A ten-days long event is based on the concept ‘A film, A subject, A debate’, following the screenings with discussion in presence of filmmakers and specialists.
It means that the films presented at the festival are followed with a topic discussion on the problems highlighted by the movie, in the presence of filmmakers, human rights defenders, politicians and recognized specialists.
This simultaneous event makes the Festival a Free Platform for discussion and debates on a wide variety of topics concerning human rights,[8] including violence against women, historical revisionism, microcredits, threat of genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, forced disappearances during the 1990s in Algeria, massacres under the Syrian regime, violence in Central American countries,[9][10] human trafficking in Bangladesh, child soldiers in Yemen, reproductive rights in the Dominican Republic, and many more.
Other patrons of the festival are Barbara Hendricks, Ken Loach, Robert Badinter, Ruth Dreifuss, William Hurt, and Louise Arbour.
The panel discussions of the edition regarded the topics of AI rapid expansion, gender apartheid in modern Afghanistan, and many more.
In the Creative Documentary Competition the Geneva Grand Prix was awarded to Name Me Lawand by Edward Lovelace, the Gilda Vieira de Mello Prize went to Life Is Beautiful by Mohamed Jabaly.
The OMCT prize in the Focus Competition was taken by Jialing Zhang's Total Trust, and the Artopie Award — It’s Always Been Me by Julie Bezerra Madsen.
The list of premieres included Angels of Sinjar by Hannah Polak and Red Jungle by Juan José Lozano and Zoltán Horváth.
Among the guests of the edition there were American whistleblower Chelsea Manning and abortion rights activist Paxton Smith, WTO director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nobel-prize winner Shirin Ebadi.
[24] In Creative documentaries competition, the Grand Prix of Geneva went to Among the believers by Hemal Trivedi et Mohammed Ali Naqvi, Prize Gilda Viera De Mello: Hooligan sparrow by Nanfu Wang, Special Jury Prize, offered by the Barbara Hendricks Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation: A Syrian Love Story by Sean McAllister, Youth Jury Award: Hooligan sparrow by Nanfu Wang.
In Fiction and human rights competition Grand Prix was given to ZVIZDAN (The High Sun) by Dalibor Matanić, Special Mention EXPERIMENTER by Michael Almereyda, Youth Jury Award: “3000 NIGHTS” by Mai Masri.
In OMCT competition Grand Prix of the World Organization Against Torture was given to Chechenya, a war without trace by Manon Loizeau.
In Fiction and human rights competition the Grand Prix was given to A Stranger by Croatian director Bobo Jelcic, Youth Jury Award: The Selfish Giant by Clio Barnard.
Guest list included Carla Del Ponte, Riccardo Petrella, Navanethem Pillay, Géraldine Savary, Leila Chahid, Colonel Shaul Arieli, and others.