The United Nations Traveling Film Festival at the Arts Arena

Image: Garbage Dreams

The United Nations Association Film Festival and its Traveling Film Festival celebrate the power of films and videos dealing with human rights, the environment, globalization, war and peace. In the last 12 years, UNAFF-selected films have included 15 that received Oscar nominations and five that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. The Arts Arena has chosen five UNAFF films to be screened and discussed by distinguished panelists around the topic of FACES: Who are we? Who’s in charge? What do you do when the war ends? What do we do when the movie’s over?

The festival will begin on Saturday May 8, at 5pm with a cycled called Urban Faces. It will open with screening of Megalopolis by  Francesco Conversano, Nene Grignaffini, a stunningly filmed exploration of six of the worlds's largest cities that draws on the science fiction of the past. After an open panel discussion and drinks, a different image of the urban life will be presented with Garbage Dreams by Mai Iskander, a story of three boys born into the trash trade in the world's largest garbage village, a ghetto on the outskirts of Cairo and home to the Zaballeen, 'garbage people.'

On Sunday, May 9, at 2pm another two screenings are presented under the heading of Corporate Faces. The first one, Flow: For Love of Water by Irena Salina, is a documentary that highlights the local intimacies of an emerging global catastrophe, the precarious relationship between humanity and water, with an unflinching focus on politics corporate power and human rights. The second one, The Yes Men Fix the World by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, is a screwball true story that follows two political activists as they infiltrate the world of big business, posing as top executives of corporations whose practices they dislike and hilariously defeat the logic of greed.

Finally, the cycle Neighbor Faces will conclude the festival on Monday, May 10 at 7pm with a screening of My Neighbor, My Killer. This powerful documentary gives an insight to the functioning of the Gacaca tribunals in Rwanda, open-air hearings with citizen-judges meant to try their neighbors and rebuild the nation. As part of this experiment in reconciliation, confessed genocide killers are sent home from prison, while traumatized survivors are asked to forgive them and resume living side-by-side. Filming for close to a decade in a tiny hamlet, award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has charted the impact of Gacaca on survivors and perpetrators alike. Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to co-existence.

Vingt Paris has reserved 20 places for these screenings.

For reservations, please email news(at)vingtparis.com