Seeing is believing

This year's Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which has just finished in London and moves to New York in June, showcases several films that document the discrimination faced in certain societies by people who are ill, or who have suffered physical attack, and are in medical need.

The festival, set up by the organisation Human Rights Watch to publicise the stories of activists and survivors of human rights abuses around the world, includes 22 films from 20 countries this year.

Rosita, a joint US and Central American documentary, tells the story of 9 year old Rosa, a Nicaraguan girl who became headline news in 2003 when she was raped and fell pregnant. Her parents, who were working in Costa Rica as coffee pickers at the time of the attack, fight for Rosa to obtain a rarely granted “therapeutic” abortion. The story is told through media footage and the words of Rosa's parents, doctors, lawyers, and priests. As the media and the government publicise Rosa's story, the girl is imprisoned …