Whatever fiction or documentary, they have pointed their cameras at the sensitive areas of humanity. War, migration, the weight of tradition and patriarchy, the environmental crisis, post-colonialism, everything is subject to narrative. How do human rights and their defence permeate the language of film?

Conversely, what role does the seventh art play in social mobilisations? In this podcast, which gives the floor to filmmakers invited to the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights Geneva, Voies Libres explores the link between cinema and activism.

Voies Libres is a podcast produced by RTS Genève Vision and the FIFDH.
Interviews and direction: Laura Cazador

Season 2

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Foudre

Set against a backdrop of beautiful mountain scenery, Foudre reveals the origins of tenderness and carnal desire through the story of the young Elizabeth. At the dawn of the 20th century, following the death of her older sister, she meets up with three childhood friends with whom she engages in a sensory and sensual communion from which none emerges unscathed. A jewel by Carmen Jaquier.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Zadvengers

What if superheroes were not to be found in Hollywood productions, but in the ZADs (Zone à défendre)? While the first ZAD in Switzerland is being held on the "sacred" hill of Mormont, in opposition to the extension project of the multinational concrete company Holcim, the Genevan director Simon David films in ZADvengers five young anti-capitalist activists in an attempt to understand their motivations and their aspirations.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie The Land Within

How do you build your identity and your future in a land haunted by war, where dead bodies and their secrets lie? The Land Within tells the story of Remo's return to Kosovo, a young man who has been exiled in Switzerland for years, and his reunion with Una, his cousin who experienced the horrors of the armed conflict there first hand. A powerful sensory portrait on the fringes of reality, where History strikes at the intimate experiences of the survivors

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Les Âmes perdues

Journalist Garance LeCaisne co-wrote the documentary Les Âmes perdues, which follows the steps taken by the families of victims of the Syrian regime to denounce their disappearance or death. A moving journey into the depths of humanity.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Colette et Justin (Winner of the Gilda Vieira De Mello Award at the FIFDH 2023)

In Colette et Justin, Alain Kassanda gives voice to his grandparents about the independence process in his native Congo. By entering into a poetic dialogue with history and his own personal experience, he proposes a new form of writing about post-colonialism.

Season 1

Originally a personal story, an intimate journey indissociable from a manifestly political commitment... they are directors, sometimes in spite of themselves. Their flesh and their consciousness are marked by a memory that is not theirs alone and that resonates in a singular way in each of us. Voies Libres explores how projecting one's own voice can contribute to questioning and opening new collective paths.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Penelope, my Love

In Penelope, my Love, French director Claire Doyon recounts her daughter's autism and draws a self-portrait of a mother ready to do anything to "save" her offspring. For twenty years, she has accumulated family images that she reappropriates in an artistic and introspective gesture.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Above water

French director and actress Aïssa Maïga tells how she got behind the camera to tackle issues that resonated with her, such as racism, feminism and climate change in Africa, in Above water. She also talks about the political heritage passed on by her father, a pan-Africanist close to Thomas Sankara.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie The Silence of the Mole

In the documentary The Silence of the Mole, Anaïs Taracena, a French-Guatemalan, traces the fragmented history of one of the bloodiest civil wars in Central America, the memory of which she carries within her. Faced with non-existent or inaccessible archives, she searches for this silent past through testimonies.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Ne nous racontez plus d'histoires

Carole Filiu, the daughter of a black foot, loves a man whose family was close to the FLN and whose several members were assassinated. Together, they go in search of the past in order to deconstruct the clichés and official frameworks that they grew up with. Ne nous racontez plus d'histoires, they conclude.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Je suis noires

Je suis noires, with a deliberate and determined s. This is how Rachel M'Bon titles her film, which is being presented at the FIFDH. The journalist and activist went to meet black women in Switzerland, gathering their experiences, attentive to what they live on a daily basis, in a country that is said and believed to be tolerant.

It is not so obvious. The film was painful at times," she says, "but also cathartic, and political, as society is not ready to accept vulnerability. Rachel M'Bon hopes that the film will help create new black narratives.

Realised by Genève Vision, around the movie Serendipity

Prune Nourry discovers in 2019 that she is suffering from breast cancer. The French artist, based in New York, decides to confront the disease with a camera. The result is the documentary Serendipity: from this confrontation with the disease, an artistic project was born.

The intimate and the universal, her work and her illness, intertwine to sing a hymn to life, before the song of victory.