5th Human Rights Human Dignity Film Festival kicks off on June 14

The film festival that once gave away tattoos spelling out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is coming back for its fifth run in 2017. This year’s Human Rights Human Dignity Film Festival will be held from June 14 to June 19 at Yangon’s Waziya Cinema and Junction City.

The festival will showcase 50 films from around the world, 35 of which are Myanmar films. Nineteen of these 35 are documentaries.

The festival will open with a screening of the film “Burma Storybook” – a documentary “looking at the poetic imaginings of political prisoner and poet Maung Aung Pwint.”




During its brief existence, the festival has left its mark on Myanmar – a country that has long been infamous for its government’s disregard for human rights. In 2015, President U Htin Kyaw attended the festival and watched a student-made film about a land confiscation that resulted in the arrest of 19 farmers. The festival’s organizer told Mizzima last year that the president was so moved by the film that he awarded a scholarship to the student and granted amnesty to the famers.

However, there have been limits to the festival’s impact. Last year, the film “Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess”, directed by Austrian filmmaker Sabine Derflinger, was removed from the schedule after being rejected by Myanmar’s censorship board.

Read: How to watch the now-controversial ‘Twilight over Burma’ film

The film tells the true story of an Austrian woman who married a politically active Shan prince who disappeared in captivity following the 1962 coup. A Ministry of Information official said it could not be screened because it could “affect unity among national races.”

The Human Rights Human Dignity Film Festival, first held in 2013, is organized by the Human Dignity Film Institute. The institute, which also trains Myanmar filmmakers, was founded in 2012 by poet and filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, who drew inspiration from the One World Human Rights Film Festival in the Czech Republic. Since then, tens of thousands of people have come to watch films about human rights at the Yangon festival.

A list of Myanmar films slated to appear this year can be seen here, and more information about the schedule will be posted on festival’s Facebook page.

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