The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers will showcase the feature-length documentary The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, produced by Paco de Onis and directed by Pamela Yates, in March 2010. Pamela Yates is the recipient of a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the Director of the Sundance Award-winning When the Mountains Tremble, the Producer of the Emmy Award-winning Loss of Innocence, and the Executive Producer of the Academy Award-winning Witness to War. Most recently she directed State of Fear (2005), a feature length documentary that tells the epic story of Peru’s 20-year “war on terror” based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. State of Fear was featured in the 2006-2007 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. Pamela is a co-founder of Skylight Pictures, Inc. and is a member of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and The Writers Guild of America (WGA). Paco de Onís grew up in several Latin American countries and is multi-lingual (Spanish, Portuguese, English, Italian, French). Prior to the ICC project, he produced State of Fear. Paco also has produced documentaries for PBS (On Our Own Terms with Bill Moyers), National Geographic (Secrets from the Grave), New York Times Television (Police Force, Paramedics), and MSNBC (Edgewise with John Hockenberry).
Launched in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first international tribunal of its kind — a permanent criminal court created to prosecute individuals, no matter how powerful, for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The Reckoning, a feature-length documentary filmed in High Definition on four continents, follows the dynamic and charismatic Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and Senior Trial Attorney Christine Chung as they issue arrest warrants for the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, put four Congolese warlords on trial at The Hague, challenge the UN Security Council to support the Court’s call for an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan on charges of genocide, and shake up the Colombian justice system. Filmed at ICC headquarters in The Hague for three years with unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Court, the dreamers behind it, and the obstacles they need to overcome as they create a new paradigm for global justice. The Reckoning puts in high relief the mounting drama of the international justice movement, embodied in this tiny court in The Hague that is struggling to change the world and how we think about justice.