Published July 16, 2022

The International Festival of Guanajuato (giff) and the Ministry of Health of Guanajuato made an pledge to strengthen actions against violence against women.

This festival will be held from July 21 to 31 in Irapuato, San Miguel de Allende and León, and it will be on Saturday, July 23, when the “Zero Violence against Women” Campaign will be launched at the Bicentennial Theater of the shoemaking city.

The founder of Guanajuato International Film Festival, Sarah Hoch, pointed out that together with the Ministry of Health of Guanajuato and Planet Youth, this year the campaign is stronger than ever.

“Zero Violence against Women,” she explained, aims to prevent atrocious behaviors that affect us all, through dissemination and information based on scientific evidence collected by the Planet Youth initiative.

Within this campaign, the animation workshop “Amor a Tiempo” is contemplated, which will consist of three films with three themes that have to do with the platforms of the social fabric. Topics that are considered important and relevant for youth were selected: one is the overuse of the screen, and another about the importance of education, such as knowledge of art and sport.

Through this space, three animated short films will be created that will express the voice, concerns and enormous talent of the children and adolescents of our identity.

In addition, the conference “Racism and Stereotypes in Guanajuato Cinema” was organized with the participation of Poder Prieto, which is a Mexican collective that seeks to eradicate systemic racism in Mexico. Through this talk, we seek to raise awareness among audiences about the serious problems of demographic representation faced by the national media industry.

Among GIFF’s social programs is also the “Wise Girls” project, which is an education platform for girls and adolescents that seeks to ensure that women are healthy, safe and knowledgeable from an early age and are aware of their status as women. As part of this effort, the film Pad Man by Hindustani director R. Balki will be screened.

Dr. Daniel Díaz Martínez, Secretary of Health of Guanajuato indicated that Planet Youth is a model to prevent the disintegration of the social fabric among children and adolescents and that it has been implemented in 34 countries, this year this strategy is added to the campaign of “Zero Violence against Women” within the framework of the Film Festival.

Díaz Martínez mentioned that the GIFF has been joining forces against gender violence in all its expressions for 15 years.

He stressed the importance of creating narratives in which the discourse of prevention is also the protagonist and that the campaigns will be very useful for young people to learn to manage their free time, among other benefits:

“The Ministry of Health of the State of Guanajuato has implemented since 2016, in conjunction with the GIFF, prevention campaigns, because art and culture represent an opportunity for girls, boys and adolescents. Who hasn’t seen a movie where we make us fall twenty? What we want is to continue promoting a better environment for the development of the human being”.