SAN FRANCISCO – Celebrating its 17th year of bringing award-winning documentary films to the Bay Area, the University of San Francisco (USF) will host the Human Rights Film Festival March 21-23 at the Presentation Theater located at 2350 Turk Blvd. at Masonic Ave. The three-day festival will showcase 13 films from nine countries and a program of nine USF student shorts. This event is free and open to the public, and will include four to five screenings each day.

This year’s films address human rights violations in the United States, Kenya, Spain, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Tonga, Argentina, Kiribati, Chile, and England. The issues include political repression, genocide, disappearances, free speech, censorship, environmental destruction, climate change, digital cleaning and corporations’ control of online information, policies abusing economic and social rights, workers rights, LGBTQ rights, racism, migrant and farm workers, indigenous rights, migrations, immigration, the prison system, and museums’ colonial plundering. Each screening will be followed by a Q&A session led by experts in the topics addressed by the films, including some of the filmmakers.

The festival begins with a series of short films produced by current USF students on Thursday, March 21 at 11:00 a.m., and closes with a screening of “The Silence of Others,” Best Documentary and Peace Film Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival 2018, showcasing the ongoing struggles for memory and justice for crimes committed during Franco’s 40-year dictatorship in Spain on Saturday, March 23 at 6:00 p.m.