Deadline: 31 March 2013
Region: Worlwide
To celebrate the World Refugee Day (20th June), Slovene Philanthropy and Zavod Voluntariat are organising the fourth edition of the Festival of Migrant Film.
The festival, which is now accepting entries from filmmakers worldwide, will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from the 10th to the 21st of June 2013.
Feature films and documentaries will focus on topics related to migrations, asylum, refugees, integration of immigrants and coexistence in multicultural societies. Videos will also offer a critical analysis of migration-related topics and highlight the cultural heritage of migrants.
Providing information to the audience is not the only goal of the festival. The primary aim is to promote intercultural dialogue and diversity as important factors in the achievement of an equitable society. By raising public awareness about migration-related issues, the two Slovenian NGOs intend to lay the foundations of social and cultural development of our societies and to foster a better understanding of immigrant integration processes.
Festival organisers are looking for thought-provoking films that inspire people to contribute in the integration of migrants within the local communities. Films must have migration as main topic, but focus can range from conflicts, to asylum and policies, migrant workers, unaccompanied children, human trafficking.
“Within the festival we wish to further expand the traditional concept of a refugee, as defined in the Geneva Convention on the status of refugees (1951),” says the Festival of Migrant Film website, “and put the spotlight on contemporary causes and shapes of refugeeism and migration.”
Lack of economic perspectives, unbearable living conditions, armed conflicts, and persecution based on ethnicity, religion, gender, sex orientation, and political beliefs, are the main reasons that forced millions of people to leave their native countries. But new factors, such as climate change, have also played a role in pushing human mobility in recent years. Migration flows are not still, and although the stock of international migrants remains concentrated in relatively few countries, directions and provenance of labour migration have shifted.
For example, as a 2005 report by the International Organization for Migration revealed, between 1970 and 2000 Asia’s share of global migrant stock dropped from 34.5 per cent to 25 per cent.
According to the UN 2008 International Migrant Stock, there are 214 million estimated international migrants in the world, which means that one out of every 33 people today is a migrant. Sixteen million of them are refugees.
The deadline for submission is the 31st of March 2013.
More information is available here.
