Bella Ciao
Did the Italian partisans really sing “Bella ciao” during their struggle against fascism? The focus here is on the magic of a song that has captured the imagination of the world, with archive footage, interviews and music.
More info
Frontlight
This year's Frontlight section consists of 23 films, showcasing a leading cohort of truth-seeking filmmakers who don’t compromise on stylistic integrity. Together, they reflect on some shocking global developments in the media industry, the economic systems that preside over lives around the world and urgent political events currently unfolding around us. Explore the titles below.
Selected for Frontlight
Selected for Frontlight
Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence
A richly documented, vivid panorama of the bizarre history of the Sinixt, an indigenous Canadian people legally declared extinct in 1956. Sinixt activist Marilyn James and others have been fighting this injustice for decades.
More info
Blue Files
More than 4,000 citizens were tortured in the context of the Basque Conflict in Spain between 1960 and 2014. One of them was the filmmaker’s father. He and experts discuss the past, what torture is and how it affects the victims.
More info
Dorpie
A sensitive character study of Lana, a woman who is showing herself to be a grassroots leader in a South African town where femicide is commonplace. Will she manage to get the government on board before there’s another victim?
More info
The Etilaat Roz
As Kabul is recaptured by the Taliban, the passionate journalists of the Etilaat Roz daily newspaper grow increasingly concerned. Hopelessness and fear gradually take over in this penetrating film.
More info
Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc
The former French colonies in Central and West Africa have been independent since 1960, but many of these countries still use the currency of the former oppressor: the CFA franc. A new generation wants to complete the process of decolonization.
More info
Free Money
The fast-growing nonprofit organization GiveDirectly distributes a universal basic income to poor villages. Its implementation in Kogutu, Kenya, reveals the gap between ideology and reality.
More info
Heroic Bodies
The story of the development of women’s rights in Sudan is told through unique archive material and interviews with activists. We see and hear how women have been oppressed, ignored and abused for centuries, and what has changed.
More info
A History of the World According to Getty Images
A thought-provoking examination of the term “public domain” and deconstruction of the practice that allows historical footage to be placed behind the paywalls of companies such as Getty Images after their copyrights have expired.
More info
Kenya
Raw and frank portrait of Kenya, a trans woman who lives in Mexico City. She witnessed her friend, a fellow transgender sex worker, being murdered by a client. In her long battle for justice, she can’t avoid having to face her own fears.
More info
The Last Dolphin King
The story of the rise and fall of the controversial Spanish dolphin trainer Jose Luis Barbero. A blurry 99-second video showing him allegedly mistreating animals goes viral, opening the door to a world of deeply questionable practices.
More info
The Lost Souls of Syria
A calmly composed, probing account of attempts in various European countries to chart the crimes of the Syrian regime and bring the perpetrators to justice, based on thousands of smuggled photos of tortured and murdered victims.
More info
Merkel
Thanks to her unique palette of knowledge and experience, Angela Merkel served as the forceful and influential chancellor of Germany for 16 years. Merkel looks back on her childhood and career with vivid archive footage and a range of interviews.
More info
Mothers
Four Amsterdam mothers explain how their sons got in trouble with the law and were subjected to a stigmatizing crime prevention program. Despite their powerlessness and frustration, they keep fighting for their children.
More info
My Name Is Happy
An urgent portrait of Mutlu Kaya, a rising star in Turkey who survived an attack in 2015. After her sister is subsequently murdered, Kaya decides to fight against femicide and the normalization of violence against women.
More info
The Night My Brother Disappeared
The personal quest of human rights activist Adal Neguse shows how a collective human tragedy impacts on individual lives. Survivors of a refugee boat that sank off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013 tell their story.
More info
R 21 aka Restoring Solidarity
Militant films made between 1960 and 1980 presented the Palestinian struggle as a shining example to Japanese people opposed to US hegemony. An epilogue questions the boundary between sympathy, propaganda and identification.
More info
Racist Trees
Can a tree be racist? Residents of Crossley Tract, a historically Black neighborhood in Palm Springs, wrestled with this curious question for decades, culminating in heated discussions on national TV. The dispute is peeled away like the layers of an onion.
More info
Regard Silence
A group of deaf people demonstrate just how powerful sign language can be as a means of expression. Following a poetry workshop, they perform poems in a unique way, showing that imagination knows no boundaries.
More info
Suddenly TV
Using a cardboard replica of a camera and a plastic bottle “microphone,” young revolutionaries interview demonstrators at the 2019 mass protests against Sudan's military regime. A creative and hopeful take on a bleak situation.
More info
A Symphony for a Common Man
A shocking documentary about the sabotage of a potential agreement on weapons of mass destruction between the US and Iraq in 2002. Diplomat José Bustani and others look back, condemning the US abuse of power.
More info
Trained to See – Three Women and the War
An inspiring portrait of Margaret Bourke-White, Martha Gellhorn and Lee Miller, three pioneering journalists who made history as the first female correspondents to report on the Second World War.
More info
While We Watched
Does independent journalism still have a future? In India, the serious news channel NDTV, with Ravish Kumar at its centre, is forced to navigate a world that’s falling prey to increasing disinformation and polarization.
More info
White Balls on Walls
Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art wants to become more diverse and inclusive. But how to go about that? An honest look behind the scenes into the sometimes-fraught process taking place in many public institutions.
More info