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Editorials

Paul Néaoutyine
President of the Northern Province

Our goal is to build a fully sovereign, independent country with all those who, beyond their cultural differences and origins, will be ready to take charge of their own affairs and give breath and heart to a peaceful future for our children; the Ânûû-rû Âboro Film Festival is a very useful tool to fulfil this paramount commitment.

The festival is useful in the sense that the films it screens are truly political. Not because they deliver a partisan message but because they regard the viewer as an actor rather than a consumer, to take up a concept that is dear to me. Being an actor of one’s life means being resolutely committed to cast a vote as required, in the primary sense, i.e. to "choose".

From its inception, the Festival has proposed a popular yet political documentary cinema, with films that awaken and fortify community participation, promote critical awareness, question, disturb, stir and make the spectator reflect upon key issues to the point that he is not quite the same when the credits end. Documentary cinema moves forward in its own way against fashions, times spirit, univocal visions of the world and preconceived ideas; in short, it plays with the established order.

This established order, which we strongly reject, refers to colonial or post-colonial situations associated to their usual dramatic consequences such as the denial of identities within oppressed peoples and nations; forced migrations; export of commodities without local processing; promotion of import as opposed to the creation of a local industrial pattern; capitalist exploitation; oppression; and the plundering of natural resources as well as the environment throughout the planet, especially in Third World Countries.

Ânûû-rû Âboro is proud to present a cinema that dares, a cinema that has faith in the collective intelligence of the festivalgoers. It is the same faith that we would like to share with all the citizens of this country, whose responsibility will soon be to build, independently, their future and that of their children.

René Boutin
Artistic Director of the Ânûû-rû Âboro Festival

As a film festival programmer, I build up my scenario as I watch hundreds of productions. Factoring the spectator’s desire and avoiding unnecessary anxiety while reflecting the world in a truthful manner relate to the very core of the job; it constitutes a difficult exercise when it comes to finding the appropriate balance between sharing the material offered by reality and developing a functional programme.
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The 2017 edition of the Ânûû-rû Âboro Film Festival has been designed to be neither a perfect continuation of, nor a breach from past editions: it aims at opening up to a changing world, sometimes with a good dose of humour. May we take you beyond platitudes, contravene resistance between human beings and reflect the importance of dialogue and human relations.
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