Truth Detectives – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

We often associate new technologies with threats to our human rights, but they also make available previously unknown but now widely accessible opportunities to take action in defense of these rights. Eyewitnesses are recording violations more and more with their mobile telephones, and human rights defenders, journalists, scholars and lawyers are able to complement such evidence with further research, such as historical analyses of satellite images, DNA tests, measurements of the conductivity of the soil and three-dimensional models of cities. In her film, Anja Reiss provides a portrait of these modern teams and their spectacular successes. Truth detectives work in war-torn eastern Ukraine, document destruction of cultural heritage in Mali, look for the graves of the victims of violence in Colombia and bring to light the course, scope and purpose of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip on “Black Friday.” They are able to find and share evidence that leads back to perpetrators, as well as evidence needed in claiming the rights of the underprivileged. They are going to help demonstrate the permanent presence of Bedouins in certain parts of the Negev Desert, thus making it difficult for the authorities to claim that they are not taking land from nomads who, by their nature, do not own it.