The One World Festival team is unveiling the complete programme and preparations are reaching their peak not only in Prague, but also in 56 other cities across the Czech Republic. The audience can look forward to traditional competition sections and thematic non-competition sections.  

In Prague, the festival will open with My Memory Is Full of Ghosts, a film by director Anas Zawahri. This poignant essay paints a haunting portrait of Homs, a once-prosperous Syrian city now devastated by war. The opening screening for the public is to take place on 12 March 2025, at 18:00 in the Lucerna cinema in Prague. 

The International Competition will feature films from around the world that tackle pressing global events and social issues. The documentary The Guest takes audiences to the Poland-Belarus border, where Polish armed forces commit atrocities against migrants from the Middle East on a daily basis. The visual poem All the Mountains Give follows two Kurdish smugglers risking their lives at the Iraq-Iran border to survive. The Czech Competition continues in its tradition of showcasing a rich variety of local projects, exploring themes that extend beyond the borders of the Czech Republic. Five films will have their world premieres at One World, including Volver a Volver, a documentary about the Venezuelan Sikora family’s return to their Czech roots through a special repatriation program. The highly stylized documentary, set within a video game interface, Satan Kingdom Babylon takes viewers on an investigative journey as a detective unravels the mysterious disappearance of a woman within the confines of a hotel. Right to Know provides a platform every year for stories that would otherwise remain unseen. From Ground Zero  takes the audience to the present-day Gaza through twenty-two short films by various directors who document the everyday realities of war, viewed through the eyes of children at play and adults fighting for humanitarian aid. In Night Is Not Eternal,  an ideological rift emerges between Nanfu and Rosa after they both emigrate to the United States despite sharing democratic values. Ten years ago, One World became the first film festival in the Czech Republic to include virtual reality films in its program. This year, the Immersive Film Competition will showcase nine human rights works that immerse the viewer, providing the illusion of direct involvement and offering experiences otherwise unattainable. The spiritual film Perinatal Dreaming - Understanding Country invites the audience to enter the mind of an unborn child, reliving the crucial period framed by conception and birth.  In RAPTURE II – Portal, the audience will find themselves trapped in an abandoned house in Donbas, in a scenario akin to a survival horror experience. The film is a harsh testimony to the Russian occupation of Ukraine, conveying the sorrow stemming from the loss of one’s home.   

In addition to the four traditional competition sections (i.e. the International Competition, Czech Competition, Right to Know, and Immersive Film Competition), One World will also present seven non-competitive categories: The Slovak Journey, Family Webs, Female Gaze, Male Beings, Ecosystems, Searching for Freedom, and Community Boundaries. The festival will also engage audiences with a diverse array of debates in various formats.