É Tudo Verdade / It's All True

50 YEARS THESE NIGHTS

1968 was a year of plural meaning, as manifold were the roots and dynamics of the revolts that it hosted, all over the world, including Brazil. It is under the sign of its fiftieth anniversary that our 23rd edition develops, as celebrated by the beautiful photo of David Drew Zingg stamped on our cover, proving that the echoes of those manifestations, half a century later, still speak to us.

The struggle for the broadest universal respect for human rights was one of the rare common traits identifiable in those protests, as it is essential to the courageous work of our honoree of this year, Pamela Yates. While 1968 canceled that year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, today both protests and film festivals are invitations to disconnect for a while from the digital cocoons, to real people reconnect in the public space, to discover new worlds -and to demand them. “Imagination in power,” remember?

If the battles of 1968, specific to each territory, were generally lost, beginning with the intensification and not the overthrow of the military dictatorship then in force in Brazil, victories of long maturation were initiated there, above all in the field of the requirement of equality for blacks, for women and for the LGBTQ + community and for global ecological awareness. Several titles of this sturdy, though leaner, edition of the festival point to the urgency of these clashes, towards definitive triumphs still to be achieved.

In these five decades, no audiovisual expression has expanded and mutated more than documentary. Non-fictional films have never been more present in our daily lives, each one of us now a potential filmmaker and a regular viewer; they are enriching our experiences, sharpening our sensibility and sophisticating our reading of the world, in an era marked by the complex challenge of navigating a turbulent sea of narratives not always fishy with facts.

We thank all the filmmakers who for another year recognized us as a safe haven to present to the country and to the world their new works, selected or not. Special thanks to the partners who have closed ranks, with extra commitments, around It Is All True 2018. Be realistic, demand the impossible. That utopian graffiti on a wall in Paris was never more present.

Be all welcome and have beautiful dreams awake during and after this festival!

AMIR LABAKI

Founder and Director It’s All True - International Documentary Film Festival