After it hosted the Israeli Film Week last week, now Europa Cinema will host the 15th installment of the Human Rights Festival.
Human Rights Film Festival is taking place in Zagreb and in Rijeka again this year. It is a widely recognized and a popular program for those who enjoy independent, opinionated, documentary or otherwise non-mainstream movies that try and ask (and answer) questions regarding the human rights, as seen from various vantage points around the world.
The festival is taking place in several venues in Zagreb and Rijeka, allowing for various approaches to very diverse films which will be shown. In Zagreb, the events included in the festival have started on December 4th, in Rijeka it will start tonight, on December 6th, and the final day of the festival will be December 10th. Full schedule of Zagreb and Rijeka events – .pdf files in Croatian.
The program includes around 40 movies, including two Croatian documentaries which will be have their world premieres during this festival. The festival was officially opened last night with the projection of a Chilean film “A Fantastic Woman” (Una mujer fantástica) by Sebastián Lelio, about a transgendered woman who appears non-existent in her society.
The biggest novelty of this year’s festival is the inclusion of the special programme, called “The United States of the Levant”, including not just the movies, but also the literature festival, taking place in Zagreb, Rijeka, Osijek, Dubrovnik and Vukovar. The title of the programme suggests the meaninglessness of the international politics towards the Middle East. Seven movies: City of Ghosts by an American director Matthew Heineman, Nowhere to Hide (Norwegian-Swedish co-production, directed by Zaradasht Ahmed, Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? byTravis Wilkerson, The Reagan Show by Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez, En el Septimo Dia by Jim McKay, Beach Rats by Eliza Hitmman and The Florida Project by Sean Baker) are included in that programme.
The festival of smaller literature will present modern middle-Eastern literature written in Arabic, as selected by Zeina G. Halabi, a professor of Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut.
Many of the films shown during the festival will either be in English, or will have English subtitles (in addition to Croatian), and the list is available here. Additional programmes, such as discussion related to the topics of the films shown will also enrich the festival. Entrance to all of the events of this festival is free.
