DOCUMENT HUMAN RIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL RELAUNCH 18 OCTOBER 2025
After a break of some years, Document Human Rights Film Festival returns with films on issues that matter from around the world.
The relaunch kicks off on Saturday 18 October, 2025, in a new Southside venue, the Back Bit @Park Lane, with a fundraiser for MAP featuring two films on Palestine:
4pm
1948 CREATION AND CATASTROPHE (1 hour, 25mins; 2017)
A historical recap of the conflict through the eyes of those who lived through it.
Document presents an online screening, masterclass and conversation series exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland.
In collaboration withScottish Refugee Council, the series offers a platform for discussion and awareness-raising around issues relating to asylum, detention, healthcare, housing and welfare – as well as aspects of the complex relationship between the refugee experience and the moving image. Check out the full programme here.
The series features:
The free-to-access screening of Revenir(2018) and a livestream masterclass with filmmakers David Fedele and Kumut Imesh.
Live discussions with local activists, academics and artists including Pinar Aksu, Ako Zada, and author and journalist, Daniel Trilling (Lights in the Distance, Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe, 2018).
A film and resource playlist built around Scottish activist filmmaking, including work made by:
Revenir (2018) was the winner of the international Jury Prize at Document 2018 and has screened widely at festivals and events around the world, including at the European Parliament.
The masterclass will be moderated by Noe Mendelle, Director of Scottish Documentary Institute, andwill look at the unique and controversial collaboration that forms the basis of the film, as well as broader questions about agency, ethics, and representing the migrant experience on film.
Synopsis:
Part road-trip, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Revenir follows Kumut Imesh, a refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in France, as he returns to the African continent and attempts to retrace the same journey that he himself took when forced to flee civil war in his country … But this time with a camera in his hand.
Traveling alone, Kumut will be documenting his own journey; both as the main protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it, revealing the human struggle for freedom and dignity on one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world.
A controversial film experiment, a courageous journey and a unique collaboration between filmmaker and refugee; which is not without consequences.’
Following an ambitious 17th edition that showed the Oscar-nominated Honeyland alongside short and feature documentaries from Latin America and local activism, Document returns to the screening room this winter-spring season as a partner to other amazing Scottish film festivals.
Join us for the co-screening with Femspectives of Moments of Resistance on Saturday, 22 February, from 6pm at Civic House. This film is part of the strand ‘Collective Memory: Trauma and Nation’, a collection of stories that explore the power of memory and the role it plays in resistance. We are excited to co-present this documentary directed by Jo Schmeiser that reflects on the connections between historical resistance and the current political landscape. Amplifying the voices of politically engaged womxn the film fosters hope for solidarity and inclusion. We are delighted to facilitate the Q&A with the filmmaker who will attend the festival.
Delve into the Femspectives programme and get your tickets here.
IberoDocs returns to Edinburgh in February and to Glasgow in March with an excellent selection of documentaries from the Iberian Peninsula and Latin American countries as well as with two brand new strands: ‘Beyond Docs’ and ‘Diving into the Archives’. We are delighted to co-present Lisbon Beat by Rita Maia, following Document 2019’s screening and club night. Join us for the film screening and Q&A on Wednesday, 26 February from 8.30pm at Filmhouse in Edinburgh and on Sunday, 15 March, from 1pm at CCA in Glasgow.
IberoDocs have also programmed Sousana de Sousa Dias excellent film Fordlandia Malaise, a documentary about the memory of and the current situation in Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. Paired with Voices on the Road that gives voice to the unheard Manu communities in the Peruvian Amazon, we are delighted to collaborate on this event, which will raise many important issues on indigenous struggles and the environment. Join us for the screening and discussion with the Voices on the Road filmmakers – Bethan John and Eilidh Munro – on Saturday, 29 February, from 8.15pm at Filmhouse in Edinburgh.
Document are proud to team with Take One Action to present the UK premiere of Ariadne Asimakopoulos and Maartje Wegdam’s No Place For A Rebel (2017) at Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2017. Sixteen years after rebels abducted him as a child, Opono Opondo returns home to Uganda as a veteran soldier. Now he has to re-adapt to civil society at large, and also to his family and community. No Place For A Rebel is the quietly moving portrait of a man with scars that are still healing.
This Saturday, we team with our good friends Africa In Motion Film Festival for a special screening of Action Kommandant (Nadine Angel Cloete, 2016). Action Kommandant is the untold story of the South-African anti-apartheid freedom fighter, Ashley Kriel. Known as the ‘Che Guevara’ of Cape Town’s notorious Cape Flats, Kriel became an icon of the 1980s youth resistance before being murdered by apartheid police at the age of twenty. Through a mix of animated sequences, previously unreleased archival footage, and intimate testimony from family, comrades, and his closest friends, this captivating biopic offers a necessary confrontation with South Africa’s fraught past that finds particular relevance today as a new generation of young activists – both in South Africa and beyond – demand historical redress.
This screening is part of AiM’s newly inaugurated documentary competition, sponsored by Scottish Documentary Institute, which aims to encourage and support young and talented African filmmakers. The winner is selected by their jury of acclaimed film practitioners and academics and will be announced after the screenings on the second day. The audience will also have the opportunity to vote for their favourite film with the Audience Award winner announced on AiM’s website at the end of the festival.
Action Kommandant | 05/11 | 8pm | CCA Glasgow | Tickets here, or by phone: 0141 352 4900.
