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Human Rights Watch Screens Movies That Make a Difference
by Anthony Kauffman

Veteran news, television and radio journalist Kevin McKiernan investigates the Kurdish situation in "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends But the Mountains," a well-traveled favorite on the festival circuit. With the eye of a former Frontline producer, McKiernan makes an excellent network style news report that the networks wouldn't run (he's still looking for broadcast). Skillfully balancing stories of the political (the arrest and near execution of Kurdish leader "Apo" Ocalan) and the personal (a Kurdish family living in the U.S. with an activist son), the documentary brings to light injustices and hypocrisies committed by both U.S. and Turkish governments -- and is the kind of hard hitting journalistic effort that deserves wider exposure. McKiernan, however, will get perhaps his most important audience to date today (June 22) when the Human Rights Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives is sponsoring a special showing for lawmakers.

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