The Main Jury awards the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic Award for the best film and the Best Director Award. Jury members are: Nick Broomfield (Great Britain), Robert Drew (USA), Patricio Guzmán (Chile), Marcel Łoziński (Poland), and Helena Třeštíková (Czech Republic).

The Václav Havel Special Award for the film with the most significant contribution to human rights awareness will be personally presented by former president Havel. Jury members under former president Havel's auspices are Helena Dluhošová, Šimon Pánek, and Pavel Koutecký.

The Rudolf Vrba Award is given to the best film in the „Right to Know" category. This year's jury members are courageous individuals who have suffered from human rights violations themselves. They are Věra Fleischmannová, Taisa Izmailová, Vladimír Kováč, Jelena Podgornaja and Lýdie Žigová.

The Mayor of Prague Award, given under the auspices of Mayor Pavel Bém, is awarded to the Best Short Film. Jury members are John Anderson (USA), Ally Derks (The Netherlands) Kerstin Hagrup (Sweden), Jean-Pierre Rehm (France), and Štefan Uhrík (Czech Republic).

The Czech Radio Award is presented for the best use of sound or music in a festival documentary. According to tradition, the jury is comprised of Czech Radio employees Jiří Hubička, Vlastimil Hankus, and Ladislav Reich.

Plzeňský Prazdroj is proud to sponsor this year's Audience Award for the best film chosen directly by the votes of festival-goers.

Story of awards

The sculptures were made by blind sculptor Božena Přikrylová. She created them using a „tactile modeling technique," which is a new method of artistic work with clay. During tactile modeling, artists only use their fingers and do not see the work they are creating.

The technique was developed in Štěpán Axman's studio in Brno, where he had been teaching blind students. Prikrylova was among them. The courses were based on standard sculptural theses that could be altered to suit blind people. In 1996, more blind people adopted this technique, and tactile modeling found its way abroad. Two years ago Axman opened a School of Tactile Modeling in Tasov, which is the only school of its kind in the world.

Božena Přikrylová is twenty-five. When she was sixteen she wrote the following:

"As a small girl i used to play in mud puddles and on a big heaps of dirt. Our favorite game was the cooking game, in which boys made dishes and girls made dumplings. When mothers called children to have their lunches, everybody ran home, but i stayed - sitting on top of the heap of dirt and watching the sun crawl forward across the sky. These were striking moments, which i loved.

The years of playing with mud were soon over and suddenly it was time to go to school. It was something new to me, and i couldn't get used to the fact that i should obey all those strange people. Gradually, i found new friends and became interested in all sorts of things. I learned to play the piano and the flute, to sew and knit.

In art class, i began to work with different materials, and while squashing the colored plastic thing called „modurit,“ i was thinking about my heaps of dirt and mud. I almost started to forget about them when a teacher brought a new material into class. It reminded me of the mud that sticks to your shoes - it was my heap, dipped in water. I was modeling everything that came to my mind. Each time i finished a work, i was excited that i could actually do something like this. I felt like a creator and presented my works to my friends, which made me even more excited than them.

In my thoughts I'm coming back to a heap of my happiness that revealed itself to me. I've been working with clay for five years now. I've met both people who had the chance to hold it in their hands and those who had not. I rather give it to the latter. I found a heap of my happiness, and i wouldn't like to lose it.

P.S. I forget to mention the most important thing. I'm a blind girl and my eyes are hidden in my palms. One cannot see through them but feel. What I'm trying to say is that you should let blind people look, even if they look by touching everything."