Festival Programming Centers Indigenous Sovereignty, Gentrification, Black Land, Transgender Rights, Palestinian Youth Voices, and the life of Harry Belafonte, amongst other themes.
March 27, 2025, New Orleans, LA — PATOIS is thrilled to announce the 2025 New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, slated for Wednesday, April 2 through Sunday, April 6, 2025. This is the 22nd year of the PATOIS Film Festival, which attracts more than a thousand people to PATOIS events. All screenings and panels will take place at The Broad Theater.
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What: 2025 PATOIS: New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival
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When: April 2, 2025 – April 6, 2025
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Where: The Broad Theater at 636 N. Broad St
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Website Link: https://www.patoisfilmfest.
org/patois2025
In addition to the films, PATOIS is known for featuring in-depth conversations with filmmakers, organizers, and activists from New Orleans, nationally, and around the world. This year’s Film Festival will continue this tradition by highlighting not only filmmakers and artists but also community leaders and activists discussing topics ranging from Palestinian liberation and prison abolition to displacement, migration, and decolonization.
Major highlights for this year include:
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This year has more visiting filmmakers than any other year, including journalist and filmmaker dream hampton (the director of Surviving R. Kelly) with her new film It Was All A Dream (which premiered at Tribeca Film Fest in 2024), Rashaad Newsom with Assembly (SXSW 2025), Sam Feder bringing Heightened Scrutiny (Sundance 2025), and much more.
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On Thursday, April 3, we will welcome and hear from Dolores Canales, Michael Saavedra, and Jack Morris, formerly incarcerated people who were part of the largest hunger strike in US history.
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Additional themes include: Indigenous liberation, Palestinian youth, fighting gentrification and climate change, Reproductive Justice, Preserving Black Land, Repatriation and Decolonization, Revolutionary Theory, and more.
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Live Music from Joy Clark and Sabine McCalla.
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Local organizations are tabling and presenting their work.
The full lineup of films is included below.
2025 Patois New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival Lineup + Schedule
Wednesday, April 2
7pm Opening Night Film
Heightened Scrutiny
Directed by Sam Feder, 2025 (89 min).
A look at the battles in the courts and in the media for trans rights. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio prepares to become the first transgender person to make oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the case United States v. Skrmetti, which, once decided this year, will determine whether bans on transgender medical procedures for minors violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Post-screening discussion with director Sam Feder, producer Amy Scholder, and local organizer Mariah Moore.
Pre-screening performance by Joy Clark.
Thursday April 3
6:00 PM – Trans History Short – Free Program
Under False Colors
Directed by Mickaela Bradford, 2024 (18 min).
The first transgender woman to testify before the U.S. Congress in 1866, and the Free Black community that she was part of. This short film, based in Reconstruction Era Memphis, Tennessee, follows two Black friends, Frances Thompson and Lucy Smith, who use tea, community, and the river to redefine freedom and heal each other after a historic massacre.
Post-screening discussion with star Simone Immanuel.
7:00 PM – Resistance from Behind Bars
The Strike
Directed by Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz, 2024 (86 min).
The story of a prisoner-led hunger strike that turned into a national movement. The high-security Pelican Bay prison was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, and with little due process. In 2013, 30,000 incarcerated people went on a hunger strike that spread into a feat of unity across California prisons. With extraordinary access to the prisoners and to footage from inside the prison, The Strike follows these solitary survivors who fought to abolish indefinite isolation.
Post-screening discussion with filmmakers and the formerly incarcerated leaders of the hunger strike.
Friday, April 4
7:00pm Neighborhood Organizing
Emergent City, Directed by Jay Arthur Sterrenberg & Kelly Anderson, 2024 (99 min).
Through the story of organizing in one neighborhood, a look at the intersections of gentrification, climate crisis, and development. Over a decade, within the borders of a single Brooklyn community district, residents face a tangled web of rising rents, a legacy of environmental racism, and the loss of the industrial jobs that once sustained their community. When a global developer purchases a massive industrial complex on the waterfront – and begins to transform it into an “innovation district,” a battle erupts over the future of the neighborhood and of New York City itself. Emergent City is an observational civic epic. It sheds light on power and process, illuminating systems and giving viewers a front row seat to the public and private spaces where the city is shaped. With extraordinary access, it tracks an ensemble of participants and asks how change might emerge from dialogue and collective action in a world where too many outcomes are constrained by money, politics, and business as usual.
Post-screening discussion with director and organizers from the film.
Pre-screening performance by Sabine McCalla.
9:15pm Bodily Autonomy and Solidarity
Power Alley, Directed by Lillah Halla, 2023 (99 min).
A 17-year-old in Brazil fights for an abortion in this powerful drama about queer friendship and the struggle for bodily autonomy. On the eve of a future-defining championship, Sofia, a 17-year-old promising volleyball player, is faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Seeking an illegal abortion, she becomes the target of a fundamentalist group determined to stop her at any cost – but neither Sofia nor those who love her are willing to surrender.
Proceeds from this screening go to the Louisiana Abortion Fund.
Saturday April 5
12:00pm Repatriation and Decolonization
Dahomey, Directed by Mati Diop, 2024 (68 min).
The African kingdom of Dahomey, which ruled over its region at the west of the continent until the turn of the 20th century, saw hundreds of its splendid royal artifacts plundered by French colonial troops in its waning days. Now, as 26 of these treasures are set to return to their homeland, filmmaker Mati Diop documents their voyage back. As with her layered, supernaturally tinged Atlantics, Diop takes a singular approach to contemporary questions around belonging in our postcolonial world, transforming this rich subject matter into a multifaceted examination of ownership and exhibition, and employing multiple points of view, including—most strikingly—those of the artifacts themselves as they sail in darkness over the ocean to their rightful home. Dahomey brilliantly negotiates a lost past and an unsure present.
Post-screening discussion with scholars Jeri Hilt and Shana M. griffin to follow.
1:45pm Birth Justice – Free Program
Birth from the Earth, Directed by Katy Walker Mejia, 2023 (16 minute).
This short documentary features midwife and educator, Nubia Earth Martin, as she seeks to empower BIPOC mothers and families to be able to safely give birth, as their ancestors once did, through her non-profit, Birth From the Earth. Up against the backdrop of a broken medical system, Birth From the Earth follows Nubia’s journey as a visionary leader in the Birth Justice movement, tirelessly working to create more opportunities and make home birth safe, sacred, and accessible to those who need it the most.
Post-screening discussion with Nubia Earth Martin and Louisiana birth workers.
3:00 PM – Stories of Palestinian and Iranian Youth
An Orange from Jaffa, Directed by Mohammed Almughanni, 2024 (27 mins). Mohammed, a young Palestinian, is desperately looking for a taxi to take him through an Israeli checkpoint. The driver, Farouk, discovers that Mohammed has already failed to cross the checkpoint. Trouble begins.
A short film about kids, Directed by Ibrahim Handal, 2023 (10 mins).
Four kids from a refugee camp, in Bethlehem, decide to visit the sea for the first time in their lives.
Waiting, Directed by Amir Rooini, 2022 (3 mins).
Two children wait for their parents – the solidarity of children.
Palestine Islands, Directed by Nour Ben Salem & Julien Menanteau, 2023 (22 mins).
A 12 year old girl in the Balata Refugee Camp tries to bring joy to her grandfather.
Don’t be Long Little Bird, Directed by Reem Jubran, 2024 (24 mins).
An angsty young Rima is unwillingly whisked in time from California to 1930s Ancestral Palestine, where she is found by her great-grandmother. On her quest to find her way back to the present, she learns a few valuable lessons on the way.
Post-screening discussion with Filmmaker Reem Jubran of Don’t be Long Little Bird.
5:15pm – Environmental Justice and Story Circles – Free Program
Solidarity Ride: Convergence, Resurgence, Healing & Justice, Directed by Michael McKenzie, 2024 (22 minutes).
Environmental racism, social injustice, and the resilience of communities leading the charge for change. Solidarity Ridedocuments environmental injustice while uplifting narrative justice and ensuring the voices of impacted communities are heard, valued, and amplified.
What You Hear, What You Say – The Practice of Story Circles, Directed by Cooperation Gumbo/Maya Pen, 2025 (4 mins).
The process of building resistance and organizing through sharing our stories. Filmmaker present. Cooperation Gumbo is a collaboration between residents, cooperators, and artists to uplift the histories and ongoing presence of Black and Indigenous cooperation in New Orleans.
This free program will feature participation in a story circle after the films and a discussion with the filmmakers of Solidarity Ride and What You Hear, What You Say.
6:30pm Queer Futures
Assembly, Directed by Rashaad Newsome & Johnny Symons, 2025 (98 min).
Internationally acclaimed artist Rashaad Newsome embarks on his most ambitious project yet — a multimedia exhibition and performance at New York’s historic Park Avenue Armory. Once a bastion of white military power, the Armory is transformed into a vibrant celebration of Black and queer culture through video projections, holograms, sculptures, collages, music, dance, and African fractal patterns. This reimagining challenges colonial power structures while honoring the complexity and resilience of Black experience. Through innovative hybrid storytelling, breathtaking visual effects, and the ongoing presence of ancestors, Assembly transcends traditional documentary as it weaves together Rashaad’s creative process, dynamic performances, and the lives of his collaborators. Powerful moments, such as a memorial for murdered Black trans women that evolves into a protest march, highlight art’s capacity to reclaim agency and inspire change, offering a vision of intergenerational resilience, transformation, and hope.
Post-screening discussion with filmmakers Rashaad Newsome & Johnny Symons.
8:45pm Feminism and Hip-Hop
It Was All a Dream, Directed by dream hampton, 2024 (83 min).
The year is 1993 and hip-hop is primed for its eventual global takeover. Wu-Tang’s “Enter The Wu-Tang” and A Tribe Called Quest’s “Midnight Marauders” are released on the same day, while Doggystyle breaks into the Billboard 200 at number one. Constructed from director dream hampton’s personal archive, It Was All a Dream is a visual memoir reflecting on the dawn of the golden era of hip-hop. It takes viewers inside the studio with intimate access to some of rap’s most celebrated minds, including hampton’s neighbor The Notorious BIG, Wu Tang’s Method Man, Mobb Deep, Snoop Dogg and many more. With narration constructed from her previous work as the astonishing footage unfolds, hampton not only provides insight to this era of hip-hop but also firmly establishes her place in its story.
Post-screening discussion between filmmakers dream hampton and Zac Manuel.
Sunday April 6
12pm Movement Elders
Following Harry, Directed by Susanne Rostock, 2024 (95 min).
An intimate documentary that chronicles twelve years of legendary Harry Belafonte’s life, highlighting the artist-activist’s enduring commitment to social justice. Fueled by his tremendous sense of urgency to inspire the next generation of entertainers and activists to stand for justice, the film provides a window into both his public endeavors and private moments, capturing his journey from the aftermath of the death of Trayvon Martin, to his engagements in the protests in Ferguson, the Women’s March (which was created in his office), to the deeply and profound conversations in his home. Featuring Aja Monet, Angela Davis, Aloe Blacc, Carmen Perez, Chuck D, Gina Belafonte, Jamie Foxx, Jesse Williams, Kerry Kennedy, Matt Post, Phillip Agnew, Rod Starz, Rosario Dawson, Sean Pica, & Talib Kweli.
1:45pm Faith Ringgold & Feminist Liberation
Paint Me a Road Out of Here, Directed by Catherine Gund, 2024 (90 min).
Featuring artists Faith Ringgold and Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Paint Me a Road Out of Here uncovers the whitewashed history of Faith’s masterpiece “For the Women’s House” and follows its 50-year journey from Rikers Island to the Brooklyn Museum in a heartbreaking, funny & true parable for a world without mass incarceration.
3:30pm Anti-Colonial Revolution
Walter Rodney: What They Don’t Want You to Know, Directed by Arlen Harris and Daniyal Harris-Vajda, 2023 (72 min).
An anticolonial historian, Black Power, Cold War conspiracies, the end of empire, and how that connects to the policing and surveillance practices of today. This film delves into the life and legacy of Dr. Walter Rodney, a prominent historian, activist, and champion for civil rights. Through a series of enlightening interviews and footage captured across Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, Tanzania, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the film presents a comprehensive portrait of a man who dedicated his life to fostering unity in the face of adversity.
Post-screening discussion with Timeless, a scholar of Walter Rodney’s work.
5:30pm Illuminating Indigenous Narratives
I Am Gitxsan, Directed by Hossein Martin Fazeli, 2024 (64 min).
The impact of colonialism on one Indigenous community, I Am Gitxsan follows Phoenix Apperloo, a recent high school graduate reconnecting with his Indigenous heritage. The documentary highlights the impact of colonialism on the Gitxsan community, culminating with a moving message of hope and determination, emphasizing the power of the Gitxsan people’s enduring spirit, the beauties of their culture, and their commitment to future generations. A testament to the resilience of Indigenous communities in their battle to preserve and protect the best of our shared humanity.
Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Hossein Martin Fazeli.
7:15 PM Closing Night Film
Family Tree, Directed by Jennifer MacArthur, 2024 (93 min).
Two Black families cultivating a dream of restorative abundance. In the US South, Black forest owners fight to maintain their family legacy and create sustainable forests for generations to come. They face challenging family dynamics, unscrupulous developers, and changing environmental needs. Despite setbacks, they work to create sustainable land to pass on to the next generation.
Post-screening discussion with fIlmmaker Jennifer MacArthur.
Festival goers can purchase a festival pass for $50 ($40 for Patois members) or individual screening tickets for $12 ($8 for Patois members) at www.patoisfilmfest.org/
About Patois New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival
Founded in 2004 by artists and activists in New Orleans, PATOIS has premiered hundreds of powerful social justice-oriented films from around the world while highlighting brilliant local filmmakers and vital grassroots organizations. PATOIS is dedicated to nurturing New Orleans’ human rights community, supporting the work of organizers and organizations involved in these struggles, and providing a forum for artistic expression of local and international issues. In addition to the film festival in spring, PATOIS hosts a variety of community screenings, workshops and organizing events throughout the year. patoisfilmfest.org
