The Festival showcases 56 films spread across 13 sections, 3 of which are competitive and whose winner is chosen by national and international juries. This year, the festival centers around digital rights. Discover the list of films selected in competition:
Official International Feature Films Competition
Judges under Pressure
Poland, 2021
86’, Documentary
L: Polish
T: Democracy under attack
S: Panorama
D: Kacper Lisowski
E: marta.swiatek@kff.com.pl
Since 2015, Poland’s ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) has been dismantling the democratic system and the division of powers. Polish judges face firing and even arrest for standing up against the trampling of the Constitution. Justice Igor Tuleya has become a public enemy due to his uncompromising attitude, for which he will have to face the consequences.
The Beasts
Spain, France, 2022
137’, Fiction
L: Spanish, French
T: Socio-Environmental conflict
S: [FINCA] Environment
D: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
E: festivals@idaagency.net
A French couple, Antoine and Olga, are concerned with ecology in a small rural town in Galicia. They oppose a wind energy project, which sparks deep animosity between them and the violent brothers Xan and Lorenzo. The film As Bestas is a thriller that emphasizes environmental resistance and highlights different socioeconomic conditions.
The Art of Finding Ines
Argentina, 2022
60′, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: Argentina’s Civil-military dictatorship
S: Memory
D: Anahí Carballido Marzá
E: anahicarballidomarza@gmail.com
On the night of July 19, 1977, a military squad arrested all the passengers of a bus. The next morning, almost all of them were released except for Inés. The judicial process and the non-stop love of a family culminates in the arrest of Rear Admiral Chamorro, headmaster of the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA), where an illegal detention center used to operate.
Eternal Spring
Canada, 2022
76′, Documentary
L: Chinese
T: Religious persecution
S: Window to SIMA Studios. Panorama
D: Jason Loftus
E: kathy@thefilmcollaborative.org
In 2002, A Chinese city TV station was hijacked by the Falun Gong spiritual sect in defiance to government denunciations and human rights violations against their spiritual practice. This group of activists executes a bold and perilous plan to hack into the public television network. Animated by Daxiong, it is an impressive account of a pivotal moment.
Manifesto
Russia, 2022
68’08’’, Documentary
L: Russian
T: Childhood
S: Digital Rights. Childhood and Youth
D: Angie Vinchito
E: andy@rainafilms.com
Children are our future. In order to see what the future holds for our country and our society, we need to support teenagers’ school life. The movie consists of some strong videos recorded and posted online by 21st-century teens living in Russia.
Nayola
Portugal, Belgium, France, Netherlands, 2022
83′, Animation
L: Portuguese, Kimbundu
T: Angola. Civil war
S: Panorama
D: José Miguel Ribeiro
E: irene@urbangroup.biz
Angola. Three generations of women in a 25-year-old civil war in which past and present intertwine. Nayola sets out to search for her husband, who has gone missing at the apex of the war. Decades later, the war has fizzled out, but she is yet to return. Yara becomes a subversive teenage rap artist. Lelena tries to control her. One night, a masked intruder breaks into their home.
Bittersweet Rain
Brazil, 2022
100’07”, Fiction
L: Portuguese
T: Inclusion
S: Childhood and Youth
D: Haroldo Borges
E: acalvino@habanerofilmsales.com
As if adolescence weren’t hard enough, a young, fatherless teenager living in a small town in the Brazilian heartland confronts a degenerative eye disease that will leave him blind. As his vision deteriorates, he goes through the pain of his unreciprocated first love, and ultimately will have to learn first-hand how to see life through different eyes.
Travels inside Foreign Heads
France, 2022
119’33”, Fiction
L: French
T: African migration in Europe
S: Migrants
D: Antonio Amaral
E: antonio.amaral77@gmail.com
My name is YEDEL. I have been on Earth for one month. My graft is called GIL CARVALHO. With him, I’m like a jar full of dirty water. I can’t get anywhere. I have found GULH and KADATH. GULH has good news for us: he says that the time has come to leave. We have seven days to leave Earth, not one more.
Official International Short and Medium-Length Films Competition
Searching Heleny
Brazil, Spain, 2022
29’20’’, Animation
L: Portuguese
T: Dictatorship in Brazil
S: Memory
D: Esther Vital
E: vercadeheleny@gmail.com
Through pictures, this animated documentary unravels the story of Heleny Guariba, a philosopher, professor, and theater director who vanished at the hands of the Brazilian dictatorship in 1971. This documentary draws inspiration from the popular textile art that emerged in Chile in response to the horrors of the military regime.
Flesh of God
Argentina, Mexico, 2022
21′, Animation
L: Spanish, Mazatec
T: Colonial violence
S: Native Peoples
D: Patricio Plaza
E: patricio@ojoraro.com.ar
17th Century. Amidst the mountains somewhere in Mexico, a christian Priest who has fallen victim to a strange illness is taken by his native disciple to the hut of an old indigenous shaman. The curandera will try to cure the friar by performing an ancient ritual which will have unexpected effects on the mind and body of the evangelizer.
After the Dust
Peru, 2022
25’11’’, Documentary
L: Quechua, Spanish
T: Fight for rights
S: (Focus on) Democracy in Latin America
D: Colectivo Silencio
E: veroferrari8@gmail.com
From different parts of Peru, voices are heard in their native tongues: After the Dust is a collection of readings by activists, fighters and mourners who are part of Peru’s contemporary history. Forgotten stories and pending struggles are combined with poems and testimonies that make up a collective memory on the verge of oblivion.
Desert Lights
Chile, 2022
18’55”, Fiction
L: Spanish
T: Climate change
S: [FINCA] Environment, Schools
D: Katherina Harder Sacre
E: katherina@volcanicafilms.cl
In the middle of the Atacama desert, Antay (12) watches as his town disappears as a result of the drought. Alongside his friends and their football team, they will try to hang on to the last sun rays, fragments of their childhood, and the ties with those who still resist.
Leaves of K
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, 2022
18′, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: Police Crackdown
S: Childhood and Youth
D: Gloria Carrión Fonseca
E: hasta30minutos@gmail.com
K. is a high school student who is arrested along with other people. The documentary follows her time in prison and the police repression of 2018. Through personal drawings, she recounts her memories of the violence inflicted on her family, Nicaragua, and herself during the corrupt and authoritarian dictatorship of Daniel Ortega.
The Mechanics of Fluids
France, 2022
38’45”, Documentary
L: French, English
T: Misogyny
S: Digital Rights, Gender Views
D: Gala Hernández López
E: galamandarina@gmail.com
In 2018, a self-proclaimed Anathematic Anarchist incel posted a suicidal note on Reddit titled “The USA Is Responsible for My Death”. The documentary La Mécanique des fluides seeks explanations for that reasoning by scanning the Internet for the digital footprints of the author. This quest is an internal journey through the corners of our interconnected loneliness.
Rawa
France, Lebanon, 2021
12′, Documentary
L: Arabic
T: Refugees, Syria
S: Childhood and Youth, Gender Views
D: Camille Toulmé
E: distribucion@promofest.org
Rawa is a little girl who lives in a Syrian refugee camp on the northern border of Lebanon.
She grew up in the camp like in a huge playground, together with her siblings, and she no longer wants to leave. Through the course of five years, we follow her life journey, marked by the war in Syria.
Serigne
Spain, Mexico, 2022
27′, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: African migrants in Europe
S: Migrants
D: Rodrigo Hernández Tejero ,Edu Marin, Adriana Cardoso Navarro
E: info@selectedfilms.com
Serigne Mbayé arrived in Spain in 2006 on a dinghy from Senegal. After 15 years of anti-racist struggle in Madrid, he has now become a social and political activist, determined to confront the European Union. His mission: to hold Brussels responsible for his own migration and the migration of thousands of his compatriots.
Veintitrés: nuestro trabajo salvó vidas
United States, 2021
23’41’’, Documentary
L: Spanish, English
T: Labor rights
S: Migrants
D: Djali Brown-Cepeda
E: djali@nuevayorkinos.com
After a 23-day strike, the New York State Excluded Workers Fund was passed. The $2.1B fund allowed for excluded, undocumented workers to receive COVID relief, the first economic assistance program of its kind in the United States.
Official Latin American Documentaries Competition
On Suspicion: Zokunentu
Chile, 2022
67′, Documentary
T: Racism
L: Mapuche, Spanish
S: Native Peoples
D: Daniel Díaz Oyarzún
E: acalvino@habanerofilmsales.com
Narrated in the language of the Mapuche people, the film is a journey through the works of the celebrated Mapuche visual artist Bernardo Oyarzún from the perspective of his nephew, Daniel Díaz, who proposes a reflection on identity, spirituality, territory and racial justice in contemporary Chile.
I am Berta
Honduras, 2022
135’36’’, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: Assassination of environmental leaders
S: [FINCA] Environment
D: Katia Lara Pineda
E: katia@tercoproducciones.com
Hours before her death, social activist Berta Cáceres wrote down the names of the corrupt interests that conspired to kill her. This documentary pieces together the jigsaw puzzle to help her solve her own murder. Milton Benítez, a tenacious Honduran journalist, follows the clues he and Berta jotted down in the meeting they held the day before.
Cantos que inundan el río / Songs that Flood the River
Colombia, 2021
72′, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: Armed conflict, FARC
S: Panorama
D: Germán Arango
E: acalvino@habanerofilmsales.com
As a child, Oneida learned the Afro-Colombian tradition of singing to the dead to be a company in their journey to purgatory. War drove her to songwriting by using the melodies from funeral songs to express what her people were going through. Nowadays, her chants reflect the call for peace from a region affected by one of the world’s largest wars.
Desiderio, Thoughts about a Self-Portrait
Argentina, 2023
65′, Documentary
L: Spanish, German
T: Argentina’s Civil-military dictatorship
S: Memory
D: Juliana Fischbein
E: fa.vallarelli@hotmail.com
This film recounts the life of a 91-year-old German man who was in World War II, arrived in Argentina in 1948, worked for different military companies, and suffered the forced disappearance of a son during the past civil-military dictatorship. A group of German TV reporters interprets, questions and seeks to complete this story.
Guañuna
Ecuador, 2022
75′, Documentary
L: Spanish
T: Police crackdown
S: Childhood and Youth
D: David Lasso
E: vichasso@gmail.com
Paul was 16 years old when the police arrested him for painting on a wall. The following day, his body was found in a ravine in his hometown. His father never backed down in the fight for justice and the three police officers involved in the murder of his son were sentenced to 20 years in prison… Except they only served three.
Mukí sopalírili aligué gawichi nirúgame / La mujer de estrellas y montañas / The Woman of Stars and Mountains
Mexico, 2022
101′, Documentary
L: Various
T: Mental health
S: Native Peoples
D: Santiago Esteinou
E: santiagoesteinou@gmail.com
Rita Patiño, an indigenous woman from Mexico, was found by a human rights organization inside a Kansas psychiatric hospital, where she had been involuntarily confined, for 12 years, despite the fact that the hospital authorities were never able to determine who this woman was, where she came from or what language she spoke.
The Wind Blows the Border
Brazil, 2022
77′, Documentary
L: Portuguese, Guarani
T: Right to territory
S: Native Peoples
D: Laura Faerman and Marina Weis
E: renato@utopiadocs.net
In the heart of Brazilian agribusiness, on the violent border between Brazil and Paraguay, the indigenous teacher Alenir Aquino fights for her community’s right to culture and ancestral lands. On the opposite side of this dispute is the heiress of those lands, Luana Ruiz, a lawyer with strong relations with the Bolsonarist federal power.
Access to the films of the #20FICDH is free of charge and screenings will be held in the following venues:
- Alianza Francesa de Buenos Aires (Av. Córdoba 946, CABA)
- Centro Cultural San Martín (Sarmiento 1551, CABA)
- Cine Gaumont – Espacio INCAA (Av. Rivadavia 1635,CABA)
- Cine York (Juan Bautista Alberdi 895, Olivos)
- Honorable Cámara de Diputados, Anexo A (Av. Rivadavia 1841, CABA)
