Human Rights Watch film festival to open

NEW YORK, June 15 (UPI) -- The movie "Rana's Wedding" will open the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Monday at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The featured films will cover subjects from AIDS to poverty to the aftermath of war and genocide.

The festival, which runs through June 26, will include films shot in Brazil, India, South Africa, Cuba and the Kurdish region of Iraq.

"Rana's Wedding," a film about a young Palestinian woman who resists her father's attempts to marry her to a man of his choosing, was filmed in the West Bank area and shot in 2001, when Israeli-Palestinian violence was growing.

At times, director Hany Abu-Assad and his crew had guns aimed at them while they were working, The New York Times reported.

Abu-Assad will receive the Nestor Almendros Prize for courage and commitment in filmmaking, named after a festival founder, a Spanish cinematographer who died in 1992.