Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Nairobi featuring Enough Project’s Justine Fleischner

The fifth annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be held in Nairobi on November 16-20, 2015, with a program of five award-winning documentary films. Enough Project's Justine Fleischner will be discussing the documentary film We Were Rebels.

The film tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build up his country. The film was shot over a period of two years – from 2011, when South Sudan gained its independence, to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013.

As captain of the national basketball team of South Sudan – the youngest country in the world – Agel coaches the team through their very first international match, against Uganda. The conflicts within the team bear a striking resemblance to the political problems festering across the country. After an injury forces Agel to leave the basketball team, he forms a nongovernmental group whose work takes him into the country’s most remote areas. His journeys give him time to reflect on his country – on how it was, how it is, and how he hopes it will be one day. Today, just two years after gaining its independence, the world’s youngest nation is once again teetering on the edge of a precipice: More than half-a-million people are fleeing the country, and Agel is a soldier once again.

Discussion:

• John Penn de Ngong, prominent South Sudanese journalist
• Justine Fleischner, Enough Project South Sudan policy analyst
• Moderator: Lane Hartill, Human Right Watch

Click here for more information about the festival.