'The Rescue List' film screening + Q&A with the directors
The Rescue List is an intimate documentary following two children who had been trafficking into the fishing industry on Lake Volta in Ghana, and their recoveries as they prepare to return to their families. The film depicts a moving story of friendship and courage that transcends the trope of victimhood, exploring what it means to love and to survive. Through patiently observed scenes, the film draws into focus the complex circumstances under which children are trafficked and the challenges of recovery and reunification. Tracking their lives over the course of a year as the children prepare to return home, this tender, tensely wrought film places the children at the center of the narrative, revealing a moving story of survival, courage, and hope.
The Rescue List won the 2021 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, Best Documentary at Bend Film Festival, the Social Impact Award at Heartland International Film Festival, and the James Blue Award at Ashland Independent Film Festival. The Rescue List premiered on PBS’s series POV in 2020.
After the film, co-directors Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink will be available for a question-and-answer panel discussion moderated by Steve Hoeschele of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
Alyssa Fedele is an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She co-directed and edited The Rescue List, an observational documentary film that follows two children who were trafficked into modern slavery on Lake Volta in Ghana. The Rescue List won the 2021 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, Best Documentary at Bend Film Festival, the Social Impact Award at Heartland International Film Festival, and the James Blue Award at Ashland Independent Film Festival. The Rescue List premiered on PBS’s series POV in 2020. Alyssa produced and edited Steve James’ short documentary film, The Ride of Their Lives, for Amazon’s documentary series, The New Yorker Presents. It premiered at Sundance and screened at IDFA. Alyssa’s work has appeared on National Geographic Channel, PBS, HBO, and ARTE. Alyssa has an MA in visual anthropology from the University of Manchester. Her background in ethnographic filmmaking gives her a unique skill-set to connect with subjects and build cross-cultural understanding in her films.
Zachary Fink is an Emmy Award–winning documentary film director and cinematographer. He shot and co-directed The Rescue List which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary in October of 2021. The Rescue List broadcast on PBS's series POV in the US, BBC in the UK, ARTE in France and Germany, NHK in Japan, and CCTV in China. Zachary recently spent a month in Antarctica where he field directed and lensed a series for PBS’s NOVA called Polar Extremes about life and science at McMurdo Station. Prior to that, he shot State of Pride, a 2019 YouTube Original documentary in which activist Raymond Braun, along with Academy Award winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, explore the LGBT rights movement 50 years after Stonewall. During his tenure as the Director of Video for The George Lucas Educational Foundation, he cinematically rebranded the short documentary films at the center of the foundation's website, Edutopia.org. Early in his career, he collaborated with Robert Gardner at the Harvard Film Study Center to produce the 40th Anniversary box-set edition of Gardner’s 1964 film, Dead Birds. Zachary received his MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder, with a focus on Ethnographic Filmmaking. He also holds an MFA in Film Production from California Institute of the Arts.
Steve Hoeschele is the program coordinator at Stanford's Center for Human Rights and International Justice. In 2015-16, he worked as the strategic advisor at Challenging Heights, the Ghanaian NGO whose staff and beneficiaries are represented in The Rescue List. He earned his masters of arts degree in slavery & liberation from the University of Nottingham.