A Walk to Beautiful, 2008 Grade A+

Producer  Mary Olive Smith
Topic: African Women with Obstetric Fistula

Awards: This film took top honors at the 2007 International Documentary Association Awards Competition, where it was named Best Feature Documentary. It also won the People's Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Starz Denver Film Festival, the Audience Award at both the San Francisco and St. Louis international film festivals, and the Best Human Rights Film Award at the International Documentary Festival of Barcelona.

sez says: this is as perfect of a documentary as I have ever seen. There is no hyped-up dialogue. It is just a straight forward telling of a story about people facing an horrendous problem and good people trying to help those people.  It is about African women who, due to malnourishment, stunted growth, early child bearing, and lack of medical facilities, develop fistula while they are in labor.  They are then outcast.  There is a small clinic they can go to the get the fistula repaired--and the operation is generally helpful--but it can only help a very few of the large number of women with the problem. This is heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Grade A for perfect job.