Impact Days, the Industry arm of FIFDH – International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights Geneva, has chosen 16 projects from 21 countries for its next edition running March 10-12 2024.
The FIFDH Impact Days brings together NGOs, filmmakers, impact practitioners and funders to find joint impact strategies around common human rights themes while training the selected teams to craft an impact strategy through its Impact Lab.
The 2024 selection of 16 projects was made from 170 documentary submissions from 65 countries and 5 continents! The final selection represents directors from 21 different countries, with a 50-50 gender split.
Topics range from Afghan female politicians continuing their struggle in exile, to male ritual crying in Brazil; from the quest to save a disappearing language by dubbing a Disney blockbuster into Quechua, to protecting children born of Daesh rape; from the environmental and human cost of Big Oil in Nigeria, to press killings in Mexico; from stories of love in the Irish Deaf community, to coming of age without an official identity in Lebanon’s Shatila refugee camp, amongst other urgent stories from around the world.
This selection was made by a committee formed by Abeer Bayazidi (Jordan), Lea Maria Strandbæk Sørensen (Denmark), Marco Cartolano (Colombia), FIFDH co- editor Laura Longobardi and the Head of the Impact Days, Ana Castañosa.
2024 FIFDH Impact Days selection
- #TimesUp Kyrgyzstan by Leigh Iacobucci (Switzerland). In a country where censorship is becoming the norm, a young Kyrgyz pop star battles for women’s rights through her music and activism. Can her parents walk the fine line between supporting their outspoken daughter, and keeping her safe?
- All Rivers Spill Their Secrets (to the sea) by Jeanie Finlay (UK). An urgent, funny and tender feature documentary made in the North East of England by director Jeanie Finlay, in the place where she grew up.
- An Unfinished Journey by Aeyliya Husain (Canada) and Amie Williams (United States). Forced to flee their country, four Afghan women leaders struggle to focus the world’s attention on the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan, while coming to terms with having two decades of progress dismantled.
- Brotherhood of Weeping Men by Helena de Castro (Brazil). For 30 years, on the isolated island of Fernando de Noronha, a group of men have been meeting every week to play football, eat and drink, and cry together. A ritual of letting out the tears that has become an essential part of their lives.
- Hakuchu Munayta by Augusto Zegarra Pineda-Arce (Peru). A young indigenous man is trying to save his language from extinction. His dream: to dub The Lion King into Quechua, the language of the Incas. His journey will make him re-examine his role as a father to Dylan, his 8-year-old sidekick.
- Hawar, Our banished children by Pascale Bourgaux (Belgium). A Yazidi woman sets out to find her daughter, rejected by her community like so many others because she was born of a Daesh rape. We delve into the heart of a patriarchal Yazidi society to explore the taboo around these abandoned children.
- I Made a Mistake Coming Here by Kseniya Halubovich (Belarus). Aziz and his family, Kurds from Iraq, are stuck in Minsk following Lukashenko’s cynical plot to ‘invite’ families from Iraq and Syria – in order to create a migratory crisis. Fearing deportation, Aziz meets three Belarusians who will do everything they can to help the migrants.
- NIÑXS by Kani Lapuerta (Spain). The movie follows Karla, a 14-year-old trans* girl from the rural town of Tepoztlán in Mexico, through the ups and downs of her adolescence, in a binary and prejudiced society that tries to assign her to conventional gender identities.
- Pülö : Blood of the Kirike by Christina Ifubaraboye (Nigeria). Pülö means blood and oil. Oil is the blood of Kirike, it keeps the people going. Blood is the stream of life, what happens when this stream is poisoned? The Kirike people, who rely on the island’s water, are under threat.
- Son of the Streets by Mohammed Almughanni (Palestine). In Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp, Khodr’s quest for an official identity becomes a journey to prove his existence and secure his rights to education, healthcare, and freedom of movement. Along the way, the family grapples with long-held secrets.
- State of Silence by Santiago Maza Stern (Mexico). This movie follows four local Mexican journalists as they risk their life pursuing their calling to seek truth and veracity in a country where corruption and impunity still reign, after two decades of the so-called war against drugs.
- The Battle for Laikipia by Peter Murimi (Kenya) and Daphne Matziaraki (Greece). In some parts of Kenya, when it rains things are calm, and when it doesn’t, there is violence. Climate change and an unresolved history raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between indigenous pastoralists and landowners in a wildlife conservation haven.
- The Long Rescue by Jennifer Huang (United States). We follow Filipina teen sex trafficking survivors for nine years in an intimate journey of recovery. Can they overcome poverty, predators, pimps – and their own embodied trauma – to truly thrive?
- The Pickers by Elke Sasse (Germany). We want cheap fruit and vegetables, all year round. No problem, the Pickers deliver. But they are paying the highest price for us: all over southern Europe, exploited migrants harvest our food.
- This is a Quiet Love by Garry Keane (Ireland). Four Deaf couples share the stories of how they met and fell in love. Together, these cinematic love letters weave a tapestry of Deaf experience over a period of 70 years.
- Waiting for Winter by Farid Ahmad (Bangladesh). When summer flooding recedes, an island reappears in the Jamuna River. A homeless single mother fights for her dignity, freedom, and a safe home in a world where all odds are against her.
The next edition of FIFDH Impact Days March 10-12 2024. The dates of the next FIFDH – International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights Geneva are March 8-17 2024.
