The 5th Impact Days of Geneva’s FIFDH human rights fest opened March 13, heralding two days of solid and frenetic Impact activity. The focus of the event is to forge meaningful collaboration between film professionals, NGOs, funders and media to effect radical societal, environmental and/or policy change.
The core component of the 2023 edition is the presentation of the Impact plans for sixteen Lab projects that address a wide range of human rights and social justice issues. These include two films in official selection: My Name is Happy by Ayşe Toprak & Nick Read in Creative Documentaries Competition and Simon David’s Zadvengers in Focus Competition.
In her opening statement, Industry and Impact Head Laura Longobardi welcomed guests to “the annual gathering of all those who believe that storytelling can play an essential role in advancing positive values such as human and civil rights, social and environment justice and peacekeeping, right here at the very heart of Geneva, the city of multilateralism, of peace, and, of course, of human rights.”
“This program is not only an Impact platform…but it’s also kind of a breeding ground for a certain type of filmmaking that FIFDH stands for since its creation 20 years ago,” Longobardi continued. “A type of filmmaking that not only has cinematic and artistic quality [as evidenced by] the prizes that they win around the world, but also has the potential and the ambition to go beyond making the best possible film – the ambition to make films that can make a difference.”
“Of course, we are well aware that a film alone cannot change the world,” she told the Swiss and international guests. “It would be nice if it could, but of course that’s not the world we live in. But we also know that the right story used in the right context, and at the right time, can definitely contribute to shedding a light on situations that we were not aware of, and make us care and take action.”
She added: “Good films told in an ethical and respectful way, they make us dive into the lives of real people. We discover their struggles, their realities, and that contributes to making our world larger and more complex, which is what I think we all need.”
Longobardi squarely addressed not just the filmmakers in attendance but those whom she calls the “changemakers… those who […] put their knowledge, their talents, their resources, their decision-making position and their time towards being part of the solution. To act for change.”
“That’s you, the people in this room, and also the diversity of the people that we find in Geneva, which has such a peculiar underground,” Longobardi underlined. “This is what you have in common – with your different backgrounds, competencies, and roles in the society… This is precisely one of the ambitions of Impact Days, to facilitate alliances among people who work for different fields but share the same common will to advance causes that need to be tackled by using films to leverage concrete action.”
“That’s in a nutshell what we are trying to do throughout the whole program,” she stressed. “And in these first four years of activity, we can say that dozens of filmmakers around the world have been trained to impact production thanks to the Impact Lab program. They have been connected to organizations who work on similar issues through our networking activities, and they have raised hundreds of thousands of euros or francs or whatever you need in your own currency, thanks to the philanthropic organizations that we bring to this very room.”
