PATOIS Film Festival

Founded in 2004, PATOIS is organized by a radical collective of filmmakers, activists, writers, artists, scholars, feminists, and abolitionists who program the annual New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival; organize year-round film screenings, artist talks, workshops, teach-ins, and walking tours; and co-host special events.

PATOIS has premiered hundreds of influential, social-justice-oriented films from around the world, highlighting brilliant local filmmakers and vital grassroots organizations.

As an organizing project, PATOIS stands firm in its resistance to imperialist wars, illegal annexations, and racist colonial occupation at home and abroad. We stand in solidarity with liberation movements challenging genocide, colonialism, the carceral state, white supremacy, and patriarchal violence locally and globally.

Since our inception in 2004, PATOIS' programs have expanded along with our reach, public engagement, partners, and the subsequent support needed to sustain them. We have built an interconnected, broad-based community that spans geographies, borders, and social justice movements while strongly opposing ideologies, policies, actions, and wars perpetuating violence and human rights abuses.

As PATOIS continues to evolve, center the leadership of people of color, and reimage our work, we seek your support.