07/03/2023 - Once again, the Genevan festival will invite audiences to reflect, through the eyes of fearless filmmakers, activists and authors, on burning topics currently making headlines

The 21st edition of Geneva’s International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), unspooling 10 – 19 March, will offer up works scrutinising current affairs with courage and determination, taking viewers on a frightening yet fascinating journey which will see them opening themselves up to the world. For the length of a film or a talk, the FIFDH will act as a mirror of our society while providing the public with an opportunity to contend with crucial political, ethical and symbolic issues.

This latest edition of the event will play host to countless debates, fiction films and documentaries - poignant testimonies from a changing world. This year’s event coincides with a symbolic jubilee which Programme Director Irène Challand explains as follows: "Commemorating the 75-year anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights encourages us to consider these rights in the context of their continuity, breaches and emergencies. For this reason, and with equal acuity, Geneva’s FIFDH tackles themes as complementary as humiliation used as a tool of oppression, the extension of universal world rights, and the ethical pitfalls of the digital era".

The FIFDH is also set to welcome first-class guests, including Lebanese director and visual artist Ali Cherri (The Dam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ali Cherri
film profile]), French investigative journalist and author Garance Le Caisne (who gave us The Lost Souls of Syria [+see also:
trailer
film profile], co-directed by Stéphane Malterre and revolving around Operation Cesar which brought to light crimes against humanity committed in Syria), French documentary-maker Nicolas Philibert (On the Adamant [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nicolas Philibert
film profile]), singer and Kurdish women’s rights advocate Mutlu Kaya (protagonist of My Name is Happy [+see also:
film review
interview: Nick Read and Ayse Toprak
film profile]), Kenyan producer Toni Kamau, Swiss photographer Christian Lutz (who authored the photographic work Citizens), journalist and feminist activist Victoire Tuaillon (creator of the emblematic podcast Les couilles sur la table) and Canadian-Somalian activist Ilwad Elman.

Environmental issues analysed from an ecofeminist, decolonial and antisemitic viewpoint will be the focus of various debates, and central to the poignant, medium-length movie Duty of Care: The Climate Trials by Belgium’s Nic Balthazar. Migration and forced journeys towards an Eldorado which soon turns into a form of hell are notably set to be tackled by French director Manon Loizeau in La vie devant elle, while two films are set to open the decolonisation debate: the medium-length movie Colette & Justin by the French director of Congolese descent Alain Kassandra, and H2: The Occupation Lab by Israeli directors Idit Avrahami and Noam Sheizaf.

As for Swiss cinematography, FIFDH will provide audiences with an opportunity to discover Carmen Jaquier’s touching film Thunder [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carmen Jaquier
film profile] and Fisnik Maxville’s The Land Within [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fisnik Maxville
film profile], as well as world premieres of Gabriel Tejedor’s Naître Svetlana Staline [+see also:
film review
film profile], exploring the life of Joseph Stalin’s daughter, and Simon David’s Zadvengers. Other films taking their first bow include Pegasus, Un espion dans votre poche by Anne Poiret, which homes in on the Pegasus spyware used to track human rights advocates, journalists and political opponents, remotely. The violence engendered by the stifling laws of patriarchal societies are set to be tackled without taboos by Holland’s Coco Schrijber in Look What You Made Me Do [+see also:
film review
film profile], by Nick Read and Ayse Toprak in My Name is Happy, by Georgian director Ioseb "Soso" Bliadze in A Room of My Own [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze and Ta…
film profile] and by Claudia Varejão who’ll be presenting her magnificent movie Wolf & Dog [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cláudia Varejão
film profile].

(Translated from French)