UC Merced is hosting a film festival next week. Here’s what to know
UC Merced will host a five-day film festival next week highlighting human rights and encouraging empathy.
The 2026 Todo Cambia Human Rights Film Festival is scheduled for March 2-6. Todo Cambia translates to “Everything Changes” in Spanish.
This year’s film festival focuses on empathy, celebrating “how empathy strengthens community and reminds us that truly seeing one another can transform the world within and around us,” according to the event website.
Film screenings for all but one film will be on the UC Merced campus at Classroom and Office Building 2, Room 290.
The screening of the festival’s final film, “Coronas Negras,” will be shown at the Mainzer in downtown Merced on Friday, March 6.
Directed by André Lô Sánchez, “Coronas Negras” explores the lives of four people from Senegalese families in Mexico, according to UC Merced’s Jody Murray. Sanchez is expected to attend the screening and participate in a post-screening discussion.
The films and panel discussions are free to attend, but organizers are asking that anyone who plans to go register online. Parking for the screenings is available in the Bellevue parking lot.
The film festival is organized by Yehuda Sharim, a UC Merced professor of media and performance studies.
“In a world where media and cinema are dominated by crisis, we can easily lose sight of one another, of our shared humanity, of art and culture, of our potentialities and vulnerabilities,” Sharim told Murray. “Todo Cambia invites us to look into that mirror of self, our personal and collective crossroads, where cinema and art offer an antidote that invites us to reflect, heal and act.”
