A fairplanet produced Shortfilm has won best documentary

From over 4,000 submissions in total, Call Me Neguinho, an emotionally driven and delicately depicted story based in Cape Verde, directed by Selim Harbi and produced by FairPlanet has won Best Documentary at the Accra Indie Filmfestival 2020.

The short film scripted as a hybrid format merging documentary and fictional storytelling was first published on FairPlanet as part of our extensive dossier Beyond Slavery.

The story follows Neguinho as he walks around the Vila Nova suburb of Cape Verde’s capital Praia, recounting his and his fellow communities' colonial past at a crucial spot for the slave trade. It is a journey of exploration, emancipation and empowerment to acknowledge and overcome their collective trauma of slavery and identity.

As Selim Harbi says in his director's message, it is an attempt to "tell our own story as Africans and claiming our own narrative of our past and shaping our present".

As the producers, we intended that this African story is told by an African character, directed by an African filmmaker, filmed on an African island and screened on an African film festival to a local as well as a global audience.

The realities of our world

For many of us living across the globe, the very notion of human trafficking seems utterly incomprehensible. And yet, it is a reality in 164 countries the world over. Eradicating trafficking of persons is part of the UN's SDGs, addressed specifically in goals 5.2, 8.7 and 16.2.

When tackling trafficking in persons, one of the greatest challenges we face is in developing targeted counter-trafficking responses as well as measuring their impact, leading the lack of reliable, high-quality data related to the scale of human trafficking and the profile of victims.

Which is exactly why this year's World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, which took place yesterday, July 30, is focused on our first responders. These are, as the UN puts it, the individuals across many sectors who are "identifying, supporting, counselling and seeking justice for victims of trafficking, and challenging the impunity of the traffickers."