Snowden doc and Act of Killing follow-up among highlights of 2015 One World
Preparations are well underway for the 2015 edition of the colourful One World international festival of human rights documentaries, which begins in Prague on Monday before travelling on to 33 other cities and towns. The visuals for the 2015 One World feature people covered in bubble wrap and before discussing expected highlights with fest director Hana Kulhánková I asked what was the thinking behind this year’s theme.
“They kind of have their own space – they cover themselves in a bubble. So we were thinking of presenting films and debates that would really burst through our own bubbles.”
One of your big films this year is Citizenfour, about Edward Snowden. It’s been a big success, everyone wants to see it. How hard was it to get that film for this year’s One World?
“Getting Citizenfour was one of the hardest tasks for my colleagues. I myself went to three different festivals to see the film, but it was always sold out.
“Also the distributors weren’t sending screeners or DVDs, so it was totally impossible to see the film, if you didn’t get a ticket at a festival. I was happy in the end to see the film in Finland, in January.
“We’re very happy that we can have the film, because we feel that the film is showing a totally important topic, not only what Edward Snowden did, but how it happened: what kind of strategy he used with the director and with the journalist from the Guardian to release the information that he had.”
“We’re very happy that we have so many guests coming to the festival this year, not only festival directors, producers and editors but also lots of protagonists, which is always very interesting for the audience, to really talk to the protagonists.
“I’m very happy that one of those is going to be Rushan Abbas. She is a very good lawyer and was the lawyer for a group of Uighurs who were sent to Guantanamo without having done anything wrong. She spent many years with them – she was really on their side and trying to get them out of Guantanamo.”
You also have the producer of The Act of Killing [Signe Byrge Sorensen] here with the follow-up to The Act of Killing, which was a gigantic documentary maybe two years ago.
“Yes, exactly, the producer of The Act of Killing is going to be at festival presenting a new film by Joshua Oppenheimer called The Look of Silence.
“It follows an incredible character, an eye doctor whose brother was killed. He goes to visit people who killed innocent victims; he really kind of opens them up and is looking for answers as to how they were able to do so many killings.”
