10 highlights of the Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin

Walaa grew up in a refugee camp in the West Bank, without her mother, who was in prison. Walaa's goal is to become one of the rare women to join the Palestinian Security Forces. Canadian filmmaker Christy Garland's documentary follows the exuberant and rebellious young woman from the age of 15 to 21 as she channels her defiant energy to become a policewoman.

The opening film of Berlin's Human Rights Festival, which takes place from September 18 to 25, is a mother's love letter to her daughter. A young Syrian woman documents how she gets married and gives birth to her child, Sama, in Aleppo, right in the middle of the country's conflict. "For Sama" has already won several prestigious awards, including best documentary at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.

Rape in times of war has long been dismissed as a collateral damage against which nothing much can be done. The three lawyers portrayed in this film know this is wrong, and they fight to obtain justice for victims of sexual violence during war. Leslie Thomas' documentary travels to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to Colombia to follow these committed activists.

The so-called Islamic State occupied Mosul in Iraq for three years, from 2014-2017. During that period, 500,000 minors were living on their own. Children were trained to become suicide bombers, brainwashed to kill their own neighbors. Directors Francesca Mannocchi and Alessio Romenzi look into what is happening now with those explosive remnants of war.

Photojournalist Daniel McCabe portrays in this documentary the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo by following different people: a whistle blower, a military commander, a tailor and a mineral dealer. The film shows what it means to live in a country that has not yet experienced a peaceful transfer of power since it gained its independence in 1960.

"Novaya Gazeta" is a newspaper set up with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev's Nobel Peace Prize money in 1990. It is now one of the last investigative publications critical of the Kremlin left in Russia. Journalists such Yury Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya and Anastasia Baburova were murdered for their work. Director Askold Kurov looks at the permanent state of emergency reflected in their work.

Overfilled ships of migrants crossing the Mediterranean; many do not make it to their destination. Austrian director Nathalie Borgers decided to explore in her film the visible and invisible traces left by this often deadly journey, meeting people who help refugees arriving on the island of Lesbos, as well as a Syrian family who has presumably lost 13 relatives, but whose bodies were never found.

Journalist Clarice Gargard, born in 1988, grew up with the story of her father being an idealist who contributed to rebuilding his home country, Liberia. But when she tries to find out if he was in any way involved with dictator Charles Taylor and his war crimes, she realizes that the truth is more complex than it first appears.

#Widerstand, the German word for resistance, can be interpreted in many ways today. German filmmaker Britta Schoening portrays three young women active in different scenes: a leftist squatter living in solidarity with refugees in Athens, a follower of a far-right movement in Vienna and a Muslim poetry slammer fighting against discrimination in Berlin.

Ecuador is a country rich in oil — but one third of its reserves is found in Yasuni National Park, one of the Earth's most vital ecosystems and home to indigenous tribes. The so-called Yasuni Initiatives from 2007 aimed to leave the oil in the ground against international financial compensation; Polish journalist Ewa Ewart looks into what has happened since.