UCDVO Film Series
The UCDVO Film Series is an integral part of UCDVO’s Global Citizenship Programme and is funded by Concern Worldwide and Irish Aid. Hosted in the UCD Cinema the Film Series welcomes attendees from the wider UCD community to engage with five of the very best global justice documentaries from the year. We are delighted to see No Other Land awarded Best Documentary and the 2025 Oscars!
Each screening is accompanied by a guest speaker and an opportunity for discussion. Screenings are free of charge, all are welcome but seats must be reserved in advance at this email: info.ucdvo@ucd.ie
Programme 2025
BLACK BOX DIARIES - Monday 24th March, 5.00pm, Guest Speaker - Noeline Blackwell
-365x243.JPG)
Black Box Diaries follows director and journalist Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, Shiori's quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems. [Please note: this film contains references to sexual assault which may be harmful and triggering for some audiences]
ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND - Monday 31st March, 5.00pm, Guest Speaker - Neil Greene
Ernest Cole, a South African photographer was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid to a world audience - his camera was his weapon in the fight against apartheid. His images laid bare the cruelty of a segregated South Africa, exposing the truth when the world tried to look away. His book House of Bondage, published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old, led him into exile in NYC and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings. Raoul Peck recounts his wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence or complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime.
SUGARCANE - Monday 7th April, 5.00pm, Guest Speaker - Dr Emilie Pine
A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life – Sugarcane, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie – is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation into abuse and death at an Indian residential school, the film empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths – and the love that endures within their families despite the revelation of genocide.
NOCTURNES - Monday 14th April, 5.30pm, Guest Speaker - Éanna Ní Lamhna
Nocturnes transports us to the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas where in the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on the secret world of moths. An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, the film weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world. Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, to seek clues about what the future has in store for the moths. The result is a rare and transformative experience that invites us all to look with more attention and care at the hidden interconnections in nature.
NO OTHER LAND - Monday 28th April, 5.30pm, Guest Performance by Aziz Abushark, & Guest Speaker - Dr Vincent Durac
FULLY BOOKED
No Other Land wins the Oscar for Best Documentary 2025
For half a decade, Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist, films his community of Masafer Yatta being destroyed by Israel's occupation, as he builds an unlikely alliance with an Israeli journalist who wants to join his fight. in the is an unflinching account of a community's mass expulsion and acts as a creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.
Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.
Screenings are free of charge but please book your seats at info.ucdvo@ucd.ie
The UCDVO Film Series is kindly supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Irish Aid) and Concern Worldwide. The content and views represented in the films should not be taken to reflect the policies and views of Irish Aid, Concern Worldwide or UCD Volunteers Overseas.
