Humans Fest will screen films about migration to “move and mobilize”

The event is moved to June and will organize outdoor activities in four neighborhoods of Valencia

VALENCIA, 22 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Valencia International Film and Human Rights Festival, Humans Fest, will focus its XIII edition, to be held in June, on migration and refuge from an anti-racist and gender perspective.

For this, it will bring a selection of cinematographic and documentary works that citizens can enjoy in different spaces of the city. “We aspire to move, outrage and mobilize the widest and most diverse audience possible,” explains the president of the Foundation for Justice, the organizing entity, José Mª Tomás y Tío.

The XIII Humans Fest will be led by the journalist Majo Siscar, who in 2022 will debut as director of the festival together with a team made up of the journalists Cristina Vivó, as production coordinator, Pilar Almenar, as awareness coordinator, and Laura Bellver, as communication coordinator. All of them are firmly committed to vindicating cinema as a tool for advocacy, denunciation and debate.

“Europe systematically violates human rights in its migration policies. At the borders, in the CIEs, in a control industry that kills. Just trying to get to Spain, in 2021, 12 people died every day. That’s more than 4,000 in a year. We can’t keep looking the other way”, Majo Siscar stresses.

WILL “GO OUT” IN JUNE

Among the novelties of the Humans Fest in its XIII edition, a change in the calendar stands out, since this year it will be held from June 9 to 18. The new date has led the festival to take a leap, organizing screenings in squares and public venues in four neighborhoods of Valencia that stand out for their interculturality: Rascanya (Orriols-Torrefiel), El Cabanyal, Patraix and Nazaret.

These will be added, therefore, to the usual projections in the city center and to the parallel activities, such as different workshops with young people and with people from groups in situations of exclusion. In addition, all the films will be accompanied by discussion tables with both expert voices in cinema and with activists for the rights of migrant and racialized people.

For its part, the registration bases to participate in the official section of the XIII Humans Fest can be consulted on the website www.humansfest.com/bases-2022/ and on the specialized platform Festhome. The period will remain open for two months, that is, until April 22 at 11:59 p.m.

In 2022 there are five categories: Humans Fic Awards, for the Best International Fiction Feature Films and Short Films; Humans Doc Awards, for the best Documentary Feature Films and Short Films; Acollida Award, for the best Valencian short film on human rights; and 1 Minute, 1 Border Award, for micro-length films. Likewise, an honorary prize will be awarded to an outstanding person for her career in the defense of human rights from the audiovisual world.

In total, thirty films will be selected between feature films and short films. According to the bases, they will be works that move away from the “dominant security paradigm” to show “the complexity of migration, from the causes to the consequences”, prioritizing “new narratives” and “an empowering view of the migrants who move away from victimization and include an intersectional perspective”.

RENEWAL AND ESSENCE

All in all, Humans Fest “is renewed in 2022 without losing the essence” that has characterized it since its inception in 2008, which is also reflected in the new logo that debuts in this XIII edition and that has been created by the Valencian designer Ausiàs Tortosa.

The festival is being held this year thanks to the contributions of, for the time being, the Ministry of Transparency, Social Responsibility, Participation and Cooperation; Valencia City Council; Valencian Institute of Culture; Caixa Popular and Valencia Provincial Council. It also has the collaboration of À Punt and EMT.

Majo Siscar hopes to reinforce the València, ciutat refugi brand: “While international administrations reinforce the perspective of a fortress Europe, in recent years València has shown itself to be an open city, positioning itself as a refuge city for human rights defenders from all over the world,” he concludes.

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