We fill find out who the winner of this year’s festival is tonight. The 14 films that took part in the competition were judged by an international jury made up of director Karolina Bielawska; Gaetano Capizzi, the founder and director of Cinemambiente; Iveta Černá from the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival; Aleksandar Govedarica of Syndicado; and Paweł Kasprzak, chairman of the Citizens of Poland civic movement. Their decisions will be revealed this evening at the WATCH DOCS closing gala.
The festival’s closing film is Kinshasa Makambo, the latest film by Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi, who is this year’s winner of the Marek Nowicki Prize. This award is handed out by the Board of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights for outstanding achievements in showing human rights in film. Kinshasa Makambo is a tale from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, in 2015, President Joseph Kabila, despite the end of his second term in office, refused to give up power in violation of the constitution. People took to the streets. In the film, Hamadi follows three young activists: Ben, who decided to return to the country from America; Jean Marie, who has just been released from prison and is being watched by the special services; and Christian, a master of street demonstrations.
The last day of the festival will also give you a chance to see Anand Patwardhan’s monumental four-hour film Reason (Kino Luna 19:00). This extraordinarily brave documentary is a shocking chronicle of the rise of fascism in India, from the political killings of free thinkers; through the strengthening of fundamentalist, terrorist sects; to a massive party rally that brings to mind the famous Nuremberg Rally. This is saffron-colored fascism?like Hindu garments?dividing people according to religion and caste. Just a few weeks ago, the film won the top prize at one of the most important documentary film festivals in the world: IDFA in Amsterdam.
