Screening Human Rights is an analysis of the Human Rights Film Network and its festivals as media-space. Using feminist ethnographic methods, I conducted fieldwork at seven human rights film festivals (HRFFs) across five continents, attended a Network members' meeting, and sat in as a participant-observer for two international training workshops focused on how to set up an HRFF. My findings demonstrate that the HRFF is a significant platform for the circulation of human rights images and independent media voices. They also evince that the HRFFs, while networked, are different from one another in their local contexts, and elaborate the ways in which lived experiences and practices within those festival spaces diverge from the HRFFs' discursive presentations. The individual festivals in the Network are joined by their human rights aspirations, an ethical imperative very much rooted in notions of truthfulness, as well as their dedication to fostering discussion and debate, and a shared belief that film can be a powerful medium for social change. By looking at these festival media-spaces historically, comparatively, and in relation to their shared Network charter, I identify a number of quandaries facing both the individual organizers and the larger Network entity, in particular with regard to how to negotiate the human rights framework, how to make an intervention while recognizing the high ethical stakes involved in doing so, and how best to pursue a vision of further globalizing the HRFF practice. In turn, this dissertation explores the themes and tensions underlying the important cultural work these festivals do---the challenges they work against, work around, and try to overcome---in order to make more comprehensible the significant role that HRFFs play in shaping global understandings of human rights, and the processes by which particular human subjects are made visible and relatable.