The Art of the Social Movement Corrective: On Redeeming the Human Rights Narrative in También la lluvia and Our Brand Is Crisis

Abstract

This chapter presents a new way of understanding how filmmakers are approaching human rights advocacy while still working within the reality of neoliberal, global production structures. It juxtaposes the production processes and narrative forms of two contemporaneous films about the Bolivian Water Wars in early 2000: Tambien la lluvia/Even the Rain (IciarBollain, 2010) and Our Brand Is Crisis (David Gordon Green, 2015). The chapter examines how both films metafictionally depict this social movement as a course-correction for cinema’s approaches to human rights storytelling. The analysis suggests that while protest’s role in these films provides a fictional redemption for human rights filmmaking, it also offers a means through which cinema can acknowledge its limitations and shortcomings in ethically crafting narratives about human rights.