For this year’s Verzio Film Festival Crossroads section we decided to present a mix of pressing issues from Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival. Films that examine the policy of “Fortress Europe” and the treatment of refugees such as, Every Face Has a Name, ties the current migration situation to the darkest part of European and particularly German history: the Holocaust. Nuremberg used to be the symbolic center of Nazi Germany, so the examination of this period is highly important for us. But it is the humanity of both the overall narrative and the director’s approach to his protagonists that made us fall in love with this film.

Speaking of love: Tamara Trampe is one of Germany’s most respected documentarians and certainly one of our festival’s favorite filmmakers for the warmth, sense of humor and the maturity she brings to her projects. In My Mother, a War and Me she examines her own family history and the history of women who fought in World War II – just like her own mother was doing when she gave birth to Tamara on the battlefield in Ukraine in 1942. To broaden our perspective, The Siren of Faso Fani, sheds light on the devastation that globalization and neo-liberalism have on national economies, such as in the garment industry in Burkina Faso where people from the South are forced to migrate to the richer global North. Finally, Burden of Peace addresses national and international criminal justice – an issue that is again closely linked with Nuremberg’s past as the seat of the first International Criminal Courts. Here, we follow the brave former human rights lawyer, Claudia Paz y Paz in her first term as General Attorney in Guatemala – one of the most violent countries in the world.

We hope you enjoy our selection!

Andrea Kuhn
Festival Director, Nuremberg IHDFF

Films in Toldi, Művész, Cirko-Gejzír and KINO are screened in original language with English subtitles.