Comment >>Great article 11/20/09

Launched in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first international tribunal of its kind — a permanent criminal court created to prosecute individuals, no matter how powerful, for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court,” a feature-length documentary filmed in High Definition on four continents, follows the dynamic and charismatic Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Senior Trial Attorney Christine Chung as they issue arrest warrants for the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, put four Congolese warlords on trial at The Hague, challenge the UN Security Council to support the Court’s call for an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan on charges of genocide, and shake up the Colombian justice system.

Filmed at ICC headquarters in The Hague for three years with unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Court, the dreamers behind it, and the obstacles they overcome as they create a new paradigm for global justice. In places where the Court has intervened, we see a dramatic ICC justice effect and hear the voices of people in the conflict situation countries. They are captured taking action and discussing what they can do to end the culture of impunity as a result of notorious criminals facing a reckoning with this new Court and the international law it was created to enforce. “The Reckoning” puts in high relief the mounting drama of the international justice movement, embodied in this tiny court in The Hague that is struggling to change the world and how we think about justice.

A highly praised documentary, “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court” was selected for the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and was featured as the Opening Night Film at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at Lincoln Center. “The Reckoning” has also screened at the Nantucket Film Festival, Berkshire International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Movies That Matter Film Festival, among many other international screenings.

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of the Southern Arts Federation, a not-for-profit regional arts organization making a positive difference in the arts throughout the South since 1975.  Southern Arts Federation is supported by funding and programming partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts and the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Special support for Southern Circuit is provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For more information on the Southern Arts Federation and its programs visit www.southarts.org.

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