The nineteenth edition of Pravo Ljudski Film Festival will be held from September 25 to 30, 2024 in Sarajevo at the Meeting point cinema. This year’s special edition brings many creative documentaries that examine current cultural and socio-political topics.

At the centre of this year’s festival program is the resistance and struggle for the liberation of Palestine as a collective issue. By symbolically writing Palestine into the various struggles of decolonization, the goal is to create (at least temporarily) a more complete picture of the struggle against imperialism and colonialism, and thus to open a common space in which all our partial or peripheral struggles are complemented. Maybe that’s the only way we contribute to creating the possibility of fighting together?

The goal of fighting together is not just a mere wish, but perhaps the only possibility. It certainly is in a world where genocide is normalized in the same way that all other forms of violence have been historically normalized.

“In this brutal year, the nineteenth edition of the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival unfortunately cannot and should not deal with anything other than the unification of different resistances against violence. This is the year in which we watch live on the screens the complete erasure of the Palestinian people, so every public space should and must do everything possible to signal that resistance to that violence exists. If legal mechanisms to stop violence do not exist or are insignificant, then solidarity and empathy are the only methods we have left. Our film and public program may be a small and modest space, but that’s all that we, as a cultural space, have. We will show 23 films which problematize different strategies of resistance, from collaborative work with people with autism who battle social stigmas, to resistance against the Iranian regime and the genocide in Palestine. The festival will put all its efforts into creating a space as open as possible for reflection, with much fewer guests for the reason that economically and culturally this is a time in which we need space for introspection and reflection on personal and collective values.” – stated Kumjana Novakova, festival curator.

We are opening this year’s festival with a collective performance in cooperation with the Citizens of Sarajevo in solidarity with Palestine Collective, in the Meeting Point cinema, where we will read the names of children killed in Palestine during last year.

“The act of reading the names of murdered children of Gaza is a symbolic act of support by the citizens of Sarajevo to the people in Gaza and the West Bank, and it is also our cry to stop the genocide that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people. Aware that this is really only a symbolic act and a drop of water in the ocean, we decided to publicly state that we refuse to be complicit in this capitalist and imperialist-colonial crime in which almost all the world’s ruling elites are involved, including our ruling structures. The public readings in Sarajevo were initiated by the Feminist Anti-Militaristic Collective on 13 February 2024 and soon grew into a civic initiative continuously held every Tuesday in front of the Eternal Flame.” – stated Gorana Mlinarević, one of the founders of the initiative.

After the collective performance, we will have a performative lecture on film as an archive of survival and liberation, through the case of Palestine, with Karla Crnčević, author and selector of the program dedicated to Palestine, and curator Kumjana Novakova, followed by two short films by Jocelyne Saab to open the festival.

Films Beirut, My City and Palestinian Women by director Jocelyne Saab are about historical violence and resistance. Jocelyne Saab (1948–2019) was a Lebanese journalist and film director. She is recognized as one of the pioneers of Lebanese cinema. A reporter, photographer, scriptwriter, producer, director, artist and founder of the Cultural Resistance International Film Festival of Lebanon, Saab focused on the deprived and disadvantaged – from displaced peoples to exiled fighters, cities at war and a Fourth World without a voice. Her work is grounded in historic violence, and in an awareness of the actions and images required to document, reflect on and counteract it.

The photography exhibition Images from a Project about Dina by Tamara de la Fuente will be open in anticipation of the festival, on Saturday, September 21 at 7pm in DKC Sarajevo. The exhibition will be open throughout the entire festival program, and you will be able to visit every day from September 22 from noon to 6pm.

“‘Images from a project about Dina’ are a small example of my documentary photography project that I have been working on for the past 7 years, thanks to the unconditional support of the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival. What started as an individual search for a very important woman who was a part of my life, developed into a collective project in which I explore the representation of the female figure that embodies the city, its history, and its evolution. The women of Sarajevo symbolize the resistance, scars, and secrets of the city, reflecting the shared experience of those who lived through its joys and tragedies. The photographs aim to capture their changing and enigmatic presence, which can never be fully understood or contained, and neither can Sarajevo itself.”– stated photographer Tamara de la Fuente.

We invite you all to the Meeting point cinema on September 25 at 7 pm to participate with us in everything we have prepared for you.

The full festival program is published on our website pravoljudski.org, and for more information go to our social media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X.