RAI Film Festival 2023 online now live

RAI Film Festival’s online programme of over eighty groundbreaking documentaries is now live, and runs until 31st March.

The international film festival, which is organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, gathers storytellers from every corner of the world, whose films shine a light on the people and places often lost in the spotlight of global media.

This 18th edition is open to a global streaming audience, making it one of the most accessible public film festivals, and longest running offering four weeks of unlimited viewing.

The expansive programme of non-fiction gems grapples with central issues of our times and questions our complex, shared world.

Leaders in contemporary anthropological cinema compete for the festival’s most prestigious honours, the main competition RAI Film Prize and the Basil Wright Prize. Other prizes include the Werbner Award, given to an anthropologist based on extensive fieldwork. The Ethnomusicology Film Award celebrates rich heritage of music and sound. A live-streamed awards ceremony takes place online on Monday 27 March.

Special programmes include animated shorts on the themes of care, coming-of-age and living with trauma, and Arandu – Listen to the Weather, a celebration of 35 years of Brazilian Indigenous filmmaking.

Other festival highlights include a Lifetime Achievement award to Alanis Obomsawin, legendary filmmaker of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada’s most distinguished citizen.Obomsawin has directed more than 53 films in a career that has spanned 54 years. The RAI President’s Award is presented to Trinh T. Minh-ha’s latest film, What About China?

Festival passes and tickets can be bought any time throughout the duration of the festival, with discounts available for students, those on a low income, and those from low-income countries.

The festival’s in-person programme, Live in Bristol, takes place from 22 to 25 March at the Watershed cinema and Arnolfini arts venue. With an offer of films and filmmaker events, workshops and socials, delegates and festival-goers get to enjoy the buzz of an international event in Bristol’s premier cinema and arts spaces.

Distinguished anthropological filmmakers and film theorists, David MacDougall, Sarah Pink, Kat Cizek and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, headline an online academic conference from 6 to 10 March. Another major conference highlight will see filmmakers Annelies Kusters and Erin Moriarty reflect on how deaf ethnographers make films and re-frame language in documentary film, which will be chaired by Prof Faye Ginsburg (NYU).

The conference of live paper presentations, workshops, roundtables and film ‘work-in-progress’ sessions, complements the film festival. Both are set to spark discussion across anthropology, visual art and the future of non-fiction film.

For film festival programme, passes and tickets information, visit the RAI Film Festival website.

To view the online conference panels, visit the RAI Film website.