Bologna is hosting a 10-day celebration of diversity and dignity with a film and arts festival devoted to human rights.
Human Rights Nights, opening on Friday, will screen some 50 films from around the world, including features, shorts and documentaries.
One of the highlights of the festival will be a meeting with Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, who will engage in a public discussion and read some of her poems.
There will also be exhibitions, concerts, dance classes, soccer matches, talks and debates.
However, the focus of the initiative will be the films, which open on Friday evening with Tulpan, the first dramatic feature film by celebrated Kazakh documentarian Sergey Dvortsevoy. Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes, it is set in the steppes of southern Kazakhstan and tells the tale of a young nomad who returns home after completing his military service.
The closing film is Africa Unite by Stephanie Black, shot in Addis Ababa during a 12-hour concert celebrating the 60th anniversary of Bob Marley's birthday.
The previews and fiction section has a range of offerings, some of which on show for the first time, others of which have already won awards around the world.
The Hurt Locker, which won the Human Rights Film Network Award, is a thriller by US director Kathryn Bigelow, exploring the experiences of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.
Spike Lee's Miracle At Sant'Anna tells of four African-American soldiers fighting in Italy during World War II at the time of a notorious Nazi massacre.
Waltz With Bashir, which won this year's Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is an Israeli animated documentary by Ari Folman, recalling his experiences from the 1982 Lebanon war.
Other documentaries include Below Sea Level by Italian director Gianfranco Rosi, who won the Venice Horizons Documentary Award 2008 for his four-year coverage of a group of Los Angeles homeless living in the desert.
The War On Democracy is an award-winning British documentary exploring the influence of US politics on the economic choices of Latin America.
A variety of issues are explored in the 12 films in the shorts section, touching on subjects such as human sex trafficking in Eastern Europe, the dangers facing Mexicans crossing the US border and child soldiers.
Human Rights Nights also features films in collaboration with other events and organizations.
There are two documentary offerings as part of the Gender Bender Festival: A Jihad For Love looks at the co-existence of Islam and homosexuality, while The Times of Harvey Milk was the inspiration for the acclaimed feature film, Milk, starring 2009 Oscar winner Sean Penn.
Human rights organization Amnesty International is presenting two films at the festival: Taxi To The Dark Side looks at the murder of an Afghan taxi-driver in US custody, while Anna, 7 Years On The Frontline explores the life of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down in Moscow in 2006.
The Italian section of Doctors Without Borders will screen Una Stagione all'Inferno, a reportage on the appalling conditions facing migrant farmhands in southern Italy, while a UNICEF offering looks at the work of educators in the Democratic Republic of Congo attempting to rehabilitate street children.
Human Rights Nights runs from March 27 until April 5 at various locations across Bologna. For more information visit www.humanrightsnights.org.
