62. Under the Bombs (2007) *

Phillipe Aractingi's movie Sous les bombes (original title) follows a woman called Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) on her journey to find her sister, Maha, and son in Southern Lebanon after the Israeli bombardment in 2006.  Zeina had sent her son to her sister in order to save her son from the breakdown of her marriage.  Back from Dubai, she hires a taxi driver Tony (George Khabbaz) to drive her around the refugee camps and other shelters in search of her family.  

Under the Bombs won a number of prizes including the Premio EIUC Human Rights Film Award in the Venice Film Festival 2007.  The European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation used to run a summer school on cinema and human rights.  In 2007 students of this course were about to discuss the film with director Phillipe Aractingi.  

The aims and objectives of the course were to:  analyse the use of film as an instrument for enhancing human rights awareness on critical social, political and environmental issues. In particular,  the school aims to provide participants with a framework of understanding of what are human rights, how they can be transposed into film and what is the impact of  human rights related films on the promotion and protection of human rights in the world today.

The school's aims include:
- Raising Awareness on sensitive human rights issues analysed through the camera lenses;
- Networking: bringing participants and professional practitioners together from all over the world;
- Informing: professionals from both the human rights sector and the cinema industry facilitate modules and workshops;
- Facilitating privileged access: participants meet privately with film directors, producers and cinematographers at the Venice Film Festival;
- Pitching: participants learn how to develop their ideas into projects and how to pitch them.

Although the school no longer runs the course, a summer school course is available in NUI Galway on Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy.