Festival calendar

NIHRFF is Germany’s oldest and biggest human rights film festival. With its art house cinema background, it is the leading forum for outstanding feature films, documentaries and animated productions, which have human rights as their main focus.
The biannual festival features an international competition, which presents artistically exceptional human rights films, an international forum, an extensive supporting programme, exhibitions and international guests. 

Karama Beirut Human Rights Film Festival (KBHRFF), which is the first human rights festival in Lebanon, is an interactive, local platform where the general public can interact directly with civil society activists, filmmakers, producers and other artists from Lebanon, the Arab world and the International community. KBHRFF is a project that promotes human rights by countering racism, hate speech, discrimination, and injustice.

Festival: The Human Rights Film Festival Berlin focuses on stories from all parts of the world that vividly address and reflect on human action, the socio-political status quo and fundamental issues such as democracy, justice, freedom and environmental protection. Through discussions and Q&As with filmmakers, activists and experts, the festival creates a platform to gain new perspectives on our world.

Space for artistic communication, demands and artistic creations, the Festival des Libertés is the globalized expression of our permanent action defending the rights, liberties and values of universal democracy. As a political and cultural event, it offers documentaries, debates and talks, concerts, theater and exhibitions to a large audience.

A symbol of the observation post of the current state of rights and liberties around the world, the Festival des Libertés is a place where democratic struggles are given a voice and converge.

Human Rights Film Festival “Inconvenient Films” is an annual documentary film festival established in 2007. The mission of this non-profit initiative is to raise awareness on human rights issues around the world and to connect them to those that are present in Lithuania. By presenting documentaries on various human rights topics, inviting filmmakers and activists from all over the world, organizers hope to encourage public debates on human rights issues and ways to address them.

BIFF is the largest film festival in Norway, both in admissions and number of films presented, with more than 61.000 admissions in 2019. Each year we present more than 150 feature length films, around two thirds of which are documentaries, making us one of the biggest documentary festivals in the Nordic Region. The human rights festival Checkpoints is an integral part of BIFF, with 10 films in competition and 11 out of competition. For more information on the festival, please visit our website www.biff.no.

The Vermont International Film Festival (VTIFF) is Vermont’s longest running film festival and this year marks its 29th edition.

The festival is best known for featuring groundbreaking and independent films from around the world, with a special focus on films that, not only entertain, but also seek to broaden our views of the world. The festival is also the home of the Vermont Filmmaker’s Showcase, the largest juried selection of Vermont-made films in the state.

Free Zone Film Festival is meant to foster a debate on topical issues in the world today. The festival showcases films from around the world that address human rights and related issues, bringing together celebrated filmmakers, local experts, and local and international audiences.

International festival of documentary films One World Slovakia, taking place in the beginning of November is an inclusive hybrid (online/onsite) film event,  progressive and innovative platform for the European documentary industry and filmmaking with the focuse on films reflecting current and vibrant global issues such as climate change, political conflicts, gender inequality, new technologies etc.

MOVE IT! is a small film festival located in Dresden, Germany. It is focused on human rights themes with a special emphasis on women's and children's rights, due to the thematic focus of it’s organising NGO, Akifra e.V. Founded in 2004, MOVE IT! Film Festival takes place in the second week of November in different locations in Dresden. Since 2015 one of the selected films gets honoured with the MOVE IT! Film Prize for Human Rights and Development, in 2019 endowed with 5000.- Euro.

The Naples Human Rights Film Festival was born in 2008 as an initiative of the association "Cinema e Diritti" with the aim of establishing a reference point for Human Rights debate in Southern Europe opening up a dialogue among civil societies from the Middle East to North Africa and to Northern Europe and America.The tradition of hospitality in the city of Naples and its function as a crossroad for migrant people since the Middle Age allows us today to establish a meeting point for communities that are moving towards democracy and peace.

Ciné Droit Libre is a film festival committed to the cause of human rights and freedom of expression. Ciné Droit Libre’s goal is to provide a platform for filmmakers and journalists around the world, especially for those whose works (films on human rights and freedom of the press) are censored or have broadcast difficulties.

The festival focuses particularly on Africa. Ciné Droit Libre’s credos are the following:

Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, the largest documentary film festival in Hungary, has been organized on an annual basis since 2004. It aims to promote open society, democratic values, rule-of-law, freedom of expression, political and cultural pluralism, and to expose abuse and global human rights violations through creative, quality documentaries.

Since its first edition, the Festival Miradas Diversas has marked a different philosophy and design. On the one hand, it gathers the experience of 25 years of the Gran Cine Circuit in terms of organization and execution of Shows and Festivals, at the same time, to carry out Various Looks, Gran Cine joins forces with Human Rights organizations and expands the festival's radius of action, beyond movie theaters and an epicenter in Caracas, to expand and make it accessible to a wider audience in the country.

The International Film Festival WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film has been held annually in Warsaw in December since 2001. It combines high-class cinema, mainly documentaries, with public debate.It is a joint project of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights - Poland’s leading human rights organization, the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle – the largest interdisciplinary art center in Eastern Europe, and the Social Institute of Film – an organization specializing in promoting socially engaged cinema.WATCH DOCS is a competition festival with an international jury.

The Karama HRFF was established in June 2009, sensing the need for human rights dialogue and advocacy in the Arab region. Recent massive upheavals in the Arab region since the first edition (in 2010) have made it imperative to seek the exchange of expression, ideas, opinions and experiences on human rights issues across the region and the world. The festival’s core theme is human dignity (Karama is Arabic for dignity).

Human Rights Film Center is an organization which works on human rights through film. Founded by a group of media professionals and filmmakers for promoting and protecting human rights in Nepal, we generate public debate and encourage changes in national policy by making film and organizing festival screening.

We believe film is the most powerful tool to advocate for human rights, justice and peace. Film provides a way to reach many people easily because it overcomes literacy boundaries. It appeals to the emotion of the audience and can inspire marginalized people into action.

Ciné Droit Libre is a film festival committed to the cause of human rights and freedom of expression.

Ciné Droit Libre’s goal is to provide a platform for filmmakers and journalists around the world, especially for those whose works (films on human rights and freedom of the press) are censored or have broadcast difficulties.

FAST FORWARD Human Rights Film Festival Montenegro

Censurados Film Festival is an itinerant film festival dedicated to freedom of expression and human rights that takes place since 2014 with the aim to give voice to those films that have been censored as well as to movies that are focused on human rights.

Vieques has a long history of fighting for the defense of human rights. The best lands on the island of Vieques were occupied by the United States Navy for more than 60 years and its residents, victims of constant displacement. For many decades the community fought to stop the bombings and the use of their territories for military practices by the United States Navy. Thanks to international support, religious alliances and a large civil disobedience movement, the Navy was expelled.

HUMAN International Documentary Film Festival is Oslo’s largest documentary film festival and a significant forum in the Norwegian capital’s cultural, academic and organizational life, which engages and encourages debates about human rights and other social issues of current interest. The festival is a unique meeting place where activists, experts, filmmakers, artists, students, NGOs, think tanks, and a general audience actively participate.

 The festival’s film program consists of more than 40 new Norwegian and International documentaries, categorized in three sections:

International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights brings together filmmakers, human rights defenders, policymakers, media and citizens around leading violations of human dignity - to promote and amplify strong voices and build public support for human rights. Each year in March, we show films and run a forum where all topics can be openly discussed, simultaneously with the UN Human Rights Council. Since 2003, we welcomed 233'000 festivalgoers, 60% under 35 years old.

One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is the largest human rights film festival in the world. It is a major cultural event in the Czech Republic that attracts more than 120,000 viewers annually and takes place in over 30 towns in the Czech Republic.One World presents more than 110 documentary films from around the globe, focusing on social, political, environmental, media and human rights issues.

Movies that Matter screens and promotes films that draws our attention to human rights and situations in which these are at stake. The foundation's peak activity is the annual Movies that Matter Festival, taking place in The Hague, International City of Peace and Justice. The Movies that Matter Festival is the Netherlands' main platform for engaged cinema, with over seventy documentaries and feature films of inspired filmmakers being screened every year.

The ACT Human Rights Film Festival in Fort Collins, Colorado, showcases the best in human rights cinema from around the world. The festival convenes for one week every April on and off the campus of Colorado State University, uniting diverse audiences while inspiring them to awaken to human rights issues facing people around the world, to connect across the powerful medium of film and dialogue, and to transform their lives and communities. ACT is produced by the Department of Communication Studies housed within the College of Liberal Arts. ACT was founded in 2016.

The Festival of Human Rights Film is an initiative that is part of the San Sebastian, Space for the Culture of Peace project. The aim is to promote greater awareness, as well as encourage debate and provide greater information to citizens about human rights, by promoting, through the cinema and other cultural and artistic expressions, the values of solidarity, respect for life, peace, freedom and social justice, among other things.

Feature Films Official Selection

Docudays UA is the only international human rights documentary film festival in Ukraine. It is a part of the international Human Rights Film Network. It takes place every year in Kyiv in the last week of March. After the end of the festival, Docudays UA traditionally presents the best films in Ukrainian regions during the Traveling Festival. Screenings and discussions of films with human rights experts last from October until December. Throughout the year, Docudays UA popularizes auteur documentary cinema in film theaters as a part of the DOCU/HIT project.