“Hope is a discipline. We should not have a passive relation to hope, but we should be generating and creating hope – that’s the work of activists. We have to believe that a different world is possible,” said Angela Davis, writer, philosophy teacher & human rights activist at FIFDH 2024.
FIFDH Impact Days 2025 will embrace this sentiment with its annual public webinar on Impact Filmmaking for Social Justice (January 16, 14.00-16.00). The event will explore the power and the challenges of promoting hopeful human rights narratives in documentaries and impact campaigns, via a case study of Mayye Zayed’s Lift Like a Girl and a panel discussion on “communicating hope in human rights.” To sign up for the webinar, click here.
The FIFDH Human Rights FF runs March 7-16 2025 in Geneva. The Impact Days programme will run March 9-12.
“Uplifting stories of success can inspire both hope and action. But in the process of crafting these stories, filmmakers, civil society organisations and journalists alike must ask themselves tough questions,” write event organisers. “How best to balance hopeful narratives – stories of courage and resilience, of individuals and communities rising above adversity – with the realities of systemic poverty, persecution and oppression? How to keep conveying optimism whilst truthfully portraying protagonists’ defeats? How to avoid an oversimplification of complex issues in pursuit of a hopeful narrative?”
January 16 Case study and Q&A: Lift Like a Girl
Lift Like a Girl tells the story of Zebiba, an Egyptian teenage girl dreaming to become a world champion weightlifter. With the guidance of her relentless coach, she emerges from a scrappy training camp in the streets of Alexandria to compete at international level. The film’s impact campaign was in part conceived at Impact Days 2020 and has since reached a global audience through festivals, streaming platforms, mobile cinemas and on-the-ground initiatives. Director, Producer & Impact Producer Mayye Zayed talks us through the film’s international campaign and will answer all questions.
Speaker: Mayye Zayed (she/her) – Director, Producer & Impact Producer, Lift Like a Girl
Moderation: Ana Castañosa (she/her) – Head of Impact Days
January 16 Panel discussion: communicating hope in human rights
Speakers: Thomas Coombes (he/him) – Founder, Hope-based Comms. Adrian Kawaley-Lathan (he/him) – Executive Director, Resilient Foundation. Juan Mejia (he/him) – Director of Igualada
Moderation: Sophie Mulphin (she/her) – Impact Days NGO Programme Manager
For more information on the January 16 FIFDH Webinar click here.
