Word from the Team
Diya Angeli & Alix Laurent for the MHRFF team

“We have to wake people up. To dramatically change the way they identify things. We should create unacceptable images. People must froth. Force them to understand that they live in a strange world. A non-comforting world.”   Pablo Picasso

For the fourth year now, the Montreal Human Rights Film Festival (MHRFF) proposes to open an area of gathering around sensitive and dedicated works from filmmakers around the world with a view to appealing to our duty to not forget and to be more conscious. The 450 films we received this year confirm once more, the sad situation of human rights in the world and the emergency with which we should take action.

This year, the MHRFF will put conflict zones under the spotlight and will enlighten humanitarian work on the field, or the fight of the International Criminal Court to end war criminals’ impunity, and journalists’ struggles to preserve or gain freedom of expression. It will also recall the horrors of past political violence and will take a critical look at the actual Chinese government’s repression towards the Tibetan people.

While we prepare to celebrate in November, the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child - adopted by the UN, the MHRFF reminds us that many children still remain on the fringe of this Convention’s engagements. Let us keep our engagements! Finally, certain conflicts presented in the MHRFF require that we appeal to the power of art, one of the few tools still able to cure war pains and history’s injuries. It is therefore through art that we address the delicate situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The works chosen to address that question show the Israeli and Palestinian artists’ will to resist by expressing themselves and offering to their neighbour works inspired by pains and injustices caused by war, all proclaiming a same message from the heart: We want peace!

Thanks to all the filmmakers who sent us their works to share with us their vision of the world and give speech to those whom we almost never hear! Thanks to all those who act to make sure that a more human world is built, a world that recognises dignity to each and everyone!

We are waiting for you, dear public, to participate in our original screenings and meetings on human rights, and to exchange views with filmmakers from around the world. Let us not look away! Let us act together for justice and everyone’s dignity!