The Movies That Matter human rights film festival runs online 16-25 April with new documentary and fiction competitions and, for the first time, an international Industry programme that will run 19-21 April.
Founded by Amnesty International in 2006, the stated aim of Amsterdam-based festival Movies That Matter is “to open eyes to human rights…to use film to stir the debate on human rights, sustainability and the fight against injustice.”
The event started small, running four days within Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum, an institution dedicated to world cultures, and with a handful of screenings per day. “But at a certain point, Movies That Matter had to evolve and so we decided to be on our own,” points out festival chief Margje de Koning. “Amnesty International is still one of our biggest partners but we are completely independent now, and the festival has become much bigger.”
“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 adds.
This year’s festival presents some 50 films within the programme. Films will compete in the newly installed Grand Jury Documentary and Grand Jury Fiction
competitions as well as Activist, Camera Justitia and Dutch Movies Matter competitive sections. De Koning estimates an approximate 65/35 per cent ratio of documentaries to fiction film across the overall selection.
In terms of selections in 2021, De Koning points to the impact both of the docs and fiction films in selection.
She describes the secretly filmed Nasrin, a personal portrait of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, directed by Jeff Kaufman and selected for the festival’s Activist section, as a “mind-blowing film.”
Also in Activist section is Celina Escher’s Fly So Far, a portrait of Teodora del Carmen Vásquez from El Salvador who, after her baby was delivered stillborn, was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment for aggravated homicide. “You are like, hold on, this is so twisted,” says De Koning. “She is such an amazing main character and the filmmakers are so dedicated and want to get this story out. They will get a Q&A and they will get attention. It is a beautiful film, a highly important film. And incredible film.”
“Another documentary you don’t want to miss is Chloe Fairweather’s Dying to Divorce,” adds De Koning. The film tells how more than one in three Turkish women have experienced domestic violence, and femicides are on the rise. All the time, brave Turkish activists and lawyers fight for justice for the victims. “It is a world premiere and it is extremely strong.”
De Koning is by training a documentary filmmaker but stresses how she is continually aware of some of the limitations of the form, which she feels can, at times, be better overcome with a fictional approach. “I think the impact can be the same, but there can be limits when you have to protect your main characters, or your characters will refuse to talk, which makes it too difficult to make certain films,” she says. “A fiction film can sometimes bring back stories that are impossible to deliver in documentary. And sometimes fiction can also deliver a harsh story in a more [patable] way, but at end of the day the topic will be a very important one to talk about.”
The opening film of the festival is the fictional work The Man Who Sold His Skin, which De Koning describes as “a remarkable film about refugees, but also a film on art, and a beautiful love story as well. To get all that into a documentary is not always that easy.” Other fiction films she cites in the programme are the Academy Award-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the “black page of Srebrenica, which is a very difficult history for the Dutch,” and Night of the Kings, also Academy Award-nominated, about a shy young man who arrives at Ivorian prison, where the inmates rule, only to be ordained the next the storyteller. He soon finds out that it is a matter of life and death.
The festival director underlines the key aspects of the Industry Programme, in “seeking to match funds and NGOs with films and filmmakers”, and in promoting impact. “That’s why we work together with Doc Society to put together a very strong showcase on on how to bring the vulnerable films more to the front,” says De Koning.
“I’m a very cynical woman but I still try to make this world a little bit of a better place, and I think film is an amazing tool for debate,” she adds, underlining the necessity for the programme’s emphasis on impact.
This notion will be further underlined during an industry webinar April 17 which will explore how media makers from around the world can best support their colleagues and their causes. The event will focus on Myanmar and Belarus and the activist media makers who have used the internet and social media to expose the repressive actions of their respective regimes. The debate will include ‘Vasili’, a filmmaker from Myanmar, and Aliaksei Paluyan (the director of the Belarussian Courage) who will be joined by Dutch makers Corinne van Egeraat & Petr Lom (ZIN Documentaire), Sigal Yehuda (Close-Up) and De Koning herself, who will moderate.
The festival director expects that the panel, the industry programme and the festival as a whole, will illustrate film’s unprecedented capacity to raise awareness and to provide new insight, as well as underline how that which cannot be accomplished by the spoken or written word can sometimes be achieved via the moving image.
