The 28th One World International Human Rights Film Festival closed in Prague on March 19 with Maasja Ooms’ My Word Against Mine winning the International Jury Award for Best Film, capping a 2026 edition that drew 22,843 attendees and reaffirmed the event’s position as one of Central Europe’s key documentary showcases. The Prague leg ran from March 11 to 19 and now continues through the Prague Echoes programme and a nationwide regional rollout across 59 cities in the Czech Republic.
In the international competition, the Best Director prize went to Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi for A Fox Under a Pink Moon. Ooms’ winning film is set in a psychotherapeutic environment and unfolds as a conversation between a therapist, a group of participants and their inner voices, with the jury praising its formal restraint and emotional precision. A Fox Under a Pink Moon, meanwhile, was recognised for its portrait of a young Afghan woman living in Iran and for the way it frames artistic expression as a mode of survival under patriarchal pressure.
Other major winners included Nima Sarvestani’s Surviving the Death Committee, which took the Right to Know Award for Best Film, and Hana Nováková’s AMOOSED: a moose odyssey, which won the Czech Competition. The Best VR Film award went to Domenico Singha Pedroli’s Another Place, while Anastasiya Miroshnichenko’s Welded Together received the Regional Jury Award. The Student Jury Award went to Anastasiia Vedenskaia’s When I Get Jailed, and Rozálie Kohoutová’s Ela – Can Jump won the Children’s Jury Award. Felix Länge’s Driving Europe, focused on the labor exploitation of truck drivers, took the Audience Award.
The festival also highlighted the importance of public discussion around the films. The Abakus Foundation Audience Award for Exceptional Debate went to the debate accompanying Deaf?, which addressed the place of Czech Sign Language in public life. Organizers said this year’s edition featured 106 films overall, including 82 feature documentaries, 16 fiction features and eight VR works, alongside 196 public screenings, 234 school screenings and 123 debates. The event also welcomed 147 filmmakers, 109 accredited film professionals, 132 journalists and 243 accredited industry professionals in total.
One World Online launches its first post-festival package on March 20, with a second to follow on May 1. The festival’s 29th edition is scheduled to run from March 10 to April 23, 2027.
