The eleventh edition of the FAST FORWARD Human Rights Film Festival Montenegro, organized by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE), starts tomorrow, 10 December, on International Human Rights Day, and will last until Tuesday, 14 December 2020.
The FAST FORWARD Festival opens with the film QUO VADIS, AIDA?, directed by Jasmila Zbanic, which had its world premiere in Venice, and the audience then expressed their impressions of this story about the cruelty of war and the dangers of nationalism with ten-minute applause. Through the fate of a woman who works as a translator for the UN peacekeeping force and who is trying to save her family, the director takes us back to the genocide in Srebrenica. This is followed by the short film VISIT, by the young and talented Montenegrin director Djordje Vojvodic, which was awarded at this year’s “Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival” in Izmir.
With the motto UNDER THE MASK, FAST FORWARD 2020 brings 15 powerful human rights film stories, which have already won over audiences and critics around the world.
A special segment of the Festival refers to a recent Dutch production presenting GENDERBENDE, a story about the search for gender identity through the lives of five people who do not identify as men or women, by Sophie Dros and the provocative psychological drama INSTINCT, directed by Halina Reijn.
FAST FORWARD 2020 focuses on dealing with the past and in that segment are also films WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD IS ON FIRE? by Italian director Robert Minervini, IRRADIATED by Rithy Panh from Cambodia, PROCESS SANDZAK by Aleksandar ReljiC, and THE PAINTED BIRD, directed by Vaclav Morhoul.
Part of the programme deals with LGBT rights issues in various ways, such as the films LET THERE BE COLOUR, by Bosnian director Ada Hasanovic, and XY CHELSA, signed by Tim Travers Hawkins.
One section addresses current issues of media and politics through the films FORUM directed by Marcus Vetter and BREAKING NEWS by Czech director Tomas Bojar.
Finally, the FAST FORWARD 2020 programme also includes three great films about three different women and the manners in which they face the challenges that society and life environment bring to them – Jalda, authored by Massoud Bakhshi, MARE, Croatian director Andrea Staka, and EMA, in directed by Pablo Larraiana.
In addition to the films within the FAST FORWARD Festival, an accompanying programne was designed encompassing panel discussions Human Rights under a Mask – Society’s Attitude Towards Pride and The Shadow of the 90s over the Balkans, as well as the exhibition Life in Limbo – A Book of Scars.
This year’s FAST FORWARD is held online due to the current epidemiological situation, and the films are available through the platform on ubrzaj.me, and completely free to interested citizens in Montenegro with mandatory prior registration on the site www.ubrzaj.me.
The FAST FORWARD 2020 is organized with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the German Forum ZfD, in cooperation with the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), Beldocs and the Montenegrin Cinematheque. Media sponsors are RTCG (television and portal) and Vijesti (newspaper, portal and television), and the Festival is also supported by the media portal CdM, Radio Berane and Radio Kotor.
Milena Vujović, PR of the FAST FORWARD Human Rights Film Festival Montenegro