The film festival

The Tri Continental Film Festival is an annual, national festival that focuses on documentary and narrative films from or about Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle-East. The overall objective of the Festival is to showcase outstanding Cinema that deals with socio/political and human rights themes pertinent to these regions.

Through partnership with various stakeholders and funding bodies, the Festival offers a rich film program to audiences across South Africa and an opportunity for them to attend seminars and discussions that engender the exchange of ideas and information. Our Festival creates the opportunity for exchange between International and local filmmakers regarding issues development in the context of both society and filmmaking. The Festival also brings cinema to communities that have limited access to it through national partnership with universities and community organizations and through outreach screenings.

The Tri Continental Film Festival is the only festival primarily dedicated to issues of Social, Political and Human Rights on the African continent - our program therefore attracts film submissions from seasoned and emerging film talents from across the globe and a loyal, interested local and international audience.

The broader objective of the Festival is to contribute to the building of a mass local audience for films that matter and to remain a credible platform for local and international stories from regions that are frequently marginalized in mainstream media and cinema.

History

The festival originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2002 started by the Movement de Documentalistas. In 2003, for the first time, the festival was brought to South Africa by a group of partnership organizations including: Uhuru Productions, Lawyers for Human Rights and SACOD. The 2009 Tri Continental Film Festival was the 7th year of the festival’s existence.

In April 2004, in Prague, Tri Continental Film Fest took part in the launch of the Human Rights Film Network (HRFN), a federation of film festivals that screen socio-political films, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Nights (Italy) and One World (Czech Republic).

To date, Tri Continental Film Festival remains the only Africa-based film festival affiliated to this network. A large number of films screened during the festival came to Tri Continental Film Festival through calls for entry made on the festival website.