The 20th edition of One World took place in Prague on March 5-16, 2018. In its twenty-year history, it has become the world's largest international human rights documentary film festival and, as its director Ondřej Kamenický wrote in the festival program, has "always transgressed the boundaries of mere film in an effort to initiate discussions about topics the media talks about very little about or, conversely, covers too much."
This year's program presented 128 films from 52 countries and in 15 categories, and invited over 120 international guests. The screenings took place in various venues throughout the Czech capital, including the historic Kino Lucerna, which was inaugurated in 1909 and is one of the oldest cinema halls still in operation across Europe and the world. Most screenings were followed by extensive Q&A sessions, many of which ran for over thirty minutes, therefore surpassing the norm of most international film festivals - a further evidence of One World's commitment to encouraging dialogue.
The theme of this year's edition was "Updating the system": "We update our personal systems when watching the films, as we actually process a lot of information during the screenings," explained Kamenický. "As compared to consuming the news and photos that appear in rapid succession on the social networks, when we watch a film we have time to decipher all of the important information understand the contexts, and, most importantly, form our own opinion." This explanation appears to refer to the power of film to expose its spectators to truths that they are not familiar with or never even knew existed. As such, the choice to open One World this year with a screening of The Cleaners (Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck / Germany, Brazil, Netherlands / 2018) seems appropriate.
The film talks about the little-known role of "cleaners" hired by companies such as Facebook or Google to search for and delete inappropriate content in the Filipino capital of Manila. It examines the gradual devastation of the psyches of these men and women, whose experiences include finding horrible images of anything from executions to child pornography. However, it also looks at another flaw in the system: the problem of content being deemed inappropriate if it does not suit the governments of individual countries or if, for example, it reveals the realities of wartime conflicts in an alarming way. By pointing their cameras, mostly undercover, on a subject conveniently left lurking in the shadows, the directors of The Cleaners appear to be urging spectators to ponder on the dangers of not paying enough attention to the democracy of the digital space.
The Cleaners was presented in a section of One World titled "One Zero," which focused on the stories of people's relationships with the digital networks. Other themed categories of the festival included "Eurodrome," comprising documentary works dealing with such pressing contemporary European issues as mass migration and the growth of populist movements, "Americana," turning its attention to the United states and offering a brief recap a year after the election of Donald Trump as its president, "Unearthed," dedicated to works exploring environmental themes and issues, and "Journeys to Freedoms," devoted to countries in which People in Need, the Czech nonprofit and non-governmental organization that implements humanitarian relief and long-term development projects, educational programs, and human rights programs in crisis regions all over the world, is currently active or to which it has been focusing its attention for a long time.
One World also has three main competition strands: the International Competition, the Czech Competition, and the "Right to Know" category. The latter section is dedicated to documentary works revealing serious human rights violations or depicting powerful stories of people actively fighting for human rights. A jury named after the first president of the Czech Republic after the 1989 Velvet Revolution against Communist rule, Václav Havel, awarded its top prize to Watani - My Homeland (Marcel Mettelsiefen / U.K. / 2017), a shocking eyewitness report on the life of the family of a commander in the Free syrian Army in war-ravaged Aleppo.
Non-Parent (Jana Počtová / Czech Republic / 2018) won the Best Film award of the Czech Competition with its mosaic of non-traditional forms of parenthood in the 21st-century, no longer confined to biological parents and freed from the need to be divided into traditional mother and father roles.
One World's International Competition featured The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid (Feargal Ward / Ireland / 2017), the Irish documentary about land grabbing directed by that won the Best Irish Film prize at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival days prior to its Czech premiere. The top prize of this category went to The Deminer (Hogir Hirori and Shinwar Kamal / Sweden / 2017), about Fakhir Berwari, now a legend in the Iraqi town of Dohuk, who dedicated his life to getting rid of all kinds of explosives, even at great personal risk.
Other also held a retrospective on the works of the ever-inspiring British documentarian Kim Longinotto, screening Sister in Law (U.K. / 2005), Pink Saris (India, U.K. / 2010), and Dreamcatcher (U.K. / 2015). Longinotto herself hosted a masterclass during which, among other things, she talked about her upcoming documentary, which she is currently working on, that will tell the story of the life of rebellious Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia.
As the festival prompted people to "update their system," its plea for dialogue and change seemed to spread to through the streets of Prague. On March 14, several thousand Czechs gathered to protest against current president Miloš Zeman's attack on public television, underscoring a worsening of media rights in post-Communist European Union members, but also a strong desire of many to do something about the worrying trend.
From One
World 2018
Words: Matt Micucci
CinÉireann / March 2018 33