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The festival, organized by the Foundation for Justice, will be held from May 29 to June 7 and will once again bring screenings to the neighborhoods (La Torre, Nazaret, and Orriols).
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This year's honorary award recipient, reporter and documentary filmmaker Hernán Zin, will attend the festival in person and offer a panel discussion accompanied by journalist Rosa María Calaf.
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The Humans Fest program will once again include screenings with special subtitles and/or audio description to promote more inclusive cinema.
The Valencia International Film and Human Rights Festival, Humans Fest, organized by Fundación por la Justicia since 2009, has presented the official programming for its XVI editionThis year, the Official Feature Film Section, which includes Humans Fic (fiction) and Humans Doc (documentary), will feature 10 feature film premieres: two international premieres, seven from Spain, and one screening for the first time in Valencia.
"This year we have made an effort in programming so that all the feature films in competition are premieres and we are very happy," she acknowledged. Pilar Almenar, director of Humans Fest, at the event that was held this morning at MUVIMAS, the MuVIM cafeteria.
José María Tomás y Tío, president of the Foundation for Justice, and Patricia Bolinches, the designer in charge of the official poster, also participated in this presentation. “We want to highlight that war is not an acceptable method for resolving any conflict. For 16 years, we have believed that a film festival is the best tool for presence and awareness in the environment in which we operate,” stated José María Tomás y Tío.
For her part, Patricia Bolinches explained that with the poster she designed for this year's edition, she sought to "create a bit of visual poetry with a topic as complex as war and peace. The color green was essential to represent the earth and the hope we so desperately need."
2025 HONORARY AWARD FOR HERNÁN ZIN
The Humans Fest team has decided to recognize Hernán Zin's professional career this year, and he will receive the honorary award in person. Peace and Justice at the opening ceremony to be held on May 29.
Hernán Zin (Buenos Aires, 1971) is a war reporter, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He has worked in more than 80 countries and has focused his work on social issues. The author of seven books and more than 40 documentaries, his films include Villas Miseria (2009), The war against women (2013), I want to be Messi (2013), Born in Gaza (2014), 10 years old baby cone (2016), Born in Syria (2017) or Dying to Tell (2018). He has been nominated for the Emmy, Latin Grammy, and Goya Awards. He has won first prize at the Montreal Film Festival, a Platino Award, two Forqué Awards, and two Iris Awards.
A CYCLE AT THE IVC FILM LIBRARY WITH HERNÁN ZIN AND ROSA MARÍA CALAF
The award to Hernán Zin will serve as the backbone of the cycle that Humans Fest will develop at the IVC Film Library under the title “Armed conflicts and culture of peace”, which is the festival's theme in 2025. "Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is built. At Humans Fest, we like to say that we don't have the solution to the questions, that we don't know how to end all the armed conflicts on the planet, but what we can contribute are more points of reflection and, above all, generate spaces to find collective responses, which are the most effective," stated Pilar Almenar.
This series will include seven screenings in total. It will kick off with Zin himself and his documentary. Dying to Tell (2018). This session, which will take place on Friday, May 30 at 6:00 p.m., will feature a post-screening discussion, also featuring journalist Rosa María Calaf, a special guest at the festival.
The cycle will continue on Saturday, May 31 with Edge of night (2024), a screening in collaboration with the Valladolid International Film Week (Seminci), this year's guest festival at Humans Fest. Therefore, this session will be presented by José Luis Cienfuegos, director of Seminci, and José Antonio Hurtado, head of programming at the Valencian Film Library.
That same day, next (at 8 pm), it will be the turn of Eyes of Gaza (2025), whose director (Mahmoud Atassi) and producer (Abdulrahman Alkilany) will also participate in a subsequent panel discussion to explain the experiences of journalists who risk their lives to report from Palestine. The closing session will focus on the war in Ukraine with the documentary Intercepted (2024), an approximation based on phone calls from soldiers to their families that can be seen at 10 p.m.
For his part, Hernán Zin's work will return on Sunday, June 1, at 8 p.m., with the screening of The war against women (2013), a documentary that denounces the use of rape as a weapon of war in various conflicts around the world. The series will conclude on Wednesday, June 4, at 8:00 p.m., with For you Portugal, I swear! (2024), which tells the story of West African soldiers fighting for Portugal against independence movements in its colonies.
The series will also include two sessions within the Menuda Filmo program, aimed at children. They will be held on Saturday the 31st and Sunday the 1st, at 6 p.m. both days, when you can enjoy Flow (2024), the animated film that received both the Oscar and the Golden Globe this year
THE OFFICIAL SECTION OF 2025 IN DETAIL
Humans Fest will bring productions from countries on four continents, including Spain, Argentina, Germany, the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Chile, and the United States. best fiction feature film (Humans Fic) five films will compete: four premieres in Spain (Year of the Widow, Thanks for banking with us!, For your good y No dogs allowed) and a world premiere (This is my night). All of them will be screened at Cines Babel.
For their part, five other proposals will aspire to best documentary feature film: three premieres in Spain (My sweet land, Public bodies y I'm here), a premiere in Valencia (Day laborers: the bad boss) and a world premiere (The Promised House). These will also be shown at Cines Babel.
In the short film competition section, which will be held at the SGAE Cultural Centre from Monday 2 to Thursday 5 June, will feature 20 works: seven fiction, eight documentaries and five Valencian (specific category Curt i Barrejat). These will compete for the awards for best documentary short, best fiction short, best Valencian short film, and best Valencian short film script, awarded by the Valencian Audiovisual Writers Association (EDAV).
The accessibility for all audiences will once again be a priority for Humans Fest, which for its 16th edition has renewed its collaboration with the ONCE Foundation to offer audio description services and with FESORD for sign language interpretation at some screenings, as well as with the Association of Cochlear Implant Patients of the Valencian Community (CERMI). In addition, the festival will once again have a Filmin channel, which will be available from June 2 to 15, when two feature films and ten short films in competition this year can be enjoyed on the platform.
PARALLEL PROGRAMMING: DEBATES AND VERMOUTHS
Humans Fest will also feature a parallel program as in previous editions. On the one hand, it will celebrate the Debates Humans At the Rector Peset Residence Hall: two talks, including screenings, featuring experts who will address various aspects of human rights.
The first of these will be on Tuesday, June 3, at 6:00 p.m., under the title Resistance and acceptance: defending rights in hostile environments. This is where the short films that emerged from the participatory documentary workshop taught by La Cosecha Comunicación as part of the Humans Fest will be presented. The second, Women on the front lines of peace, will be on Thursday, June 5, at 6 p.m.
Furthermore, the festival has organized a workshop focused on audiovisual professionals: Keys and resources for a more inclusive cinemaThis activity, organized in collaboration with CERMI, requires prior registration and will feature filmmaker Miguel Ángel Font as a speaker, who will share tools, examples, and strategies for creating more accessible and inclusive audiovisual works from the ground up.
Likewise, in this XVI edition the so-called Vermouths Humans At MuVIMAS (the MuVIM cafeteria): two meetings with activists will take place on Saturday mornings, May 31 and June 7, to talk about hate speech and the tools to combat it (I love you too: against hate and lies, pro-narratives) and on peaceful responses in the current context of increasing military spending and arms trade (So I pay! Money for war, money for peace.).
Coinciding with the first vermouth, on Saturday morning, May 31st, the gymkhana "Shared Path: Discovering Stories of Migration and Diversity" will be held in the MuVIM plaza. This activity, in collaboration with the NGO AESCO, offers an immersive experience of the difficulties and decisions migrants face, developing empathy, understanding the realities of migration, and generating group reflection.
“FRESH CINEMA” IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS OF LA TORRE, NAZARET AND ORRIOLS
Finally, the festival will maintain its commitment to taking cinema to the streets with its "Outdoor cinema" screenings, so that citizens have free access to the festival's contents close to home. This year, the screenings will take place in three locations: the Plaza Parroquia Nuestra Señora de Gracia, in The Tower, on Saturday, May 31st; the courtyard of the Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados School, in Nazareth, on Thursday, June 5; and the Ermita Garden Plaza, in Orriols, on Friday, June 6. All of them starting at 9:30 p.m.
Regarding the screening in La Torre, Pilar Almenar clarified that at Humans Fest, "we cannot and do not want to ignore our immediate surroundings," and thus, in this way, the festival aims to support the areas affected by the DANA. "This is an activity in which everyone from the mayor's office of the La Torre-Faitanar district to the parish, the residents' association, and the neighborhood fallas have been actively involved. We are very happy that they liked our proposal," concluded the director of Humans Fest.
Humans Fest is part of the international Human Rights Film Network, along with 52 other film and human rights festivals from around the world. Its 15th edition, the last to be held, was thanks to the collaboration of the Vice-Presidency and Department of Social Services, Equality and Housing of the Generalitat Valenciana; the Valencian Institute of Culture; the Valencian City Council; the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA); the Valencian Provincial Council; Caixa Popular and Teika. For its part, the Valencian regional radio and television channel, À Punt, is the official channel of the festival.