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Film and Human Rights

Administrador

Among those films competing are FICM 2008 winners, La canción de los niños muertos by David Pablos, Best Fiction Short Film; Zoogocho by Bernardo Arellano, Best Documentary Short Film; Siete Instantes by Diana Cardozo, Premio Musa for the Best Feature by a Woman;  Roma by Elisa Miller,  the García Bross Prize winner, as well as best mentioned El ciruelo by Emiliano Altuna and Carlos Rossini in the Documentary Feature Film section and Susurros de luz by Alberto Reséndiz Gómez in the Documentary Short Film section.

The cinema chain Fundación Cinépolis is organizing the event, which is co-sponsored by the Morelia International Film Festival. The purpose of the festival is to promote -- through film -- the understanding and respect for human rights, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For the first time, the festival will have two official competitive sections, best Mexican documentary and best Mexican short. They will include the documentaries Los que se quedan by Juan Carlos Rulfo and Juan Carlos Hagerman and Los Herederos by Eugenio Polgovsky, both exhibited at FICM 2008, as well as the short films Los caídos by Rudy Joffroy,  Rebelión by Alberto Gabriel Mar Mancilla, La Yerbabuena, Comunidad en Resistencia by Nicolas Défossé,  Mexican Dream by David Michan Hernández, Carretera del norte  by Rubén Rojo Aura and Bajo cualquier cielo by Carlos Alonso Garza, all part of the FICM 2008 selection.

The FICDH is supported by a number of film and human rights organizations: the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights in Mexico, the Ambulante documentary film project, the Mexican branch of Amnesty International, Mexico City's Human Rights Commission, the International Red Cross Committee, the French Embassy in Mexico, Reforestamos México and Mexico City's Environmental Secretariat.

The FICDH program also has four non-competing sections: Reflectors, Fiction... or Reality?, Environment and Human Rights in Action: health and five special programs each ending with a debate.

Prominent academics, activists and experts on social, cultural, media and human rights issues in Mexico will participate in the debates that will take place from August 15 to 19. They include: Darío Ramírez, director of Organización Article 19; Aleida Calleja, general coordinator of the World Association of Community Radio Stations; Gerardo Sauri, director of The Network and Children?s Rights; Sara Garduño, in charge of the PGR (Attorney General's Office) program in support of family members of missing or disappeared persons; Xóchitl Gálvez, ex commissioner of the office for the development of indigenous peoples; Deputy Marcos Matías, president of the Indigenous Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, and Martha Delgado, environment secretary of Mexico City's Environmental Secretariat.

The FICDH will have 113 screenings of films from 23 countries, such as France, Denmark, the United States, Pakistan, Great Britain, China, Russia, Greece, Argentina, Germany, Mexico, Australia and Palestine. The themes will range from freedom of expression, migration, and racial and sexual discrimination to dictatorships, government corruption, child prostitution, kidnapping, blindness, obesity, environment and endangered animals.

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