The One World festival bills itself as a platform for documentary features focused on the media’s role in the fight for universal human rights, but beyond its activist roots, the fest is a great opportunity to catch films from around the world that wrestle with topics both controversial and drastically prescient.
In its eighth year, the partner festival to the One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague will be showcasing works that explore both the opportunities and challenges offered by global technology. Many shown in Germany, or at least Berlin, for the first time, the films will regularly be accompanied by director interviews or talks by human rights experts for those wishing to expand on the films’ themes.
Opening the festival will be 2008’s Examined Life (Nov 24, 19:00), which follows eight contemporary philosophers the likes of Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler as they discuss how their thought applies to modern culture – appropriately for such avant-garde deliberations, the film will be introduced via live Skype conference with one of the featured philosophers.
Another highlight is Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Nov 27, 20:00), a documentary which premiered at Sundance this year and examines a still highly controversial chapter in Guatemalan history: the military’s 1980s genocidal spree, which left some 200,000 people dead, and the extent of Washington’s responsibility within it.
One World Berlin, Nov 24-30 | Arsenal, www.arsenal-berlin.de; Most films in English or with English subs
