The iREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival 2024 will begin from March 21 to 24 in Lagos, organisers of the event announced in a statement on Monday.
The 14th edition of the annual event will feature conversations, screenings, workshops, networking sessions, and other related activities.
Over 45 films are expected to be screened at the two venues hosting the festival this year at Freedom Park, 1 Hospital Road, Lagos Island, and Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi.
The films – short are long features — have been drawn from largely Nigerian filmmakers and their counterparts from 25 countries in four continents, who submitted their entries via Filmfreeway. However, there are also some specially curated films selected for the festival, some of which have made the round of international festival circuits and have won awards around the world.
According to the statement, “The 2024 edition’s theme, RIGHTING THE FUTURE, is deliberately chosen to instigate conversation between the present and the future of the continent, as well as encourage deeper dialogue between the young people and their elders. The provocative theme is set in the context of happenings in this season of political anomalies and leadership failures in many countries of the continent.
‘IREP 2024 is designated as “The SOYIKA edition” to commemorate the 90th birthday anniversary of the distinguished global cultural icon, poet, playwright, essayist, polemicist and Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, Professor Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka. He embodies the virtues of the quintessential ‘citizen activist’ with the clarity of vision and passion for the betterment of our collective humanity needed to hold power accountable to the people. Over the past six decades and more, he has consistently deployed his intellectual acumen and personal resources to defend human values and the fundamentality of the freedom of the individual to resist oppression.
He is renowned for having also displayed a high degree of patriotic zeal to clamour for good governance and participatory democracy by citizens of the country, even at grave risks to his personal comfort and career. For his tenacious hold to his convictions, he has sometimes run into problems with consecutive state authorities and certain sections of the society. But he remains steadfast in his self-imposed battles to always right the wrongs he perceives in his social, cultural and political environments. These are the values and virtues, iREP hopes to spotlight and celebrate at the 2024 festival with the intention to assure members of the social milleu that they can hold on to their beliefs and convictions without being herded by the mob,” the statement added.
Founded in 2010, the iREP festival has the founding generic theme “Africa in Self-Conversation”, which encourages cross-exchanges of ideas and developmental aspirations among the diverse peoples of Africa and the global black family.
