Take One Action announces 2016 programme

Take One Action film festival returns to explore key themes facing the world today, including women’s empowerment, refugee integration, fighting austerity and global warming

Feature by News Team | 11 Aug 2016

Has there been an edition of Take One Action that felt more essential? In a year of political turmoil both at home and abroad, we need a festival interested in exploring the most urgent issues of our time more than ever.

In the face of this doom and gloom, the festival opens with Tomorrow (14-15 Sep), a hopeful doc that’s more interested in solutions than problems. Directed by French actor Melanie Laurent (still most famous for her turn in Inglourious Basterds) and ecological rights advocate Cyril Dion, it takes us around the world to explore the current ways in which activists and everyday people are working together to help make the world a better, greener, more sustainable place. Inspirational viewing for anyone who wants to pitch in and help save this planet.



As you’d expect, the ongoing refugee crisis is at the heart of the festival. Walls (22 & 24 Sep) by Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo Molina, takes on the issue by looking at three crossings between six nations, examining the lives of the people who are trying to protect the borders, and those who desperately want to breach them. And at Home in the World (19-20 Sep) takes us inside the Red Cross’s school for child refugees in Denmark, following five children as they adjust to their new surroundings.

Another timely issue explored in the festival is the impact of austerity policies on ordinary people across Europe. It's the focus of two films: A Farm of Passage (18 & 21 Sep) and The Olive Tree (23-24 Sep). Meanwhile, Shadow World (21 Sep) is an angry, gut-punching doc exploring the nefarious goings-on of the global arms trade – the film won the Best Documentary award at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Also fascinating-looking is documentary A Good American (15-16 Sep), which follows NSA whistleblower and data privacy campaigner Bill Binney, who claims to have developed a programme that could have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks but was discontinued by his employer in Spring 2001. Binney and director Friedrich Moser will be in Scotland for the premiere. With the UK looking at a new era of state surveillance powers thanks to Theresa May's plans for a Snoopers' Charter, it should be a lively debate.

This year’s Take One Action has a particular focus on women’s empowerment. Sundance hit Sonita (23-24 Sep), for example, follows a young Afghan refugee, living in Iran, who dreams of being a rapper but her family has other plans, which involve shipping her back to Afghanistan and auctioning her off for marriage. Thrillingly, Sonita is having none of it.

A similar punky feminist spirit runs through the festival. Hooligan Sparrow (17-18 Sep) documents the fight for equality by gender rights activists in China and The Trials of Spring (21 Sep) explores the legacy of the Arab Spring through the resilience of three female activists. 

Radical Grace (17 Sep) – executive produced by Susan Sarandon – concerns a group of nuns who took on the Vatican’s attitude to the place of women in the church. Most pleasing is that this concern for gender equality has spread to the programming, with over 50% of the films in Take One Action directed or co-directed by women.

“By giving audiences direct access to crucial, moving stories from all over the globe as well as the information and tools to push for positive social change within their community and beyond, this festival offers a much-needed antidote to powerlessness,” says TOA’s executive director Tamara Van Strijthem. “We are enormously proud to be encouraging a true sense of connection and a wide variety of perspectives, with a welcome plurality of voices behind the camera, on screen and among our guests.”


Take One Action takes place 14-25 Sep at various venues across Edinburgh and Glasgow. For tickets and full programme information, go to takeoneaction.org.uk