The call for entries to the 2nd edition of FUTURE DOCS is now open

From now on, documentary filmmakers and human rights defenders can submit their applications to the 2017-2018 edition of FUTURE DOCS. The focus of this year’s edition of the project are Nordic and Baltic countries as well as Central Europe.

We are looking forward to documentary filmmakers’ applications from all over Europe as well as human rights defenders’ and activists’ applications from Belarus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, North-West Russia, Ukraine, and Sweden.

FUTURE DOCS is a platform for creative encounters between documentary filmmakers and human rights defenders. It stems from a conviction that even though these two groups very often strive to turn the public’s attention to pressing issues, too rarely do they have a chance to work together. As a result, many exigent human rights problems remain hardly known, while other are hugely overrepresented. With FUTURE DOCS, we intend to bring about powerful cinematic documentaries with potential for tangible social impact.

Deadline for human rights defenders and activists: August 27, 2017

Deadline for documentary filmmakers: September 15, 2017

The main events of the 2017-2018 FUTURE DOCS program include: a preparatory workshop for human rights defenders at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival “Inconvenient Films” (Vilnius, Lithuania), to be held on October 14-15, and a joint workshop for filmmakers and human rights defenders at the WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film International Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland), to be held on December 8-10.

Participation in the project is free of charge. Travel, accommodation and board is provided by the organizers.

The most promising documentary project, resulting from a cooperation between a filmmaker and a human rights defender, will receive the FUTURE DOCS Award of 5000 USD for further development.

FUTURE DOCS is based on the idea of a reversed pitching. It means that human rights defenders and activists present selected cases they have been working on to participating filmmakers. Various human rights topics and initiatives, especially those underrepresented on screen, illustrated by powerful human stories behind them, are pitched to creative documentary filmmakers.

Filmmakers intrigued with given human rights topics or stories get to work with experts on the issue, who provide insight, information, and access to people on the ground. On the other hand, human rights defenders bring to light problems they’ve been working on and, as a result, have a chance to obtain informed advocacy tools for their further endeavors.

A complete list of this year’s tutors will be published on September 1.

FUTURE DOCS is an initiative of the WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film International Film Festival. It is organized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in cooperation with the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights (International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival “Inconvenient Films”), Bergen International Film Festival, Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and Zvyano (Belarus), with the support from the Nordic Council of Ministers, the City of Warsaw, and the Polish Film Institute.

To find out more about the project and apply, please visit the FUTURE DOCS website.