XIII HUMAN RIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL OF NAPLES
CALL FOR COMPETITION 2021

Art. 1 – Introduction

The Thirteenth Edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival entitled “Persecuted” will take place from November 10-12, 2021 in the city of Naples as both an online and in-person event.

For the second consecutive year, the Festival will be subject to the strict security measures and limitations imposed by the Covid 19 pandemic. Festival organizers apologize in advance to authors and guests for any inconvenience relating to the organization and screening of films, as a consequence of this exceptional situation.

This edition is dedicated to all those who are persecuted in the name of a legality which does not always mean “justice” in their countries of origin or in those territories occupied by others. It includes lives devastated in the name of an unsustainable development model which is destroying the natural resources of our planet and mortgaging the salvation of future generations on their way to or arriving in foreign lands imagined as hospitable, but which actually impose increasingly insurmountable barriers.

Even in Western countries whose democratic tradition appears to be solid, civil disobedience and even the mere manifestation of dissent, are often penalized by very questionable applications of the law. In Latin America – the “subcontinent” from which this Festival of ours derives – the practice of “Lawfare” is being increasingly and more dangerously used to silence political opposition in the name of a distorted and tendentious use of laws and courtroom justice.

The XIII Naples Human Rights Cinema Festival 2021 is dedicated to exposing this phenomenon of a relentless, barely recognizable form of justice, and to all human beings persecuted by systems of power that impoverish and discriminate against people for ethnic, religious and cultural reasons, or on the basis of gender etc.

As always, the competition is open to all films that deal with any topic related to human rights. We are particularly interested in films that deal specifically with persecuted people in order to highlight lesser-known situations which encourage us to take action in the name of social justice, equality and solidarity; to offer support to these people and defend their right of expression, movement and life.

Led by the cultural association, “Cinema e Diritti”, which founded and coordinates the Festival and its promotion, the event is organized by an executive board made up of experts and members of associations which  have  supported  the  event  since  its  foundation  in  2008.

Art. 2 – Objectives and Competition Sections

This call for competition participants is aimed at authors of audiovisual works who wish to compete for the prizes, and receive special mentions in the various competition categories.

A commission appointed by the Festival Board will make the official selection of participants, choosing the works that will be screened and submitted to the juries who will in turn select the winners in each category and the assignment of special mentions.

The selected films – documentary, fiction and animation – should depict aspects of current reality, with a particular focus on the social, cultural, economic and environmental issues related to globalization. As well, there should be an emphasis on the crisis of traditional development models affecting the world community, with possible solutions, good practices and forms of resistance to civil degradation that communities, associations and citizens experience daily.

We particularly welcome exposés of real cases of condemnation and human resistance, either   single   or   collective, which oppose threats, abuse, violence, dictatorships and aggression against people belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities or social groups at risk.

The XIII Human Rights Cinema Festival of Naples is divided into five sections:

A) HUMAN RIGHTS DOC: open to works lasting more than 52 minutes

B) HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT: open to short films of less than or equal to 52 minutes

C) HUMAN RIGHTS YOUTH: open to works created by authors under 25 years of age or addressed to an audience of children and/or young people up to 25 years of age, lasting no more than 25 minutes.

D) “PERSECUTED”, FICC PRIZE: awarded by the Federazione Italiana Circoli di Cinema to the best film dealing with the persecution of an individual and/or population.

E) “SAAMIYA YUSUF OMAR”, LESS onlus PRIZE: open to works interpreting the deepest sense of migration. This section is dedicated to all women, young people and many men who have risked their lives to continue to have dreams and desires, to all those who have paid the cost of human trafficking with their lives, to all those who arrival in Europe they had to imagine a new life and build a new dream, to all those who made it, and to those who helped them, never forgetting what it means to remain human

Art. 3 – Registration

Registration   for   the   call   involves   explicit   acceptance   of   these   regulations   and   takes   place EXCLUSIVELY through the FILMFREEWAY.COM platform. Registrations by mail or other means of delivery will not be accepted. The registration of each film requires the payment of a symbolic fee of 10 (TEN) USD. When registering  a  film,  the  following  files  must  be  uploaded  to  the FILMFREEWAY platform:

a) the full movie with subtitles in Italian or English

b) trailer of the work (lasting maximum 1 minute)

c) complete technical data sheet and synopsis with  directors’  notes  and  appropriate  information documentation

d) curriculum vitae and filmography of the author

e) a photo of the author and two photos of the work, in jpg or png format with high resolution and further a copy of the poster of the film;

f) Secure postal, e-mail and  telephone  contacts of  the  author  and/or  the  person responsible for the application.

Following items must be sent by email to competition@cinenapolidiritti.it  with explicit reference to the progressive registration number provided at the time of entry of the work on the FILMFREEWAY platform.

1)  declaration/release form, downloaded from the website, www.cinenapolidiritti.it,  and  duly signed and finally sent in pdf format;

2)   Acceptance of regulations included in the competition   announcement   signed   by   the   author   and/or   the   person responsible for the application

By signing the declaration/release (see 1) from the Festival, available on the website cinenapolidiritti.it, and sending it in pdf or jpeg format, authors and/or producers assume full responsibility for the content of their works and declare they have completed all formalities relating to the property rights of the work, and have fulfilled copyright obligations towards third  parties.

All documentation must be produced in Italian or English.

(For info e-mail: competition@cinenapolidiritti.it)

Art. 4 – Terms, conditions of the competition and selection phase

Works duly  delivered  BY  AND  NOT  LATER  THAN  AUGUST 10,  2021,  produced not earlier than   November 1, 2019, which deal with aspects related to the topics indicated in the framework of art. 2 “Objectives  and  sections  of  the  competition”,  will  be  admitted  for  selection  to  the  five sections of the competition.

The documentaries  and  short  films  will  be  viewed  and  selected  by  a  commission  composed  of experts indicated by the Festival Board. The selected works of the XIII Naples Human Rights Film Festival will be programmed and projected online, with appropriate advertising and promotion previously communicated to the authors.

Each author may submit a number of works but subsequently may participate with only one work selected for each section of the competition, at the discretion of the Selection Commission.

Works produced or sponsored by commercial companies which contain advertising material are not eligible for participation.

The results of the selection will be communicated by e-mail to the candidates and published on the website cinenapolidiritti.it by October 5, 2021. If no work fulfills the minimum   requirements for admission, the organization reserves the right to cancel the competition section(s) from the Festival program.

The  authors  of  the  selected  works  will  be  contacted  in  time  to  send  the  film  in  the  necessary format for the screening.

The authors of the selected works must provide (if not already present) Italian subtitles for the films by November 1, 2021, under penalty of exclusion from the competition.

The  Executive  Board  of  the  Naples Human  Rights  Film  Festival   undertakes,  upon  obtaining permission  free  of  charge  from  the  authors,  to  disseminate  the  selected  works  in  specialized cinema circuits for the promotion of Human Rights.

Art. 5 – Competition results and prizes

Works admitted to the official selection of the XIII edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival will be evaluated by a jury of experts composed of a maximum of 5 members chosen among directors, journalists, cinema experts and personalities from the world of culture and Human Rights. The selection of  the  jury  members  will  be  made  public  through  various communication channels (press, internet media, radio …).

The Jury will award a prize of 1000 euros to the winners of competition sections HUMAN RIGHTS DOC and HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT.

The Youth Jury, made up of children aged 13 to 18 and their educators, will award the winning film of the HUMAN RIGHTS YOUTH section with a prize of 500 euros.

For the section “PERSECUTED” a jury made up of representatives of FIIC will award a prize of 500  euros.

For the section “SAAMIYA YUSUF OMAR” a jury of experts from the Association LESS Onlus, Naples  will award a prize of 500 euros  to the film deemed most deserving for its interpretation of the deepest sense of migration. 

The Internal Selection Committee will assign a Special Mention named in memory of Vittorio Arrigoni and Juliano Mer Khamis to the work that, with courage, passion and independence, brings  to  light  marginal  situations  and  marginal  stories  depicting  unusual experiences in the struggle  for modern civil activism, through the use of  experimental forms of  communication and language.

In collaboration with the Festival partners (universities, schools, associations, organizations, etc.), a jury  will  be  formed  with  the  task of  assigning a  Special  Mention  (“Platea Diffusa“) to  a  work among those in competition in the Human Rights Doc and Human Rights Short sections.

The  winning  films  in  the  sections  “Human  Rights  Doc” and  “Human  Rights  Short”  will also  be  given the opportunity to participate in one of the Festivals linked to the Naples Human Rights Film Festival in order to contribute to the diffusion of the works in some of the most notable contexts  of Human Rights Cinema.

The winning films and films which receive a Special Mention Arrigoni Mer-Khamis will be offered promotion within the framework of the Human Rights Film Network and the Network of the Suspended Coffee Festival after presentation by the authors of suitable copies with subtitles in English or Italian, as well as in the cinema and activism circuits of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival.

Art. 6 – Screenings outside the competition

The commission of experts will identify works to be  screened outside the competition in particular  contexts such as prisons, schools, universities and other cultural aggregation centers during the XIII edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival,  in the context  of special events aimed at training the public and to promote and disseminate the cinematographic and audiovisual culture on human rights.

Art. 7 – Clauses

The authors and producers implicitly authorize, upon registration, the use and dissemination of 90 seconds of their work for Festival promotion.

Admission  to  the  Festival  implies  the transfer,  without  a  counterpart,  of  the  reproduction  rights  of  photography  or  extracts  from  the film for a maximum duration of 3 minutes, intended for the promotion of the Festival through the media, television and the Web.

By registering for the Human Rights Cinema Festival in Naples, every author, producer or distributor will

  • be responsible  for  the  content  of  the  submitted  works
  • declare that they have fulfilled all copyright responsibilities to third parties, and
  • grant explicit authorization to use them.

The  subscriber  is  responsible  for  the  truthfulness  of  the  data  contained  which,  in  the  event  of selection,  will  be  used  in  the  Festival’s  promotional  and  communication  materials  (catalogue, website, press releases, etc.)

These regulations have been signed and uploaded along with the required attachments, on the

FILMFREEWAY.COM platform.

In case of disputes, the Court of Naples will have jurisdiction.

Personal data  will  be  processed  according  to  the  provisions  of  law  12/31/1996  No. 675 including subsequent amendments and additions.