Human Rights Watch Film Festival

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is set to begin in New York this week, celebrating 25 years of bringing important stories to the world stage.

What began as a small series of films shown on a television-sized screen in a tiny New York theatre has grown to include big-screen viewings in 20 cities worldwide with 100,000 viewers each year.

The festival, which opens on Thursday, will feature 20 documentaries and two fiction films. This year's program boasts 16 features by women, which the organisers say is unprecedented.

Five themes make the center of this year's program: armed conflict and the Arab spring, human rights defenders, icons and villains, LGBT rights, migrants' rights and women's and children's rights.

Here are our picks for the top three films to watch out for this year (click the titles to view the trailers).

Sepideh - Reaching for the Stars: a teenage girl from a rural village outside Tehran dreams of becoming an astronomer. Gender roles, cultural expectations.

The Supreme Price: experience the development of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, where a special focus is put on helping women into leadership roles.

Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus: Smuggled footage provides a rare peek into the dissident movement in Belarus. Public activism meets stage performances.