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Event news: The Apology screens at Human Rights Watch film festival

Human Rights Watch film festival will be screening The Apology, a documentary on the subject of women forced into sexual slavery in WWII. There will be two opportunities to see the film, both followed by a Q+A session with director Tiffany Hsiung.

The Apology (2016)

UK Premiere, with Q+A with Director Tiffany Hsiung
Wednesday 15 March, 18.15, Barbican Buy Tickets
Thursday 16 March, 18.30, Picturehouse Central Buy Tickets

The Apology

The Apology follows three octogenarians, often referred to as ‘comfort women’, from S. Korea, China and the Philippines, as they continue to demand accountability for their sexual exploitation by the Japanese army during World War II.

Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines were amongst thousands of girls and young women who were sexually exploited by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, many through kidnapping, coercion and sexual slavery. Some 70 years after their imprisonment, and after decades living in silence and shame about their past, the wounds are still fresh for these three former ‘comfort women’. Despite multiple formal apologies from the Japanese government issued since the early 1990’s, there has been little justice; the courageous resolve of these women moves them to fight and seize their last chance to share first-hand accounts of the truth with their families and the world, and to ensure that this horrific chapter of history is neither repeated nor forgotten.

Director Tiffany Hsiung is an award-winning filmmaker based in Toronto. Her approach to storytelling is driven by the relationships she builds with people. Since 2009, Hsiung has been documenting the lives of survivors of military sexual slavery during World War II, inflicted by the Japanese Imperial Army, for her first feature-length film, The Apology (2015). For the past six years, Hsiung has been advocating in communities and universities across North America for the grandmothers (survivors known as “comfort women”), as they fight for justice, by sharing their stories. Her most recent presentation at the United Nations in New York brought to light one of history’s greatest and unresolved injustices on the world stage for human-rights issues.

The director discusses the film with BBC World News in the below video:

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