GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN previews the 61st Festival de Cannes, beginning this week.

IN A WAY, Cannes has managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and the selection of films is as good as it was in 2002. That year, we saw City of God, About Schmidt and The Pianist, and the edition that will open May 14 has some of modern cinema’s best helmers, such Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Atom Egoyan.

At the Human Rights Film Festival, the trials of Ethiopian women who give birth. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

CHILDBIRTH sounds painful enough, without having to worry about giving birth without any medical or institutional help. That’s precisely what happens to millions of women around the world, and the documentary A Walk to Beautiful looks at a particular consequence of this lack of care. Mary Olive Smith’s documentary examines the medical condition of fistula, which leaves many women in the world incontinent, leaking urine and faeces uncontrollably. The resulting societal discomfort at these women’s conditions leads to them being ostracised. And the sad thing is, it’s not too hard to fix, but countless women are forced to endure the discomfort and the shame.

At the Human Rights Film Festival, Mexico’s objects of labour. By HELEN SIMS.

Maquilapolis refers to the huge industrial district in Tijuana, just past the border between Mexico and the USA. The factories of large, mostly US, corporations dominate the landscape. They attract internal migrants from all over Mexico seeing work. They function on the basis of mass production by cheap labour and substantial tax breaks granted by the government. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) raw products come into Mexico, are turned into items like televisions and pantyhose and then the finished items are sent back for distribution in the US. Although this system results in jobs for Mexicans, the “maquiladoras” who work in these factories, they see more detriment than benefit to themselves as a result of the workings of free trade.

At the Human Rights Film Festival, colonialism still rules. By BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

LAST DECEMBER, I ended up in, of all the places in the world, Western Sahara. Its landscape is a remarkable visage, the ocean creeping up to a desert so vast that a whisper and a shout would be the same thing. But even here, the torrid, cruel landscape provoked such strong feelings of belonging for its inhabitants, that I couldn’t help but share the joy that the wonderful Sahrawis I was travelling with felt about their earth. And they told me about the tragedy unfolding in the impassive wilderness, of a people dispossessed since colonial times, and forgotten by the Western world. It is within this backdrop that Fecci and Bloeman’s documentary, Western Sahara: Africa’s Last Colony is made.