Despierta Festival
TIME: Spain 6-7.30pm, UK 5-6.30pm
WAKE UP, THE PLANET NEEDS YOU (Despierta, el planeta te necesita) is the name of a Festival of documentaries and debates that is organized every year in Madrid by Despierta Association. This 11th edition aims to make you enjoy discovering the importance of conserving biodiversity and helping to protect it and regenerate it. All the debates will take place from 6 to 7:30 in the afternoon and the documentaries will be available during the Festival. This edition will be totally ONLINE and FREE due to Covid19.
The Festival will dedicate 5th June, International Environment Day, to ecocide under the title Join the movement against ecocide hosting A DEBATE ON ECOCIDE with three remarkable speakers who will approach the issue from different perspectives:
- Baltasar Garzón, lawyer and former judge, former advisor of the International Criminal Court, presiding over the FIBGAR Foundation (organization for Human Rights and Universal Jurisdiction) Fibgar and member of the Board of Trustees of the Stop Ecocide Foundation.
- Joaquín Araujo, naturalist, writer and documentary filmmaker, will speak from the perspective of planet Earth about why it is so necessary to achieve the Law of Ecocide to protect the life of the planet. Joaquín Araujo
- Maite Mompó, director of the Stop Ecocide campaign and the Earth Protectors movement in Spain, with a long career in human rights and environment activism. Maite Mompó
As a support to this event, from the previous days it will be possible to watch THREE SHORT DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT ECOCIDE, unpublished in Spain, which gives an exceptional opportunity to gain an empathic insight into those communities already suffering ecocide and to understand the potential of a simple legal solution with the power to reconnect humanity to the greater web of life, protecting future generations of all species including our own.
- Big Sun: A film in which we will visit Vanuatu, an island country in the Pacific where the locals call climate change Big Sun. They live off the land to garden, fish and find medicine. They depend on the quality of the soil and water on the island to provide for their families. And the sea level is rising, rapidly, and they are also suffering extreme draughts and then severe cyclons.
Harm to harmony
We will visit the Ecuadorian rainforest and the indigenous people of Sarayaku, known as the ‘People of Zenith’ who are defending their ancestral lands from oil exploration for the benefit of all of us. They understand the interconnectedness of all things and how we must live as part of nature.
Excerpt from feature film The Code
It shows the importance of making ecocide crime part of international law in future, and how universal jurisdiction enables criminals to be arrested anywhere in the world if they commit such crimes. Baltasar Garzón and Polly Higgins, among others, feature in it.
Visit the page www.asociaciondespierta.org to see all this year's interesting program, which will be held online from La Casa Encendida cultural center.
Sign up for free at Eventbrite. is to attend all the debates (in Spanish) and watch the exclusive documentaries (in English with Spanish subtitles)
Don't miss it!