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Beginning Thursday, March 28, The University of Tampa will show three selections from the Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival that highlight the struggles and triumphs of communities in Egypt, Uganda and Iraq. All screenings will be held in the Vaughn Center’s Reeves Theater and are free and open to the public.

Films included in the festival are:

• Words of Witness, Thursday, March 28, 2 p.m. Defying cultural norms and family expectations, Heba Afify takes to the streets to report on an Egypt in turmoil. Her coming of age, political awakening and the disillusionment that follows, mirrors that of a nation seeking the freedom to shape its own destiny, dignity and democracy.
• Call Me Kuchu, Monday, April 8, 8 p.m. In Uganda, a new bill threatens to make homosexuality punishable by death. David Kato — Uganda’s first openly gay man — and his fellow activists work against the clock to defeat the legislation while combating vicious persecution in their daily lives. A brutal murder shakes their movement to its core and sends shockwaves around the world.
• Salaam Dunk, Monday, April 15, 5 p.m. Playing basketball is a release from the realities of a war-torn nation for the young women on the Iraqi basketball team at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani in Kurdistan. The joy they discover in playing and the deep love they come to feel for the young American man who coaches them reveals an Iraq united in a way we’ve never seen before.

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. The Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.

The festival is organized by the Office of International Programs. For more information, contact Elizabeth Mills at (813) 258-7431.