A touring program of Uyghur documentaries will run in New York from September 22 to 24, bringing together feature-length and short films that have drawn attention at human-rights festivals in Prague, Geneva, and elsewhere.
Eyes of the Machine, which has received strong notices at recent festival screenings, follows Kalbinur Sidik, a Uyghur woman now living in the Netherlands. The film traces how digital surveillance, technical controls, and related security practices have entered everyday life in the region, while also documenting her search for her husband and other missing relatives.
All Static and Noise, five years in the making and filmed across seven countries, centers on Jewher Ilham’s campaign to secure the release of her father, Ilham Tohti, the Uyghur economist and writer who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014. The film also follows several Uyghurs who fled China and recount their own experiences, or those of family members, in detention facilities.
In Search of My Sister, directed by Jawad Mir, follows Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, as she tries to learn what happened to her sister, who was taken into custody in Xinjiang in 2018. Abbas has repeatedly asked Chinese authorities where her sister is; she says she has never received an answer.
Three short films grouped under the title Fleeing Xinjiang are also part of the program. Organizers say the screenings are intended to present the scale, evidence, and human cost of repression against Uyghurs through the voices of diaspora communities, and to help audiences in New York and across the United States understand conditions in the region.
The series is presented by Scholars at Risk and the Campaign for Uyghurs. George Washington University and Monroe Gallery in Washington, D.C., have joined as screening partners.
