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LEAVING AFRICA

    • LEAVING AFRICA

    FINLAND - UGANDA 84 MIN
    RUSSIAN PREMIERE

    • ABOUT

      Finnish doctor Riitta has been working in Uganda for more than 25 years. Together with her Ugandan friend Catherine, she brings sex education to Ugandan villages, challenging priests, imams, women and their husbands to discussions on women's rights to their bodies, sexuality and life. In ultra-conservative Uganda, this soon leads to serious complications, jeopardizing their entire life's work.

       

      It is a film about the quest for gender equality in Africa and the world's greatest challenge - mitigating the population explosion.

    • DIRECTOR

      IIRIS HÄRMÄ 

       

      Has been involved in film industry since 1999 and is the other founding member of Guerilla Films Ltd. She has produced and directed several awardwinning short and feature-length documentaries that have acclaimed international reputation in various fi lm festivals around the world.

    • OTHER FESTIVALS

       

      • Doc Point Helsinki, Finland 2015 (Audience Award) 
      • Hot Docs Toronto, Canada 2015  
      • Festival SiciliAmbiente, Italy 2015 (Best Documentary) 
      • Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Australia 2015 
      • Sheffield Doc/Fest, UK 2015 
      • Leeds International Film Festival, UK 2015

       

    • DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

      The gender equality is progressing in small steps. I fi nd that it is extremely important to show the work done for equality matters. I am fascinated by how the religion and sexuality are so closely entangled in this fi lm. It has been interesting to witness the dialogues between religious leaders when they exchange their views on issues around sex and sexuality and then refl ect these views on the stories of individual women whose lives are directly affected by these values. Somehow this fi lm is very comforting on a way how it brings people of di erent faiths together in order to tackle common social problems. 


      I am also interested to seek answers for these questions: what are the benefi ts of development cooperation? How does it help the community and what is its signifi cance? What are the motives of the aid workers? I’m very happy that I can examine these issues through the emotional story of very unique and warm friendship of Finnish and Ugandan woman and share the humor and wisdom they have.

    • SECTION

      Main Competition 2016

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