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The NGO International
Film Festival

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20 - 22 October 2021

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HUMAN-INTEREST STORIES, THEMED ALONG SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

A unique festival that aims to collate and disseminate human-interest stories that are themed around the Sustainable Development Goals, promote a knowledge-sharing culture and develop  a digital media library for future activists, campaigners and policy makers. 

Comprising a jury of 8 members, the festival aims to select and nominate films that are themed under the SDGs in seventeen (17) different categories/goals, and award the rightful copyright owners (organization).

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A PILL FOR SLEEPING SICKENESS
A whole new world
INVISIBLE CHILDREN
Defiance voices of new Generation copy
world agroforestry
Emeka's money copy
I quit copy
I will be fine copy
Le pouvoir du dialogue copy
life after terror
Maduwarshini's story copy
REBELVZN
Muthubanda's story copy
Risto za number nane - the lady with codes copy
The inspiring story of selvamalar copy
Speak up against sexual and gender based violence copy
Struggling to survive on the zambezi river banks copy
KAA RADA NA WEATHER
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Fionna-Icon-image.png
Deborah-Icon-image.png
Hamzat-Icon-image.png
Michael-Icon-image.png
Chidi-Icon-image.png
CHIDI
Sarika-Icon-image.png
Theron-Icon-image.png
KUMI NAIDOO
KUMI NAIDOO
LANCE GOULD
LANCE GOULD
Monique Ntumngia
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Laura Aguiar
stephename
Priyanka Srinivas
Name Karishma Ahmed
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Name Cynthia Evelyn Doley
name Sandeep Borah
Mugambi Nthiga 2
English French
Fiona Smyth

FIONNA SMYTH

In her teen years, she joined PRISM as a quest for peacebuilding. She has a Masters in Comparative Ethnic Conflict and a Post Graduate Diploma in International Human Rights Law. 

From 2004, she has worked as the Campaigns and Media Officer at Amnesty International in Northern Ireland. For the last 15 years,  she has worked across Amnesty, Oxfam, the UN and Christian Aid. From 2011 to 2015 at Oxfam,  she was responsible for leading the Middle East  policy and advocacy team  during the time of the Arab Spring focusing specifically on Yemen, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and led the Oxfam Advocacy response to the Syria Crisis. She has since worked very closely with Yemeni Women activists and CSOs,  Colombian Women HRDS, Women Lawyers in CAR calling for Women’s representation in the transitional Council,  as well as women leaders in Sudan as part of the transition period, facilitating Ala Salah to address the UN security council.

Last year while at Oxfam, she managed the development and launch of the IMatter campaign a campaign which worked with women crisis contexts to gain a seat at the table in peace talks, as part of this campaign.  One of the tactics of this campaign was to use art, poetry and drama. She also commissioned and co-authored a paper with renowned women peace and Security experts, on how to transform power and put women at the heart the Women peace and Security agenda. She currently leads the Global Policy and Advocacy team at Christian Aid.

Deborah Dauda

DEBORAH DAUDA

Deborah Dauda ( she/her) is a mother/dancer/ educator/activist and a Ph.D. student in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development (SGISD) at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She holds master’s degree in Public Health (MPH) and African Studies (MA) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Her work focuses on Gender and Security matters as it relates to the intersectional experiences and narratives of Black women and girls wherever they are positioned geopolitically. Her research interests include mapping the aesthetic values and practice of Black female creatives as a process of cultural preservation, the policies of inclusion/exclusion that target Black girls/women and the implications it has on health outcomes and socio-economic security, and the self-care practices of Black women living in violent and post-conflict settings.

Deborah is passionate about youth development, storytelling, and co-creating opportunities, spaces, and resources for African and African Diaspora peoples to flourish and thrive. In her spare time, Deborah enjoys spending time with her family, reading, street-dancing in her living room, cooking, and curating ‘Bridges X Connections’; a podcast that features folks with fascinating projects, ideas, and research that is necessary for the world to know and bear witness.

Hamzat Lawal

HAMZAT LAWAL

Hamzat Lawal is an activist who has successfully led grassroots campaigns in over 40 African countries with over 15 years experience in the non-profit sector and specializes in practical issues associated with Climate Change, Open Data, advocacy campaigns and development policies as it affects rural and deprived grassroots communities.

He is also the Founder of Follow The Money, a Pan-African grassroots data-driven movement and leads a team of technology and innovation-driven campaigners to amplify the voices of marginalized grassroots communities in promoting accountability as it affects utilization of public funds focusing on specific communities across Africa. His Follow The Money initiative emerged winner of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Mobilizer 2019 Award. This announcement was made at the SDG Global Festival of Action which was held in Bonn, Germany.

He is currently the Chief Executive of Connected Development (CODE),  under his leadership in 2017, CODE won the ONE Africa Award which recognizes, rewards, and advances the exceptional work of Africa based organisations; dedicated to helping the continent achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Also, CODE won The Council of Europe Democracy Innovation Award which recognizes Follow The Money as one of the leading ground- breaking initiatives in the world that are promoting democratic principles.

Hamzat was honored and recognized on the 2018 list of the world’s 100 most influential people in digital government by Apolitical, a global network for government, helping public servants find the ideas, people and partners they need to solve the hardest challenges facing our societies.

He is a Malala Fund Education Champion and the co-founder of Social Voices, a digital publication rooted in practice of public service journalism, using a solutions-oriented reporting approach and has joined his voice on different platforms and policy influencing coalitions across Africa such as the Not Too Young To Run movement which drives youth political inclusion.

HLA HLA WIN

HLA HLA WIN

Leveraging on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and other mobile phone technologies, CEO and an educator, Ms. Hla Hla Win is on a mission to democratize access to quality education. She received her master’s degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and her undergraduate degree in Education from William Penn University and a leadership diploma from East West Centre at Hawaii University.

She was also selected for the prestigious Singularity University program, based in NASA research centre in Silicon Valley for the program for entrepreneurs to address big problems where they can impact a billion users. After launching the 360ed company in Silicon Valley, she moved the headquarter to Myanmar and has built a team of 70 individuals. 360ed is providing policy advice, conducting teachers training and applying technological innovation to pedagogy in Myanmar.

Their work had been recognized by UNESCO and received an award for innovation in digital technologies in February 2018 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. She is now heading Myanmar office and working on EdTech projects dedicated to bringing scalable, immediate, and exponential impacts in transforming national education and beyond.

MICHAEL BRONNER

MICHAEL BRONNER

Bronner is an award-winning writer, producer, director and longtime journalist. After many years as a staff producer at CBS News/60 Minutes and long-form magazine writer for Vanity Fair, Foreign Policy and others, Bronner transitioned to feature film in 2005, collaborating with director Paul Greengrass on Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning United 93; Oscar-nominated Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi); and Green Zone (Matt Damon).

He wrote and is producing the feature film Chasing Agent Freegard (James Norton, Gemma Arterton; in pre-production for 4/21 shoot).He wrote and is producing an epic film about the apartheid-era relationship between South African musician Hugh Masekela and gangster monk Trevor Huddleston, whose relationship was tested over the Graceland controversey around the Cultural Boycott of South Africa.

While at 60 Minutes, Bronner co-produced the Peabody Award-winning documentary Death by Denial about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa, with Ed Bradley as correspondent. His work has also been recognized with the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting and three Emmy nominations, as well as the Silurians Press Club “President’s Choice Award” for a Vanity Fair expose based on never-before-heard NORAD recordings from the 9/11 attack. 

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

CHIDI ANSLEM ODINKALU

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is a human rights activist, lawyer, professor and writer. He was the former Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (Nigeria) and currently the senior team manager for the Africa Program of Open Society Justice Initiative.

He has worked as an advisor for the Ford Foundation New York, World Bank, African Union, International Council for Human Rights Policy, Geneva; and many others. In 2018, he co authored a book titled Too Good to Die.

SARIKA HEMI LAKHANI

SARIKA HEMI LAKHANI

Born to a German mother and a Kenyan/Indian father, Sarika was raised in the South of Germany. She began her professional career as a production assistant and coordinator for Studio Babelsberg, followed by several national and international productions. Sarika studied Film Production from 2002-2006 at the German Film- & TV Academy (dffb) in Berlin, and completed a post-graduate program entitled “L`Atelier Masterclass”, a collaboration of the Film Academy in Ludwigburg and La Femis in Paris.

During the Production of “Germany 09”, Sarika was approached by Marie Steinmann and Tom Tykwer to support their pilot project SOUL BOY. Today she is working as a producer for ONE FINE DAY FILMS, and is in charge of all operations.

THERON PATTERSON

THERON PATTERSON

Theron Patterson, originally from the USA, has taught filmmaking at the university level for 22 years. He was a faculty member at institutions in Singapore and Istanbul, Turkey, and is currently a professor (and director of the Program in Film) at the American University of Rome. He’s also taught several dozen filmmaking workshops in: South Korea, Turkey, Austria, Portugal, The Netherlands, and the US.

He also has over 25 years of professional experience in filmmaking in the U.S., Asia and Europe both in the independent film and television worlds, as well as in corporate communication. He’s written and directed short and feature-length films as well as worked professionally as a film editor and sound designer.

KUMI NAIDOO

KUMI NAIDOO

Born in Durban, South Africa. He is a Human rights and Environmental Activist.

Executive Director of Greenpeace International  from 2009 to 2016.

Secretary General of Amnesty International 2018 to 2020.

He is the first Global ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity as of June 2020.

LANCE GOULD

LANCE GOULD

Lance Gould is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Brooklyn Story Lab (BSL), a media-strategy firm that teaches purpose-driven organizations how to be more effective storytellers, particularly around their SDG-related work. He was previously a journalist who held newsroom-leadership positions at The Huffington Post (Executive Editor), The Boston Phoenix (Editor in Chief), The New York Daily News (Deputy Managing Editor), and Spy Magazine (Editor). In 2016, Lance received a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award for his editorial work related to the SDGs. In 2017, Lance was named to the Leadership Council for the UN’s Media for Social Impact Summit

Monique Ntumngia

Monique Ntumngia

Monique Ntumngia is a renewable energy entrepreneur from Cameroon. She is an
unapologetic feminist who believes that women and girls deserve the same equal
opportunities that men are entitled to. She is the founder of the Green Girls
Organisation an NGO based in Cameroon that trains exclusively women and girls in African rural communities on how to generate energy from the sun and waste using a unique scoring model(MNKB92) which is basically making use of Artificial Intelligence to provide specific clean energy solutions in regards to the energy needs of the community.

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LAURA

Laura Aguiar

Laura Aguiar is the Community Engagement Officer and Creative Producer for Making the Future at PRONI in Northern Ireland. She is a multi-media content creator and educator and works across the education, heritage, and arts sectors. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Rathmullan Film Festival.

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stephen color

Stephen Strong

Stephen Strong was born in Belfast in September 1967. He became an engineer after school and took up diving as a hobby. Through both activities he traveled a lot, sometimes combining the two, and experienced many wonderful places and the beauty of nature. After losing most of his sight in 2017, his life has taken a different path that led him to being involved in the ‘Every day is a School day’ project. It has opened up new ideas and activities that he can engage with.

Priyanka Srinivas

Priyanka Srinivas

​​Priyanka Srinivas is the Founder of The Live Green Co a Chilean Food Tech startup that blends Ancestral Sciences of Plant Nutrition, BioTech & Machine learning to R&D next-gen clean label, functional & sustainable plant-based food products. She has been named one of the 100 Women leaders of Chile for 2020.

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kevin color

Kevin Sofen

I am a water guy that loves technology, the fire service, side hustles and helping others.

I work for W.S. Darley & Company who manufactures fire, defense and water solutions for fire departments, federal agencies and the Department of Defense. I specifically focus on new product innovations that cover two distinct categories: water and virtual reality. I also am a part of several side hustles, my first being a social enterprise called Wristsponsible which raises funds and awareness for water projects that include safe water systems, watershed improvement and water is medicine projects. Additionally, I am a Co-Founder of Box of Rain, an organization with the mission to help corporations provide safe, accessible water to those in need after disasters so those impacted can worry about other urgent needs. In my third side hustle, I am a board member for Comics for Safety where we create and deploy graphic novels to communicate safety messages in an easy-to-digest way.

After I attended the 2019 UNLEASH Innovations Labs in Shenzhen, China, my friend and now partner James Armour and I were asking ourselves, “How can we continue this momentum around the United Nations Sustainable development Goals (SDGs)?” Over lunch discussions between solution co-creation, my fourth side hustle SDG Talks was born with the goal of developing a physical and virtual platform where changemakers could share ideas, best practices and human interest stories around the SDGs via a weekly podcast and monthly webinars.

Karishma Ahmed

Karishma Ahmed

Karishma Ahmed heads the Forums and Communications at the Balipara Foundation. Associated with the foundation for over five years now, Karishma’s efforts are centred around strengthening communications through digital platforms, managing branding objectives of the organisation and leading forums, dialogues regionally across Eastern Himalayan capitals. She has been engaged and passionate in bringing forward community stories from the grassroots, with a vision to recognise their conservation efforts and giving them a platform to share their green stories.  She firmly believes that conservation storytelling can inspire viewers to take action in promoting the indigenous knowledge, and understand the need to preserve biodiversity and ancient cultures in natural resource management. A post graduate in social sciences, her prior experience and other interests include socio-economic research with a special focus on gender empowerment and Ecofeminism.

kevin

James Armour

James has a strong understanding of the mechanisms, impacts, adaptive and mitigative solutions to climate change with a specific focus on hydrometeorological (flood/drought) hazards from Copenhagen University.


James is a co-founder at SDGTalks media, providing content creation services around the Sustainable Development Goals and highlighting the best-in-class solutions and activities towards the 2030 agenda.

He also has three years of project management experience working at the Danish environmental cluster and leading the International Cleantech Network. Areas of expertise and interest include: Partnerships, project development, stakeholder engagement and communications.

Fun fact, James established a cetacean conservation adventure world first 307km swim (32km)-run (92km)-bike (183km) of the Outer Hebrides.

Cynthia Doley

Cynthia Evelyn Doley

A Graduate from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, India , Cynthia is a digital marketing and social media enthusiast, looking to explore different opportunities in the field of conservation and passionate of highlighting Eastern Himalayan community stories to the world. Cynthia strongly believes that conservation today needs a strong youth connection and hence tries to focus her digital work around that. She also leads the Foundation’s workshops programmes with the grassroots champions at the centre stage, with a focus to inspire audience, students, youth groups and help them understand the importance of stories, rural future, and about our indigenous communities – who are the frontline of conservation.

Sandeep Borah

Sandeep Borah

A post-graduate in Mass Communication and Journalism from Tezpur Central University, Assam, Sandeep leads the regional forums of the Foundation across the Eastern Himalayan region. With his efforts to curate community forums, he has been part of the indigenous hub journey of the Forum – documenting grassroots traditions, folklore, culture, artforms and voices of the forest-fringe communities. With a background in journalism, he has been associated with esteemed national and regional media organisations (ETV Bharat, Northeast Live & EastMojo) with an expertise in both digital and electronic media platforms as a content specialist /reporter. He is also a core member of the Balipara Foundation’s Advocacy team.

Mugambi Nthiga

Mugambi Nthiga

Mugambi is an actor, writer and director working on stage and on-screen. He featured on the celebrated Kenyan film ‘Nairobi Half Life‘ and ‘Stories of Our Lives’, and went on to co-write the critically acclaimed films ‘Kati Kati‘ and ‘Supa Modo‘. He has also co-written, featured in and directed various stage plays seen in Nairobi, Kampala and Philadelphia. He starred in the solo performance play ‘Every Brilliant Thing‘ by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, and directed what was arguably Nairobi’s most well-attended play yet; a retrospective on renown politician and trade unionist Tom Mboya, titled ‘Too Early for Birds: Mboya‘. Mugambi is also part of Kenya’s premier improv collective dubbed ‘Because You Said So‘, which staged bi-monthly improv shows before the pandemic. The improvising has found itself in his daily life as he, like the rest of the world, is trying to figure out what’s going on. So far, it’s alright.