Today, we’re pleased to announce the creation of the inaugural Tony Elliott Impact Award, supported by Time Out, at the 26th Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
The winning film is Myanmar Diaries, a remarkable piece of guerrilla filmmaking that was shot in secret by an anonymous filmmaking collective, charting the country’s 2021 coup by a military junta in visceral detail.
The award, in honour of our founder Tony Elliott, a committed human rights advocate and champion of emerging film talent, will give financial support to the filmmakers, and additional promotional support to help amplify the film’s future international distribution.
Myanmar Diaries was unanimously selected by Tony’s son Rufus Elliott; the film critic Anna Smith and the Time Out Global Film Editor Phil de Semlyen for its nail-biting storytelling, guerrilla inventiveness, raw courage, and filmmaking craft.
‘It gives me great pleasure to hear that a winner has been announced for this special award in memory of my husband,’ says Elliott’s wife Janey. ‘Tony was a great supporter of independent cinema as well as a longtime supporter of Human Rights Watch and its annual film festival. He would have been delighted to be honoured in this way.’
The festival, presented in partnership with Barbican Cinema, runs from 17-25 March and showcases the finest in human rights storytelling. There are ten documentaries on the line-up, covering subjects as diverse as the immigrant experience in Britain, women surfers in Bangladesh, judicial independence in Poland, and assaults on boycotting rights in the US.