Petr Lom was born in Prague in 1968, grew up in Canada, and is now based in The Netherlands with his Dutch wife Corinne van Egeraat. He received his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard and was Associate Professor at George Soros’ Central European University in human rights and philosophy. In 2003, he became an independent documentary director and producer specializing in human rights film. His award-winning films have been broadcast in over thirty countries and screened at more than two hundred and fifty film festivals around the world including Sundance and the Berlinale.
When a Kyrgyz man decides to marry, he often abducts the woman he has chosen. Typically, he takes several friends, hires a car, stakes out his bride-to-be’s movements, and snatches her off the street. The woman is taken to the groom’s family home.
A delegation is then sent to her family to inform them of the kidnapping. The abducted woman…
This is a lyrical film about four children living in an orphanage in Xinjiang province, China. The children are Uighurs, members of China’s eight million strong largest Muslim minority. To prevent Uighur separatism, China enforces a policy of cultural and political assimilation in Xinjiang: religion is particularly targeted. (Human Rights Watch reports that 10 000 Uighurs are political prisoners, and…
Poetry is immensely popular in Burma/Myanmar, a country emerging from years of dictatorship and isolation. In the past, poetry was a way to endure and resist tyranny. Today, there are more online poets than bloggers. The stories and poems in Burma Storybook circle around Maung Aung Pwint, the country’s most famous dissident poet alive today, as he waits for his…