17th WATCH DOCS soon to arrive

The 17th International Film Festival WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film will start on Thursday 7 December at the Muranów Cinema.

The programme of 17th IFF includes more than sixty films from all continents, selected from amongst roughly 1500 titles reviewed by the Selection Committee.

This years’ WATCH DOCS prize competition selection includes 14 new, outstanding documentaries that touch upon a wide spectrum of key aspects of human rights. This selection includes “Risk”, the latest film of Oscar-winning filmmaker Laury Poirtas (“Citizenfour”), which is a controversial and highly emotional portrayal of Wikileaks chief Julian Assange, or the provocative “The White World According to Daliborek” directed by Vít Klusák, who follows the life of a Czech neo-Nazi. Audience will also be able to enjoy “12 Days”, a new work from the French master of documentary and photography Raymond Depardon, which presents court hearings on a compulsory committal to a psychiatric hospital, and Jian Fan’s “Still Tomorrow”, a multi-layered documentary about the Chinese superstar poet Xiuhua Yu, a woman afflicted with cerebral palsy who ferociously strives for independence in life.

The programme of the 17th WATCH DOCS also includes two thematic reviews devoted to current problems that are lively discussed in Poland.

Thanks to the support of the Polish Bar Association, this year’s WATCH DOCS hosts a documentary edition of the review “Starring: the Attorney”. The screenings of the review’s documentaries will be accompanied by an international panel discussion about lawyers witnessing a collapse of a state ruled by law.

The other thematic retrospective of this year’s WATCH DOCS, “Body under Control”, will present films depicting issues associated with the social control over the human body and health seen from the perspective of human rights and bioethics. Apart from documentaries addressing the controversial problems of abortion and euthanasia, the festival audience will be given an opportunity to watch “Bending the Arch” by Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, a film about the activist doctors who founded Partners for Health, a non-governmental organisation working to reform health care systems in the poorest countries on Earth.

This programme of the 17th WATCH DOCS festival also includes four permanent repertoire sections: “I want to see” – a review of the most interesting documentaries of the season that narrate the events, figures and themes attracting the attention of human rights defenders; “Discreet Charm of Propaganda” – a panorama of documentaries focusing on different forms of indoctrination; “New Polish Films” – a collection of the most interesting Polish social documentaries; and “Watch Shorts” – a section presenting short documentaries, but open for experimental works and animated films.