IndieFest, Barcelona Indigenous Film Festival

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Film still from "Journey to Our Homeland" directed by Adrien Harpelle (Canada, 2022).

IndiFest, Festival de Cine Indígena de Barcelona gives indigenous peoples a voice on the creative scene, allowing them to bring their demands for compliance with their internationally-recognized human and political rights to a wider audience.

The Festival advocates for political and social mobilization, with activities that range from audiovisual projections to workshops, talks and more, giving local residents the opportunity to discover the different perspectives, problems, struggles and proposals for change that impact indigenous communities.

2024 Program

This year festival is dedicated to ancestral intelligence, a concept that helps us to think about the knowledge and practices of indigenous peoples in the face of the global challenges of the present and the future. Organization and communality, indigenous epistemologies and traditional ecological knowledge are some of the collective alternatives and responses of indigenous peoples to deal with environmental, health and social crises.

The festival opens with a film that has made its way through festivals around the world: Algún día las raíces, Alejandro Valdeavellano (Chile, 2024) is a fictional account of a real, young Mapuche man killed by a policeman while trying to encourage his people to recover their ancestral lands. Other films on the program include Saber Sumud Palestina: Les arrels de la terra, Josep Galván (Palestine, 2023) a documentary on the resistance that the Palestinian people put into practice every day and the accumulated violence that the State of Israel employs to continue its expansion; Journey to Our Homeland, Adrien Harpelle (Canada, 2022) follows two First Nation Elders and a small group of youth as they traveled an historic canoe route from Nibinamik First Nation to their old village site; Bila Burba, Duiren Wagua (Panama, 2023) shows the power of community theater to maintain a unique collective identity, which emphasizes cooperation; DESERT PHOSfate, Mohamed Sleiman Labat (Western Sahara, 2023) an experimental film that weaves together multi-layered narratives about phosphate, sand particles, plants, and human and mineral displacement, as well as the loss of nomadic ways of life of the Sahrawi indigenous people in Western Sahara; and Yana-Wara, Óscar Catacora (Peru, 2023) a drama that explores the duality of evil and good spirits in Andean culture, with a focus on violence against women and respect for nature, so lacking in western culture.

Films are screened in original version with Catalan or Spanish subtitles.

Venues

Most films will be screened at Cinemes Girona with additional showings at Ateneu del Raval, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Nau Bòstik, Ágora Juan Andrés Benítez, El Mercat Cultural de Vallvidrera as well as Cinema Catalunya in Terrassa, MAC Museu d'Art de Cerdanyola in Cerdanyola del Vallès and Sala Santa Llúciain Reus. Tickets are free, but a donation is requested, and you can get them on the festival website.

October Film Festivals in and around Barcelona

October’s calendar is packed with an impressive list of film festivals in and around the city. Check out our article October Film Festivals in and around Barcelona where you'll find gritty investigative documentaries, hair-raising fantasy and horror flicks and everything in between!

For more events check our online events calendar.