The Rome Independent Film Festival presents the RIFF 2009 special event:

Documentariff 2009: Protection of the victims from violence and aparthied

Rome Independent Film Festival, according to the international cinematographic tendency of our times, in the last editions, has given more space and attention to the documentary section, now considered as a main instrument to show social, politic and human realities from all over the world.
This year most of the works underline the common tendency towards difficult issues, with large experimentation both in technique and originality in pictures and contents.

In the 2009 edition, full of international contributes, the main works all deal with the most important themes of the social world today: the environmental problems, in the wider sense possible (Joe Berlinger's “Crude”, Cristiano Barbarossa's “Live Mauritania”); globalization,  and fair-trade  (Erling Boren and Tom Heinemann's “The bitter taste of tea”); illnesses and poverty ( Gabriela  and Sally Gutierrez Dewar's “Tapologo”); the war and its consequences (Terje Carlsson's “Welcom to Hebron”,  G. Orignac and B. Daniel Laurent's “Khmers Islam”).

During the festival, the Human Rights day, according to Documentariff 2009 main theme, will give a fundamental relevance to those documentaries which are focused on support activities and protection of women and children, victims of hard situations and social weakness: poverty and exploitation, negligence, slave reduction, war and baby-soldiers. Since a few years, in fact, the Documentariff Section is trying to built a big connection to the contemporary world social situation, right to focus on the main Human Rights themes.

Aiming to this, after showing some works dealing with these themes – Hungarian  Ferenc Moldoványl and Mona's and Agnes Rossa's “Another Planet” - there will be a short meeting between the audience and some ONG members and some other Associations which are cooperating to protect needy people's lives and guarantee human rights. We will have the chance to have as our guests some Associations which will tell us about their direct experience supporting women and children, through some particular campaigns for human rights support. In particular : Save the children Association, which,with the “Riscriviamo il futuro” campaign, wants to guarantee by 2010 high instruction  levels to 8 out of 39 millions of children in the world, who live in war areas; another important association is Pangea Onlus which has been working for several years for women and children protection. We will also have Terres des hommes, Medici Senza Frontiere, Unicef, NativoOnlus, TelefonoAzzurro.

Like every year, we will show s2009 edition selected documentaries , to give the audience a chance to know documentary works which underline cultural, cinematographic and visual horizons, often proposing  important social contents. According to this principle, two documentaries, dealing with two far but still very near realities, such as India and China, will be shown (  Arvind Sinha's “King of India” and  Villi Hermann's “From somewhere to nowhere”): these two works show the social poverty but, on the other hand, the great cultural vitality of these two huge countries.
The jury will assign a prize for the best Documentary and a special mention for the best work on Human Rights.