Devi’s 15-year-old daughter has been captured by the Nepalese army and she must do everything in her power to get her back. Meanwhile Krishna is leading a rural rebellion against Maoist insurgents, and Kranti is heading up a band of militias.

The Sari Soldiers, part of the Human Rights Watch film season, tells the powerful stories of the women caught on either side of the battle lines in revolutionary Nepal, as the Maoist forces attempt to declare the mountain kingdom a socialist republic.

Also screening at the festival, Iron Ladies of Liberia follows the fascinating figure of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (pictured below), the African state’s first female president, and the woman charged with leading it away from its corrupt past.

Behave, showing for the first time in the UK, takes an ambivalent look at the messy Brazilian juvenile court system. And Everything’s Cool pursues film-makers Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand around the United States in a bio-diesel truck to find out why Americans think global warming is a load of hot air.

Persepolis, an animation of Marjane Satrapi’s lively graphic novel about Iran under the Ayatollah, opened the festival at the Curzon Mayfair this week. See www.hrw.orgiff.