A festival that is not just about films

The One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, organised by the People in Need foundation, is currently the largest human rights film festival in the world. More than 100,000 viewers attend it every year. Half of these festival-goers comprise audiences from our network of regional festivals, which has expanded this year to 33 towns and cities in Bohemia and Moravia.

The films shown at One World provide comprehensive information on the entire gamut of human rights, foreign-policy and social issues. The festival demonstrates how effective a tool documentary film can be, if it is used strategically for increasing awareness, education, advocating human rights, stimulating debate, and promoting social integration.

The aim of One World’s activities is to awaken a sense of joint responsibility among audiences for the state of society and to support their inclinations towards civic activism. The Homo Homini award, which is so far the only international human rights prize from a Czech organisation, is presented within the scope of the festival.

Discussions with festival guests after screenings, panel debates with experts, screenings for primary and secondary schools, and cooperation with universities and colleges are all an integral part of One World. The History, Film and Human Rights project strives to ensure that seminars on human rights become firmly embedded in tuition at Czech universities.

As of this year, the festival is also devoting itself to activities intended for film professionals. In cooperation with the German organisation Documentary Campus, it is organising an open workshop, focusing on the development and distribution of documentary films with a special emphasis on their human rights aspects.

Extensive international cooperation is important for One World. One World in Brussels is to be held for the fifth year, and it is taking place under the auspices of the president of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek. The One World festival also provides methodological guidance to those who are establishing new film festivals abroad. One World is one of the founding members of the Human Rights Film Network (HRFN), which is an association that brings together 32 festivals from all over the world.

In Prague throughout the year, the festival team regularly organises Right to Know screenings at special Film and Debate Thursdays. In the form of panel discussions, these events acquaint the public with the wider contexts of local and international human rights cases, which are often neglected by the Czech media. The programme for the spring of 2011 will include the films at this year’s festival that enjoyed the most success with audiences. You can also watch excerpts of the debates on this website.

The festival develops alternative means of distribution for documentary films. Since 2010, it has been organising the Get Your Audience programme, which offers free loans of documentary films so that viewers can present them to their own audiences. More than 500 film projectionists have got involved in the programme, and they have attracted more than 20,000 people to their screenings.