A new programme for the FIFDH!
From the 6th to the 15th of March, the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) will present an updated program of 27 debates and interviews with prominent speakers, transmitted live on the internet. Two days after the cancellation of the public events of its 2020 edition due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the FIFDH is announcing a high-quality alternative program that will bring the voices of Human Rights Defenders to a wide audience.
As agreed, the Festival's juries will award their 2020 prizes. Several of the films in the official selection will be available for viewing by various means: in streaming, on RTS TV channels, when they are released in cinemas, as well as in ten Swiss festivals, including Visions du Réel, the Locarno Festival and the GIFF, which will host screenings of films selected by the FIFDH.
Discover the new FIFDH programme (in French):
"There was no question of renouncing our mission to offer a space for expression and debate to activists and artists, to denounce human rights violations throughout the world and to highlight possible solutions. We agreed there was no giving up. With the support of our partners, the entire FIFDH team imagined a new version of the Festival in 48 hours"
Isabelle Gattiker, Director of the FIFDH
Major interviews and debates in streaming
"The FIFDH's vocation is to highlight the actions of those who, on a daily basis, act in the defence of human rights. If the public cannot come to the Festival, it is essential for us to bring at least part of the Festival to the public"Caroline Abu Sa’da, FIFDH Forum Editor
Over the next ten days, Kenneth Roth, Agnès Callamard, Pablo Servigne, Joe Sacco, Alaa Salah, Rony Brauman, François Gemenne, Alaa al Aswany, Tahani Abass, Abdulaziz Muhamat and Hatice Cengiz will be among the 50 guests who will nevertheless travel to Geneva to take part in debates and major interviews broadcast on several platforms, including the website fifdh.org. The debates will be transmitted live, allowing the public to ask questions to the speakers.
This new format takes up most of the original program of the FIFDH Forum, devoted to the climate emergency, the defence of fundamental rights and the multiplication of citizen revolts around the world. In addition, there will be an in-depth discussion on the Covid-19 epidemic with Professor Didier Pittet and health policy specialist Yannis Papadaniel.
The Festival's guests will take part in major video interviews and podcasts, and will be asked to participate with stories, official statements, texts and drawings on the themes of the revolts in a project of publication throughout the year
Official 2020 awards announced on Sunday, the 15th of March
The FIFDH juries for creative documentaries and fictions, as well as the youth juries and the ones from the prison and hospital programs will view and discuss the films in the selection from afar. The entire 2020 FIFDH Awards List will be announced at the end of the Festival.
RTS broadcasts three documentaries of the FIFDH
The public will be able to discover three documentaries on RTS channels: Délit de Solidarité, by Frank Preiswerk, on Thursday the 12th of March at 8.10 p.m. on RTS1, Maisonneuve, à l'école du vivre ensemble, by Nicolas Wadimoff, on Sunday the 15th of March at 10.10 p.m. on RTS2, and Numéro 387, disparu en Méditerranée, by Madeleine Leroyer, on Wednesday the 18th of March at 11.45 p.m. on RTS1. The film Pano: Youth for Climate, by Sarah Sylbing, can be seen on the rts.ch/docs website on the 12th of March at 2 p.m. for 24 hours only.
Several films that were part of the Festival's selection will be distributed in cinemas in French-speaking Switzerland in the near future. The FIFDH will inform the public of each film release.
The Swiss Festivals will host screenings of the FIFDH
The Swiss Film Festivals and Geneva's cultural actors immediately mobilized to give life to the films in the official selection that could not be shown to the public. Several films that were to be screened at the FIFDH will thus be screened at:
- Visions du Réel, Nyon (April-May)
- International Oriental Film Festival, Geneva (June)
- Locarno Film Festival, Locarno (August)
- Numerik Games, Yverdon (August)
- Festival Cinémas d'Afrique, Lausanne (August)
- Salon du Livre, Geneva (October)
- Film Festival Diritti Umani, Lugano (October)
- Geneva International Film Festival GIFF, Geneva (November)
- Castellinaria, Bellinzona (November)
- Filmar in Latin America, Geneva (November)
- Human Rights Film Festival, Zurich (December)
Numerous partner venues maintain their cultural offer
Several of the partner events programmed on the occasion of the FIFDH are maintained, under the responsibility of their organisers. Thus the exhibition of Ernest Pignon-Ernest and Lyonel Trouillot at the CAIRN in Meyrin, the exhibition of LaToya Ruby Frazier at the Centre de la photographie, the opera Voyage vers l'Espoir at the Grand Théâtre de Genève are maintained, as well as special screenings, carried out under the strict control of the participants, at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
The Festival's school screenings are also maintained, with the prior authorization of the Department of Public Education, Training and Youth of the Canton of Geneva and under strict conditions, with rooms exclusively reserved for students. Part of Impact Day, a professional program designed to network filmmakers with NGOs and other organisations, was also maintained under strict security conditions.
The entire FIFDH team warmly thanks the guests of this edition, the filmmakers, as well as all the partners and friends who showed great solidarity and offered a thousand forms of support. We hope that despite the disappointment, this very special edition of the FIFDH will make people dream, and act.
