This year, ACT highlights include a new Festival Pass, two U.S. premieres and six Colorado premieres, more than 15 international film guests, encore screenings and a closing night concert featuring musicians from the film RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World.
The festival’s hand-picked feature documentaries begin screening Friday, April 6, in Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center Theater at 4:30 p.m.
About ACT
ACT showcases the most critically acclaimed and recently released international documentary films that explore a range of human rights themes, including democracy in crisis, immigration, war, gender rights, race and class in America, occupational health and climate change. The festival closes Saturday, April 14, with RUMBLE, followed by a reception and concert with Pura Fe and Cary Morin in the Lory Student Center.
Films will screen Friday through Sunday at CSU, The Lyric and the Lincoln Center Magnolia Theatre, and resume the following Friday, April 13, at The Lyric before closing Saturday, April 14, at the Lory Student Center Theatre. Encore screenings will occur Monday, April 9, through Thursday, April 12, at The Lyric. The complete festival schedule appears on the festival’s website, www.actfilmfest.org. Festival tickets, four-packs and all-festival passes go on sale March 8. Tickets are also available for purchase the day of show, pending availability.
Six premieres
The festival’s lineup represents the most relevant, recent and acclaimed films produced within the last two years. ACT is proud to premiere in Colorado six international and U.S. films, including two U.S. premieres, Chega de Fiu Fiu from Brazil and Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas from Ethiopia, as well as a sneak preview of Minding the Gap, which won the U.S. Documentary Competition Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
“This is the strongest lineup of films we’ve yet curated,” said Professor Scott Diffrient, who conceived the festival during his time as the William E. Morgan Endowed Chair of Liberal Arts (2014-16), and now directs festival programming. “The fact that we’re premiering six films in Colorado tells us that in just a few years ACT has emerged as a nationally recognized festival catering to a discerning crowd — audiences who are well-informed and who want something more from movies than just an escape from reality.”
“In fact, each of the films selected for the ACT Human Rights Film Festival highlights acts of human kindness, perseverance and bravery in the face of adversity, and each celebrates the kind of empathy-building connectedness and border-dissolving kinship that so many of our elected officials and political leaders seem to have forgotten or turned their backs on during these divisive times,” he added.
Special guests from the films
Directors and film subjects from around the world will appear in person for the majority of post-screening Q&A sessions.
Guests include Heather Wright, director of Complicit, a breakthrough story about poisoned phone assembly workers in China; Col. Honorine Munyole, a senior Congolese policewoman in charge of stopping sexual violence and physical abuse against women in children and the subject of Mama Colonel, directed by Dieudo Hamadi (also appearing in person); and Stevie Salas, executive producer of RUMBLE and the recipient of the festival’s 2018 Harry Belafonte Resistance Through Art Award.
2018 highlights:
- The Music District joins ACT in presenting RUMBLE musicians Pura Fe and Cary Morin in a closing-night concert and reception.
- Encore screenings of select opening weekend films will screen at The Lyric from Monday, April 9, through Thursday, April 12. Tickets available at www.lyriccinema.com.
- NEW: A limited number of all-festival passes being offered at $90 ($45 for students) feature priority seating for all screenings. Individual tickets cost $10 ($5 for students), and four-packs cost $30 ($15 for students).
ACT is produced by the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University with generous support from university and community partners, including the College of Liberal Arts, the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, One Tribe Creative, The Lyric, Odell Brewing, The Music District, KUNC 91.5 FM, The Coloradoan, The Armstrong Hotel and the Colorado Office of Film, TV, and Media. ACT is the Intermountain West’s only film festival dedicated to curating the most relevant, recent and acclaimed documentary and narrative fiction human rights cinema produced around the world. Learn more at www.actfilmfest.org.
Connect on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
