a busy highway. “How unjust life is,” she says, and after a pause, adds, “Not life. We humans. We are unjust.”
After Franco’s death, his political opponents, many of whom were still imprisoned, received amnesty. But amnesty was also granted to Franco loyalists, many of whom were guilty of crimes against humanity. The amnesty law became known as “The Pact of Forgetting.” chronicles the efforts of a dedicated group of individuals, led by a wheelchair-bound human rights lawyer named Carlos
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