The World is My Home
The 16th International Exile Film Festival
10 – 16 November 2023
PROGRAM
This festival edition accepts films in the following program sections:
Main Program
- Exile, a Global Experience
The festival’s main program screen films made by filmmakers in exile and other film¬makers living outside their countries. Theme is free.
Special Programs
- Woman-Life-Freedom
A film program about modern woman’s revolutionary fight for freedom, with Jina Aminis death as an ignition spark. On September 26, 2022 was Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, arrested by the mullah moral police and was beaten to death because of her veil was improper. Her fate resulted in Iranian woman’s uprising against the hierarchy and the fundamental dictatorship and patriarchate in Iran. The slogan for the movement is Woman – Life – Freedom. The scope of this slogan went across national, religious, and ideological borders. The slogan became ironical for all woman’s fight against systematical oppression, and for equality, freedom and class struggle all over the world. The film program will include a variety of visual expressions as documentary film, feature film, and animation film, including social media. The program will be supplemented by music, poetry, and debate.
- OFF: The suburb will Speak Out
This program is about people, generally refugees, especially the young ones, living in suburban areas of major cities referred as “critical” and “vulnerable” neighborhoods by mass media.
The panoramic media image of these neighborhoods is based on a series of stereotypes focusing on violence, wide-open presence of criminal organizations, rampant shootings, and drug dealing. But is it possible to project a different view than this common public view – an impartial view?
This is an attempt to create a free and open forum, so that the suburban people are given the opportunity to be heard.
- Women and War
An open film program about the position of women in war.
They are forgotten victims, and also victims of the silence of shame society.
- In Kobane, equality is born out of war
In Kobane is equality born out of war In October 2014 overtook the Jihadist group the Islamic State (IS) the Kurdish city of Kobane in the Northern part of Syria. This led to that women became organized as soldiers in the Kurdish battalion YPJ. It was these women who first took up arms, and after extensive fighting liberated the city in February 2015. Meanwhile these women were fighting against the Jihadists and defeated IS, they also challenged ancient sex roles in the area. The Kurdish city of Kobane has both become a symbol for the resistance against the Islamic State a unique revolutionist female struggles to form a popular and pluralistic free autonomy in the Middle East. A film about Kobane and its citizens, the Kurds.
- Yes, to Peace
A film program how to obtain a lasting peace!
- Words and Images, the human existential soul
A film program about how the freedom of speech is controlled by the global market, and how it transforms the human soul. In connection with the censorship of political, ideological and religious power, and the accompanied persecution, jails and death penalty, it limits people’s possibility for free expression.
- Close Up: Dream of My Palestine
A special feature program about Palestinians dreams and nightmares confused with widespread scent of green olive tree branches.
This program will be held in collaboration with the Palestine Film Institute.
Side-Programs
- Odyssey of Cinema – Freedom Odyssey
An open program for films that advocate efforts towards solidarity, human rights, democracy, justice and freedom.
- Focal Points
In this section, we have an open program for films that focus on areas of the world affected by war, conflict, occupation or civil war.
- Another View
Finally, the festival present films made by non-exiled filmmakers about immigrants and people who live in exile, in an attempt to see from another point-of-view: a look from the outside.