Prague, March 13 (CTK) – Nowhere to Hide, a Swedish-Norwegian film about the IS-controlled part of Iraq, has won the 19th One World festival of human rights documentaries in Prague, and the best direction prize went to Jiu-liang Wang for a film about a plastic recycling plant in China, the organisers told CTK on Monday.
A total of 12 films took part in the main competition of the international festival that will end on Wednesday and continue in other 32 Czech towns and also in Brussels.
The winning film of Zaradasht Ahmed is about an Iraqi male nurse who is shooting his life in the war-afflicted environment before he escapes from the IS-controlled part of Iraq and becomes a protagonist of the story.
The jury said the author’s courage enables spectators to see his life in conditions that no one would like to experience, and also life in a devastated country.
Jiu-liang Wang’s film Plastic China shows a plastic recycling plant where adults and children live amid plastic wastes imported from Europe.
To many people, recycling simply means environment protection, but to many others, it is a way to survive, said the jury comprised of the Prague Film Academy dean Zdenek Holy, last year’s victorious film director Liang Zhao and the heads of several film festivals.
A total of 13 films were assessed by the Vaclav Havel Jury, which awards the prize for a special contribution to human rights.
The prize went to Chasing Asylum, a film by Australian director Eva Orner, which uses hidden cameras to show conditions in the refugee detention centres in the Pacific where Australia takes asylum seekers.
It is an original and shocking film that unveils the moral, legal and political failure of the international community in tackling one of the most urgent humanitarian problems, said the jury comprised of representatives of foreign organisations that deal with human rights protection.
The jury’s special mention went to Croat film maker Duro Gavran for his News from Laayoune, a film about the Western Sahara.
A Normal Autistic Film by Miroslav Janek, which focuses on autistic children, won the best Czech film prize.
The student jury awarded Death by Design, a film by Sue Williams that deals with the production of electronic devices using toxic materials.
More than 24,000 people visited the festival that started a week ago.
