'Film and Memory' cycle at Human Rights Film Festival
The 23rd San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival will take place between 23 and 30 April at the Victoria Eugenia, the main setting for the event, and the Teatro Principal, as well as other venues around the city. This year Tabakalera will again be featuring the Film and Memory series, made up of three films analysing the power of images and their importance in recounting History: Mes fantômes arméniens , La noche está marchándose ya and Redlight to Limelight.
FILM AND MEMORY (Tabakalera)
- Mes fantômes arméniens (2025). Tamara Stepanyan. France-Armenia
Tamara Stepanyan embarks on an evocative journey through the forgotten world of Armenian cinema. Sparked by a dialogue with her father, renowned Armenian actor Vigen Stepanyan, this captivating documentary brings to life the vibrant and often overlooked history interwoven with personal loss. The film explores the creative spirit behind films that spoke to universal themes of identity, love, struggle, and artistic expression. It captures not just Soviet Armenian cinema, but the enduring soul of Armenian storytelling: its beauty, its struggles, and its unyielding spirit.
- La noche está marchándose ya (2025). Ezequiel Salinas, Ramiro Sonzini. Argentina
Pelu is in his thirties, barely getting by on his salary as the projectionist of a municipal film club. After losing his job, he agrees to stay on as night watchman, and following a series of unfortunate turns, ends up living in the cinema in secret, accompanied by the films he reviews each night. As he begins to feel more comfortable in his new home, Pelu starts to build a small community who inhabit the cinema after closing time. But their precarious financial condition is also part of a widespread crisis, which threatens to close the cinema down, and place their small community at risk.
- Redlight to Limelight (2025). Bipuljit Basu. India-Finland-Latvia
The documentary follows a group of young childern who are passionatley weaving stories with mothers and sisters through their native video production unit, in order to cultivate a meaningful change in the lives of a community of sex workers in the brothel of Kalighat, Kolkata. Keeping aside the ghosts of their grimy reality, women and children get immersed into an incredible joy of storytelling with a burning desire to turn the brothel into a better place.
