XV HUMAN RIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL OF NAPLES
CALL FOR PROPOSALS 2023

Art. 1 – Premise

The Fifteenth Edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival entitled “DirittiMinori – Children at War” will take place in November 2023 in the City of Naples.

The Festival, as always, is organized by its Executive Board made of experts and members of associations that have been supporting the event since its foundation in 2008, especially the Cultural Association “Cinema and Rights,” which founded the Festival and is responsible for coordination and promotion.

Art. 2 – Objectives and sections of the competition

This call for entries is addressed to creators of audiovisual works who want to compete for the prizes and mentions assigned to the categories in the Competition.

A commission appointed by the Festival Executive will carry out the first selection, choosing the works to be screened and submitted to the Juries, who will then establish the winners and special mentions for each category.

Eligible works, – documentary, fiction and animation, -will describe aspects of current reality, looking at the social/cultural/economic/environmental issues that globalization and the crisis of traditional development models have inevitably brought to the attention of the world community, and also possible solutions, good practices and forms of resistance to civil degradation that communities, associations and citizens experience daily.

Works that recount real cases of denunciation or human resistance, individual or collective, which oppose threats, abuse, violence, dictatorships and aggression against people belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities or weak social groups, are particularly welcome.

The XV Naples Human Rights Film Festival Competition is divided into 4 sections:

A) HUMAN RIGHTS DOC, open to works lasting longer than 52 minutes

B) HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT, open to short films of 52 minutes or less in length

C) HUMAN RIGHTS YOUTH, open to works of authors under 25 years of age or addressed to an audience of children and/or young people of up to 25 years of age, lasting no longer than 30 minutes.

D) SWISS AMBASSADOR’S AWARD FOR PEACE, open to works about events and issues related broadly to the theme of peace and its implications.

Art. 3 – Registration for the Competition

Entry in the competition entails explicit acceptance of these rules and regulations and is done EXCLUSIVELY through the site FILMFREEWAY.COM. Entries via email or other means of delivery will not be accepted. The registration of each film requires the payment of a symbolic fee of $10 (TEN) USD. At the time of the film’s entry, the following must be uploaded to the FILMFREEWAY site:

  1. unabridged film with Italian or English subtitles;
  2. trailer of the work (maximum length 1 min.);
  3. complete technical data sheet, synopsis, with director’s notes and informative documentation;
  4. curriculum and filmography of the author;
  5. one photo of the author and two photos of the work, in high resolution jpg or png format;

At the same time, the following should be sent to the email address: competition@cinenapolidiritti.it :

  1. a declaration/authorization downloaded from the website cinenapolidiritti.it and duly signed;
  2. rules of the competition signed by the author as acceptance with explicit reference to the progressive registration number given at the time of entering the work on the FILMFREEWAY site;
  3. safe references for postal, e-mail and telephone contacts of the author/authors and/or of the person responsible for the application.
  4. list of dialogues in .srt format in Italian or English.

The Authors and/or Producers, in a declaration/authorisation to the Festival, available on the website www.cinenapolidiritti.it,

(vers. ita: https://www.cinenapolidiritti.it/web/download/11385/

eng vers. https://www.cinenapolidiritti.it/web/download/11388/ )  to be signed and sent in pdf or jpeg format, assume full responsibility for the contents of their works and declare they have fulfilled all the formalities relating to the property rights of the work and have fulfilled all obligations to third parties arising from copyright.

All documentation must be produced in Italian or English.

(For info e-mail: competition@cinenapolidiritti.it)

Art. 4 – Terms and conditions of the competition and selection phase

The works of authors duly delivered NO LATER THAN June 30, 2023, and dating from June 1, 2021 onwards, dealing with aspects related to the topics indicated in the framework of art. 2 “Objectives and sections of the competition,” will be admitted to the four sections of the competition.

The documentaries and short films will be viewed and selected by a commission composed of experts indicated by the Executive Board which oversees the Festival. The works selected for the XV Naples Human Rights Film Festival will be programmed and screened online for the duration of the Festival, with appropriate publicity and promotion, subject to prior notice to the authors. The winning works will be screened in theaters, one day after the award ceremony.

Each author can send more than one work but can then participate in the competition with only one selected work in each section of the competition, at the discretion of the Selection Comittee.

Works produced or sponsored by commercial companies which are, in terms of content, a vehicle for publicity cannot participate.

The results of the selection will be communicated via e-mail to the candidates and published on the website http://cinenapolidiritti.it/web by October 2, 2023. Should no work pass the minimum requirements for admission, the organization reserves the right to cancel the section/s in this competition from the Festival program.

The authors of the selected works will be contacted in due time to send the necessary support for the film screening.

Authors of the selected works must provide the films in h.264 format without subtitles, and Italian subtitles in .srt format by October 2, 2023.

The authors of the selected works must provide an authorization/release, free of charge, for the full on demand screening of their works at www.cinenapolidiritti.online from November 13-26, 2023.

The steering committee of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival, subject to obtaining authorization from the writers, undertakes to disseminate the selected works on the film circuits specializing in the promotion of Human Rights.

Art. 5 – Outcomes of the competition and awards

The works admitted to the official selection of the XV edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival for the sections HUMAN RIGHTS DOC and HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT will eventually be evaluated by a Jury of Experts composed of a maximum of 5 members chosen from among directors, journalists, cinema experts and personalities of the world of culture and Human Rights. The choice of Jury members will be made public through various communication channels (press, internet media, radio…).

For the competitive sections HUMAN RIGHTS DOC and HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT, the Jury will award a prize to the works declared the winners.

A Young Jury will be constituted and will assign an Award to one of the films in competition in the HUMAN RIGHTS YOUTH section.

For works selected in the competitive sections HUMAN RIGHTS DOC, HUMAN RIGHTS SHORT AND HUMAN RIGHTS YOUTH, there is also:

– The “MARIO PACIOLLA” PRIZE, in collaboration with the NGO “Un Ponte per…,” for works dealing with international cooperation, solidarity and volunteerism

– The “FICC” PRIZE, in collaboration with the Italian Federation of Cinema Circles.

For the SWISS AMBASSADOR FOR PEACE AWARD, the “MARIO PACILLO” AWARD and the “FICC” AWARD, special juries will be set up in collaboration with the partner organizations, promoting the respective awards.

The Internal Selection Committee will assign a Special Mention, entitled to the memory of Vittorio Arrigoni and Juliano Mer Khamis, to the work that, with courage, passion and independence, brings to light marginalized situations and stories which describe little known struggles as a form of modern civil activism, using experimental means of communication and   language.

A jury will be formed, in collaboration with the main media and the Festival partners (universities, schools, associations, organizations, etc..), with the task of awarding a Special Mention (“Platea Diffusa“) to a work among those competing in the sections Human Rights Doc and Human Rights Short.

The winning films of the sections “Human Rights Doc” and “Human Rights Short” will be awarded a cash prize of 1,000 euros and given the opportunity to participate, also out of competition, in one of the festivals related to the Human Rights Film Festival of Naples. This will allow the works to become known in some of the most important contexts of Human Rights Cinema.

The winning films of the sections Human Rights Youth, Swiss Embassy Award for Peace, Award “Un Ponte per…” and Award “FICC” will be awarded a cash prize of 500 euros.

The winning films and the films that  receive the Special Mention Arrigoni-Mer Khamis and the Special Mention of the Popular Jury will be offered promotion in the Human Rights Film Network and in the network of Festivals of the Caffè Sospeso, upon presentation  of suitable copies with English or Italian subtitles, as well as in the cinema and activist circuits of the Human Rights Film Festival of Naples.

Art. 6 – Screenings out of competition and post Festival diffusion

The commission of experts may identify works to be screened out of competition in special contexts such as prisons, schools, universities and other centers of cultural aggregation during the XV edition of the Naples Human Rights Film Festival, as part of special events aimed at educating the public and promoting and disseminating film and audiovisual culture on human rights. In these cases, the willingness of authors to grant permission for free screening of their works will be particularly welcome.

Art. 7 – Clauses

Authors and producers implicitly authorize, upon registration, the use and broadcasting of 90 seconds of their work for the promotion of the Festival. Admission to the Festival implies the transfer, without any counterparty, of the rights to reproduce photographs or extracts from the film for a maximum duration of 3 minutes, intended for the promotion of the Festival in the press, on television and on the Web.

When registering for the Naples Human Rights Film Festival, each author, producer or distributor will be responsible for the content of the submitted works, declaring to have fulfilled all copyright obligations towards third parties, and granting explicit permission to use these works.

The undersigned is responsible for the accuracy of the data contained in their work, which, in the case of selection, will be used as part of the promotion and communication materials of the Festival (catalogue, website, press releases, etc.).

The above regulations need to be signed and sent, together with the required attachments, to the email: competition@cinenapolidiritti.it.

The Court of Naples will be called on to decide in the case of any legal dispute.

Personal data will be treated according to the law 31/12/1996 n° 675 and its subsequent amendments and additions.