08/02/2023 - The industry platform will welcome several teams of participants, invite professionals from around the globe and boast a series of case studies on impact campaigns

Becoming a Black Woman by Rachel M'Bon and Juliana Fanjul, which will form the basis for the launch of the global campaign #JeSuisNoires at FIFDH Impact Days

The fifth edition of FIFDH Impact Days is due to run from 12-14 March as an integral part of the 21^st International Film Festival and Forum of Human Rights (FIFDH), which will unspool from 10-19 March in Geneva. The industry programme has confirmed its schedule and has opened the call for industry accreditations (please click here).

FIFDH Impact Days has already announced the selection of 16 projects partaking in this edition’s Impact Lab, which hail from 23 countries and will be pitched publicly (see the news). Also, as is the case every year, in addition to participants with a film, industry professionals – producers or filmmakers – can also attend. The professionals will also have a unique opportunity to meet with all nine members of the Global Impact Producers' Alliance (GIPA) advisory team, who will shed light on questions such as: what is an impact producer anyway? And why does a film need – or why should an organisation get involved in – a documentary impact campaign?

As for this year’s schedule, some of the highlights include a series of film case studies, starting off with a screening of the Kenyan documentary Softie by Sam Soko, which captures the generally accepted “normal way” of doing politics in East Africa. The study is focused on cinema and activism, and follows the movie’s path from festival success to an active citizenship impact campaign in Kenya, as the filmmakers have assembled concrete resources to encourage Kenyans of all ages and from all backgrounds to exercise their political rights as active citizens.

“The Power of Collectivity to #DigUpTheTruth” is being explored with To See You Again by Carolina Corral, in which three mothers train in forensics to help bring home their murdered daughters. The #DesenterrarLaVerdad (Dig up the truth) impact campaign has focused on supporting their search and sparking fundamental conversations in Mexico to stop the normalisation of missing persons there.

The third case study, “Impact Film in Times of War – Using Documentary Film to Advocate for War-crime Accountability”, will involve the team behind the Ukrainian documentary Peace for Nina by Zhanna Maksymenko-Dovhych, which won last year’s Impact Days Award (see the news). The film is now in post-production, and the partners will talk about how they had to adapt to the challenges of the war and ensure the objectives of the campaign evolved with the shifting landscape of legal action taken against the perpetrators of war crimes committed in Ukraine since 2014.

Under the Swiss Focus, the global campaign #JeSuisNoires will be launched. At the height of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Swiss-Congolese journalist Rachel M'Bon went in search of her black identity by interviewing other Swiss women of colour for her film Becoming a Black Woman [+see also:
film review
film profile], co-directed by her and Juliana Fanjul. Following the movie’s 12-month Swiss tour, Rachel is ready to launch a global campaign to bring together black women from around Europe to coordinate strategies against social inequalities.

The detailed schedule of the 2023 Impact Days can be found here.