The Movies That Matter Industry programme gets into full swing April 7 after easing of restrictions on face to face engagement in The Netherlands, and following its initial online roll-out during lockdown. Industry manager Emma Romeijn tells Business Doc Europe what to expect over the coming days. “The red thread throughout our industry program is the idea of impact,” she underlines.
The aims of the Hague-based film festival Movies That Matter (running 8-16 April) are unambiguous, “to open our eyes to human rights,” both in terms of their violation and their protection. And this is done through the medium of cinema. Like fellow Dutch festivals such as IDFA and IFFR, Movies That Matter is ‘more than just a festival’ and operates outside its April timeslot with school educational programmes, a nationwide tour, workshops and an urgent mandate to lobby hard on human rights issues. The 2022 festival opens with Daniel Roher’s Navalny.
“We use film to stir the debate on human rights, sustainability and the fight against injustice. We believe that film has the unprecedented capacity to raise awareness and provide new insight. What cannot be accomplished by spoken and written language, is sometimes achieved by motion picture,” the festival writes online. “We create impact by asking questions and providing context and insight…Our vision is that film as an art form is an exceptionally strong medium. Where words and writing sometimes fail to really touch people, cinema can break through indifference or cynicism. It is precisely this capacity that makes film the ideal means of involving people in the fight for human rights and a sustainable society.”
The MtM programme is not exclusively documentary, but non-fiction plays a large part, as one would expect. Nine films are selected for Grand Jury Competition, including recent Oscar nominees Writing With Fire and Ascension, as well as the recent Berlin Teddy Award winner Nelly and Nadine. Four docs are selected in the six-film Camera Justitia competition section, including Navalny and Myanmar Diaries (both of which also feature in Grand Jury Comp). Eight documentaries are also selected for Activist Competition, including Alex Pritz’s The Territory and Jason Loftus’ Eternal Spring.
When festival director Margje de Koning took over in 2019 she was determined that the festival wasn’t just audience-facing but also industry-facing. “Film remains an amazing tool to open eyes, to lead people into worlds they don’t know and to fight prejudice in the lives of others,” she told BDE in 2021.
After the online launch of the Industry programme in 2021, the event is presented both live and virtually in 2022 with a full and augmented agenda of talks and pitches. The Industry component actually kicks off a day early (7 April), running through to April 13.
“With the Industry program, we really want to focus on where certain very urgent topics like current affairs meet with…what’s going on in the film world,” programme manager Emma Romeijn tells BDE. “I would say like the red thread throughout our Industry Program is the idea of impact, because that’s where we believe our expertise [lies] as Movies That Matter…mostly in our Impact lab that we run, but also within all the different panels and talks that we host. It always comes back to how can film be used as a social tool? How can we actually use film to make concrete change in the world?”
Commencing April 7 is a series of Take on… discussions, starting with Film & Impact, featuring a keynote by Danielle Turkov (ThinkFilm), a case study of a successful impact campaign and a panel discussion on distribution moderated by Christian Popp (YUZU Productions) with speakers from both the world of impact production and distribution. Later in the day, the live (and livestream) Take on Myanmar Diaries will invite Dutch producer Corinne van Egeraat and the Myanmar Film Collective to reflect on their film about life in the aftermath of the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Both panels will be viewable online from April 8.
A further nine ‘Take On…’ discussions are planned for coming days. These include the April 10 Take on Afghanistan in which this year’s main MtM guests, filmmakers Sahra Mani, Aboozar Amini and Dawood Hilmandi ,will address the challenges and difficulties of being an Afghan filmmaker, illustrated by excerpts from their films. “I think it’s incredibly important to keep talking about the situation in Afghanistan and to keep shining a light on that as well,” says Romeijn. “Even with everything that’s happening now in Russia and Ukraine, I think it’s really important that we don’t forget about our Afghan filmmakers.”
Industry programme manager Romeijn also flags up the April 13 Take on Women in Film keynote (to be announced) and subsequent panel. Here we speak with female filmmakers about their experiences and their role in the industry, and we look at different regions in the world for this. Again, I think this is a topic that we just need to continue and continue talking about and continue to highlight.”
On the morning of Friday April 9, a dozen teams will present impact plans for their “incredibly strong and urgent projects” in the Take on Film & Impact: Pitching event. The session is two-part, beginning with a mentorship session on strategy and development before the impact plans are pitched to a panel of NGO representatives, funding bodies, sales agents and other interested parties.
The selection is very international and covers all stages of production. There are even two completed films to assess. Dutch filmmaker Marjolein Busstra’s We Don’t Talk (orig. Wij praten niet) world-premieres in the fest’s Dutch Movies That Matter programme and records in-depth conversations between therapists and youngsters who are entangled in the complex network of sexual violence and exploitation.
The other film is Bulgarian Nikolay Stefanov’s No Place for You in Our Town, which asks ‘what hides underneath the violent façade of a local gang from a decaying ex-mining town?’ The film world-premiered at CPH:DOX and is selected for Visions du Réel 2022.
“In these panels we are addressing some of the most urgent issues of the time and I hope people will tune in for it and listen to what our filmmakers have to say,” Romeijn concludes of these essential Talks, which will also be available to view online.
