The Festival

Emerging in 1991 out of a desire to present films made in Africa, a multidisciplinary and artistic event until 1998, the Black Movie Festival shifts its focus in 1999 at the instigation of new management.

Faithful to its initial vocation of promoting films shaped by realities and imaginary realities other than those familiar in the Western world and echoing the multiculturalism that characterizes Geneva, the festival widens its horizons to films from the three so-called "Southern" continents: Africa, Asia and Latin America, and occasionally to emerging European films with innovative forms. Guided by new management, the event also focuses entirely on the 7th Art.

In its choice of films, Black Movie favors auteur cinema, as well as independent or unusually formatted films that are rarely, or not at all, shown in Swiss movie theaters. The festival aims to harmonize with contemporary cinematography, anchored in today's social and esthetic realities, and to develop as yet unpublished and innovative programming.

Committed to the defense of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and South American films, the Black Movie Festival has offered film-lovers in Geneva and French-speaking Switzerland an opportunity to discover the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhangke, Carlos Reygadas, Wang Bing, Hong Sangsoo, Takashi Miike, Tsai Ming-Liang and João Pedro Rodrigues – for the first time. Most of those film directors, now winning kudos and prizes at the world's most prestigious film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Busan, Toronto, Rotterdam…), were there in person when their films were being screened at Black Movie.

Sorted into thematic sections (society, politics, new urban culture, gender...), the films screened during this annual 10-day festival witness to the liveliness of an international cinematography completely ignored by commercial distribution circuits and barely visible in Switzerland. Here, audience find all shapes and sizes of film: fiction, documentaries, experimental, animated, feature length and short films. Daring and specifically targeted programming encourages minority voices, candor, cinematographic quality and impertinence. As for the festival's competitive aspect, a Jury of international critics awards a prize from the City of Geneva to the year's finest work.

Black Movie can lay claim to global outreach, confirmed by the arrival each year of some twenty guest film directors from all continents and by the presence of and coverage by numerous foreign correspondents.