Obon

Directors André Hörmann and Anna Samo bring difficult memories to life in their viscerally compelling and richly drawn animated short. Ninety-two-year-old Akiko Takakura revisits portions of her childhood as she travels to her parents’ graves during the festival of Obon. Akiko remembers her father, a typical man from Meiji times, to be a strict disciplinarian and her mother to be warm and beautiful. As her Obon journey proceeds, so do her memories, and we see Akiko as a young woman attending her first job at a bank in the heart of Hiroshima. Akiko and her new friend Satomi prep the office for the day and chatter happily just as the atomic bomb explodes.  WFM

A Thousand Girls Like Me

In a region where violence against women is the norm and publicly identifying their assailants can be punishable under the law, one woman, Khatera, does the unthinkable and takes to court the man who repeatedly raped her and fathered her two children—her father. Despite a 2009 law penalizing abuse against women in Afghanistan and repeated attempts to file charges, Khatera is unsuccessful until this 2014 victory in a broken legal system. Through painful but necessary conversations, Khatera and her mother steadily move toward healing from the violent decisions of their shared abuser. Here, Khatera continues to be an agent of her own truth and fearlessly shares her story in a trustful exchange with Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani. Despite constant death threats and beatings from members of her own family, Khatera refuses to remain silent in hopes of ending the cycle of rape, fear, and violence for her children and for the thousands of Afghani girls like her.  TD