Screened as part of TOAFF15

The most powerful, shocking and ultimately inspiring film to come out of the Arab Spring so far, Sundance veteran Greg Barker’s We Are The Giant takes its audience inside the lives of six extraordinary people from Libya to Bahrain who grapple with the agonising and universal dilemmas at the heart of all struggles for justice and freedom: whether to take up arms and fight, or to advocate change through peace and non-violence.

Filmed largely in secret, sometimes at great risk, and woven together by wonderful animated segments which call up connections between the past and present, the film is witness to very different, painful choices that come to define the protagonists – and their nations. It reminds us that we are all products of revolutions, and despite its central procession of brutal militarism which some viewers will find upsetting, it compels us to locate our own courage and hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

This film was supported by the Bertha Film Fund.