The festival is very well-curated, presenting a broad range of difficult and disturbing themes in ways we first-worlders can handle: small, personal stories, such as the daily life of a Kabul cab driver (Kabuli Kid)  and cultural oddities we can somewhat relate to, such as Afgan Pop Idol--the Afgan equivalent to American Idol-- depicted in the film Afgan Star. The documentary Remnants of a War addresses the issue of cluster bombs by telling the simple stories of the mostly young Lebanese who decide to take jobs clearing their land of unexploded ordinance.

Other long-standing human rights issues are handled in fresh ways. Mrs.Goundo's Daughter is the story of a West African woman and her husband who are fighting to gain asylum in America to save their two-year-old daughter from genital cutting. Good Fortune "explores how massive, international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. "

Crude looks at the "Amazon Chernobyl" case, the largest oil-related environmental lawsuit in the world, which pits indigenous Ecuadorans against Chevron, and has been going on for 16 years.

Other issues examined are anti-semitism, the International Criminal Court, life in the West Bank, Putin's Russia and corporate greed.

The Festival ends on a somewhat lighter note  with The Yes Men Fix the World. The Film Festival website decribes the film as

The screwball true story of a couple of activists who infiltrate the world of big business and pull off outrageous pranks to expose corporate greed and its impact on society.

The Yes Men are back. If you don’t know them, they’re Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, a pair of notorious troublemakers who sneak into corporate events disguised as captains of industry. In The Yes Men Fix the World, they’ve set their sights on a plethora of manmade disasters, from profiteering after Hurricane Katrina to the environmental disaster in Bhopal. By changing reality—even temporarily—they open your mind to the possible. When they present what should have been done, you become acutely aware of how easy it would have been to solve the problem in the first place. A film complete with comedic interludes and, yes, an underwater ballet, The Yes Men Fix the World is as entertaining as it is effective.

Sounds like fun.

Most of the directors will be at the screenings and availble for question and answer sessions afterward. If you're in the NYC area, I urge you to check it out.