The closing ceremony of the 7th International Film Festival WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film took place at the Muranów cinema on 16 December 2007. As the best film, the festival’s audience selected the Israeli documentary “Bridge over the Wadi”, directed by Barak Heymann and Tomer Heymann, about a joint Israeli-Arab elementary school. Director Barak Heymann collected the award on Sunday.(18-DEC-07)

Written by Agnieszka Chmielecka/ HRH Warsaw

The feature film competition jury, made up of: Petr Lom, Head of the Jury, Omar Amiralay, Roman Gutek, Violeta Krasnic and Kristina Schulgin, awarded the WATCH DOCS Prize to the German film “Losers and Winners” directed by Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken. “Losers and Winners” is the story of Chinese workers dismantling the most high-tech German coking plant in order to relocate it to the People´s Republic of China. In justifying its decision the jury wrote: “Losers and winners is an extremely fascinating picture that rivets the viewer’s attention from start to finish. A perfectly shot, excellently edited and continuously thought-provoking film that very clearly portrays both the economic and moral consequences of globalization”.              

Jacek Kuron Award
The winner of the Jacek Kuron Award, Short Film Competition, Watch Docs 2007
is: “Beyond The Wall” by Vita Zelazkeviciute, Poland. Without exchanging any words the Jury has chosen unanimously the film where no word is said. “Beyond the Wall” shows the unbearable evil of the forced isolation. The film touches deeply our emotions, but it doesn’t leave us without the hope. The author manages to show the human dignity in the characters that are in the hopeless humiliation. Moreover “Beyond the Wall” is a splendid achievement of the art of document. It is a result of patient observation, has the beautiful photography, the precious editing, the expressive music and all this elements are in the splendid harmony creating a complete film work. The members of the Jury: Dorota Roszkowska PL, Heidi Lobato NL, Karel Strachota CZ.

15 000 fans
This year’s edition of WATCH DOCS, already the seventh one, attracted great interest from the audience. The festival films were watched by 15 000 fans of high quality involved documentary. The number of viewers will continue to grow as the traveling edition of the Festival sets out for various parts of Poland in February 2008. It will visit twelve cities in Poland and will arrive in Lithuania in the fall.

We wish to remind you that this year’s winner of the Festival’s Marek Nowicki Prize for outstanding achievement in depicting human rights in film, awarded by the Board of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, is the outstanding Cambodian documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh.

More information about movies and more photos you may find on WATCH DOCS´ webpage: http://www.watchdocs.pl and on “Domysly” – festival´s newspaper -webpage: http://domysly.blox.pl/html (the authors bit by bit put there texts also in English)