Melbourne's Human Rights Arts and Film Festival Is Back for 2022 with an Eye-Opening Lineup

Heading to the cinema has never just been about staring at a big screen. That's one key — and glorious — part of the equation, but discovering new things while being transported to different corners of the globe is just as important. It's pivotal at Melbourne's Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, in fact, with the long-running event taking the medium's eye-opening potential as seriously as it can. On the fest's lineup each year: flicks that engage with human rights issues, alongside a lineup of art, music and talks that does the same thing.

From Thursday, April 28–Saturday, May 7, HRAFF will start unfurling its 2022 program — and, spanning 21 events across seven venues during its ten-day run, it's quite the lineup. It all kicks off with opening-night pick Dear Future Children, a documentary focused on activists from Hong Kong, Uganda and Chile who are fighting to improve — and save — their futures. From there, highlights include Oscar nominees, New Zealand standouts, simmering Aussie docos and much more.

Among those must-sees sits Writing with Fire, a contender for Best Documentary Feature at this year's Academy Awards, which hones in on the journalists behind India's all-female news network Khabar Lahariya; three-time Oscar nominee Flee, a stunning animated documentary about an Afghan refugee's life story; Eva Orner's searing 2021 doco Burning, which doesn't hold back in its scorching examination of Australia's 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires; and fellow homegrown effort River, a lyrical look at the planet's sprawling waterways as narrated by Willem Dafoe.

There's also: NZ duo Cousins and Night Raiders, the former about the nation's history of removing Indigenous people from their land and culture, and the latter a dystopian sci-fi executive produced by Taika Waititi; the Bronx-set Queen of Glory, about a Ghanian American academic dealing with the fallout from her mother's passing; and the first Tunisian film to be nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature, wild art-world satire The Man Who Sold His Skin. And, closing out the film program is Fanny: The Right To Rock, about one of the first all-female bands to release an album in the US.

Other key parts of the festival include interactive storytelling and cooking sessions, several lineups of shorts — homegrown, feminist and flicks about interconnection — and a photography event that links in with international photography festival PHOTO 2022.

Everything on the bill ties in with four themes — bodies, environment, ancestors and distance — as curated by HRAFF's new Program Director Ayesha Mehta and Festival Director Sophie Parr.

The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival runs from Thursday, April 28–Saturday, May 7 at various venues around Melbourne. For more information or to buy tickets, head to the festival's website.