Did you know that most of our films are available on our digital film platform until March 14th? However, 7 expire at midnight sunday.
Last chance to see these 7 film today, Sunday 7th:
The remaining 37 films on this year’s program are available until March 14th at 23:49.
During tonight’s awards ceremony, this year’s HUMAN Award and the HUMAN Rights Human Wrongs Film Award were presented digitally. Congratulations to this year’s impressive winners!
Eleven new Norwegian documentaries participated in this year’s Norwegian competition program. The winning film is awarded the HUMAN Award, and NOK 50,000. The winning film also qualifies for the Amanda nomination for Best Documentary.
This year’s jury for the Norwegian competition program has consisted of Åse Svenheim Drivenes, Håvard Bustnes and Julie Lunde Lillesæter.
Rarely have we seen a more necessary film, with such strong, vulnerable and impressive protagonists. The winning film captures the time we live in, and balances finely between pain and hope. Fortunately, it lands on hope, a hope we desperately need.
It is a strongly visual film that shows that words mean something. With a cautious look, and without being bombastic, it addresses some of the most important topics in the public debate today.
It clearly shows the consequences of hate speech, and that the fight against right-wing extremism in Norway has not been won. Every word counts. We cannot take democracy for granted.
The film beautifully portrays the brave young politicians who refuse to be silenced, and who defy the traumas, despite being attacked by the terrorist. For them, it is vital to continue fighting for what they believe in. The rest of us can only thank you for helping us believe in the future.
The film shows that there is hope for democracy. Making a film about our deepest pain, that still brings hope, is a feat in itself. The winning film is Generation Utøya.
Honorable mention goes to a film that with unique attention, caution and respect directs the camera towards its main character. With a very accomplished visual expression, the director manages to tell the main character’s story on her terms. In a brave way, the film dares to enter into the unpleasant, and thus gives a voice to a young woman who until now has been asked to keep quiet about her painful story. The everyday moments in the main character’s life contain emotional depth and subtle system criticism.
The main character’s strength and openness impress and touch us. The film forces us to see the consequences of a societal problem that is unfortunately bigger than we want to believe. Honorable mention goes to All that I am.
Ten international documentaries with a focus on human rights competed for
HUMAN Rights Human Wrongs Film Award, and NOK 30,000 given by Amnesty International Norway and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.
These two organizations have been close partners of the festival since the beginning, and with this award we want to highlight the filmmakers’ efforts to make human rights issues known to a larger audience.
This year’s jury for the international competition program has consisted of Anders Hammer, Laila Susanne Vars and Leiv Igor Devold.
This year’s International Competition Program offers a broad selection of human rights documentaries. We have been touched by the stories and impressed by their artistic level.
“The war is not only bombs and weapons. No. The war destroys your life, not only your home. It destroys families. It destroys everything.”
That’s the words of Rana Agha in a movie that takes us on a long journey after the original flee, where four family members are divided between three countries. In order to reunite they not only have to struggle against the traumas of the war in Syria. They also have to battle against the bureaucracies in the countries they have ended up in. The two boys are losing a vital part of their childhood. And the whole family has to fight hard to keep their hope for a new future together.
We want to praise the director Mira Jargil for making an observational and intimate documentary that brings us very close to this small family. And we want to praise the two boys and the parents for sharing their experiences with us.
Told in a raw way, the documentary Reunited is an emotional rollercoaster, and it is this year’s winner of The Human Rights Human Wrongs Film Award. We were deeply touched by the mother Rana’s unbreakable faith that it is possible to restore human dignity.
Thank you for a beautiful movie.
A movie that deserves a special mention captures a wide range of human rights by spotlighting colonial structures and social injustice. It helps us understand the overwhelming over-representation of Aboriginal youth in juvenile detentions in Australia.
Through the narrative of Dujuan, an Aboriginal child, and the director’s culturally sensitive approach, we get to know how Australia’s education system fails to incorporate indigenous people, traditional knowledge and learning, through erasing the history of the people who first were living in Australia.
This movie gives voice to both elders and youth who still live with the consequences of the inhuman policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families – The Stolen Generations. This is a heart-wrenching and important contribution to the discussions about the relationship between indigenous peoples and settlers, highly relevant also for other indigenous people in the world.
Our honorable mention goes to In my blood it runs, directed by Maya Newell.
Due to new restrictions, all art galleries must close until March 15th. This affects the two festival art exhibitions.
All art galleries must close due to the new infection control measures from the City of Oslo, and this unfortunately affects the festival’s two exhibitions HALO OF SHAME and Enhver har rett til- klimarettssaken fra innsida.
These exhibitions are postponed until March 15.
Stay tuned to the exhibitions’ own pages for further updates.
Our digital platforms open today, friday 26th!
In just three days, Monday 1 March 19.00, we officially open HUMAN 2021!
Read more about the festival opening here
HUMAN 2021 takes place on two different digital platforms:
HUMAN digital film platform for film and related conversations, and Digital salong, where we live-stream debates and conversations.
The festival opens digitally and officially on Monday 1 March 19.00, and at the same time our digital film platform also opens for streaming this year’s film program.
HOWEVER – already today, Friday 26 February at 12.00, you can go to the digital film platform, create a user, and pre-rent the films you want to see – but you can not start watching the films until Monday 1 March 19.00.
We recommend you pre-rent the films, because as in a regular cinema screening, there are a limited number of “tickets” for the films, and they can sell out in advance.
From today you can also take a look at our Digital Salong, where we stream debates and conversations throughout the week. Digital salong is free and open to everyone!
The complete festival program for HUMAN International Documentary Film Festival 2021, 1 – 7 march, is ready! Read more about the program here.
Finally we can post the whole program!
Here are what we think are the best films from the past year, of Norwegian and international films. In total, there are 44 films with everything from the hard-hitting political films to the close and warm feel-good experiences.
Together with our partners and our editorial board, we have created an exciting debate program that is suitable for a festival that can now be experienced 100% online.
There will be talks and discussions about the authoritarian turn in Poland, about the foreign journalism of the future, about climate change, about racism, a deep dive into the peace negotiations in Colombia and much, much more.
Creating a digital festival for the first time is a challenge, and very educational. Now it all starts to fall into place and we think we will be able to give you an entertaining, challenging and interesting festival experience, although we may have to keep longing for the opportunity to meet physically, in the cinema, at the debates or over a glass in the bar afterwards.
We will miss being able to meet you, hear opinions, experience how movies and conversations engage, create joy, shock or just simply make a deep impression.
We still have a small hope that we can show films in cinemas as well as online, but we have nevertheless worked hard to be able to create the best possible replacement for a physical festival. The program is as large as usual, and the quality is the same. There are a lot of exciting guests, both Norwegian and international.
Review the program, choose what you want to bring with you and be ready when ticket sales open. We’ll let you know!
This year’s program is as full as any other year, but the form will necessarily be a little different, since this year we will be a digital festival.
In the program you will find four categories; a Norwegian and an international competition program, Just Human which consists of films out of competition and Human Live which contains everything that is not film.
All films can be rented and streamed on our digital film platform, which will be published soon.
All films have a limited number of views, so it might be wise to pre-purchase access to the films.
Many of the films you rent come with introductions and conversations included with the film, this is stated in the film reviews.
Under Human Live you will find debates, conversations and seminars – which this year will take place digitally.
Most of our debates and conversations will be openly available in our Digital Salong here on humanfilm.no, and the Digital Salong with a more detailed description of how it will work comes a little closer to the start of the festival.
All Live events that have not specified a time will be available for streaming throughout the festival week.
The live events that have a specific event time will begin at the specified time in our Digital Salong, and after this time the stream will be available for the rest of the festival week.
As every year, the gallery Kunstplass Contemporary Art [Oslo] has set up a separate exhibition in collaboration with the festival, and this takes place physically!
Happy New Year! 2021 is a promising year, and we look forward to further vaccination and easing of restrictions, and of course HUMAN idff 2021, March 1-7. To kick off the new year we present two new films from our program, on ecological grief and Argentinian abortion rights.
One of the best news in 2020 was Argentina’s legalisation of the right to free abortion, as one of very few countries in a conservative region. In the quiet Argentine documentary Mother-Child, we see the consequences of prohibiting the right to free abortion: very young, vulnerable teenage mothers in a clinic who tell health professionals about their lives.
Something that unfortunately can not be celebrated as Argentina’s historical legislation, is the consequences of climate change. More and more people are experiencing a deep grief over what has, or is about to be lost in the nature around us, which has been called ecological grief. In the magnificent The Magnitude of All Things, director Jennifer Abbott dives into her own deep ecological grief, traveling the world to meet others who have suffered climate change in different ways, and the film tells us one thing: You have to act to have hope.
With these films, we welcome 2021: let’s all make this a year of action.
Argentina / 2019 / 66 min / Spanish
Dir: Andrea Testa
Prod: Pensar con las Manos
A quiet argument for the right to free abortion in Argentina.
Pregnant 13-year-olds and 15-year-old mothers of two – these are some of the girls we meet in this subdued, but hard-hitting Argentine documentary. In sober black and white, we come face to face with far too young teenage mothers at a clinic in Argentina, and get to see the consequences of prohibiting free abortion. In the conversations with health workers, a bleak picture is painted of a society that forces young vulnerable girls, who are still children themselves, to bear the burden of unwanted pregnancies alone. The film is a convincing testimony to the necessity of a new law, and on December 30, 2020, the right to free abortion was finally adopted in Argentina.
Canada / 2020/ 85 min / English, Spanish
Dir: Jennifer Abbott
Prod: Magnitude Productions, National Film Board of Canada
A magnificent journey into ecological grief.
Is there hope? That is the question director Jennifer Abbott asks herself in this deeply personal and poetic film about both her own grief over climate change, but also among people around the world. In an epic journey via Canada, Australia and Ecuador, we meet those who have fallen victim to the consequences of climate change and become involuntary activists. We meet Anote Tong, the president of the island nation of Kiribati which will disappear into the sea, Greta Thunberg, and the Extinction Rebellion, who all lead up to the central question: Is it when hope disappears that the action begins?
