At One World Romania, high school students choose the best film of the festival. If you are in high school in Bucharest, you have the chance to be part of this year's High School Jury: to deliberate and choose together with your team the film that will be awarded at the Closing Gala on April 14th.

As part of the High School Jury, you will watch, discuss, and debate documentary films, along with 14 other students and two media education tutors who will guide you to learn notions related to human rights, civic participation and documentary film. It's a comprehensive experience through which One World Romania hopes to develop your critical thinking skills and make you fall in love with documentary films.

What does it take to be part of the High School Jury?

For 9 days, during the festival (April 5th - 14th, 2024), together with Nicoleta Fotiade (media education trainer) and Ionuț Mareș (journalist and film critic), you will discuss and learn notions related to human rights, civic participation, media education and documentary film. After an introductory course on April 5th, throughout the festival, you will attend evening screenings in cinema halls (Cinema Elvire Popescu, Eforie, Union) and daytime working meetings and discussions with your Jury colleagues and the two tutors. In total, you will watch and debate 9 films from the festival program, and then, on April 13th, you will choose together with your colleagues a winning film, which will be announced at the Closing Gala of OWR #17.

Registrations

Sign up as soon as possible, places are limited to 15. There is no registration or participation fee. Registration deadline: March 5th.

If you have any questions regarding the application, you can write to us at: atelier@oneworld.ro.

About the program

The program aims to familiarize young people with the experience of watching documentary films. Not only to help them decipher them but also to be more open to debate, especially as within the specific framework of a film festival like OWR, some screenings are followed by discussions with filmmakers or invited experts. The High School Jury is an experience that exposes them to various forms of non-fictional cinema, stimulates their debating skills, argumentation and critical thinking, and helps them understand how documentary films can be seen both for the aesthetic pleasure they produce and for the reflection on the surrounding world they trigger.

Specifically, the 15 students in the High School Jury will watch 9 documentaries from the OWR selection and will choose the winner of the festival's only trophy, announced at the Closing Gala. The learning process they will go through before choosing the winning film includes an interactive media education course with trainers Nicoleta Fotiade and Ionuț Mareș, where they will learn notions related to human rights, civic participation, and media education, as well as basic concepts to help them identify and decipher the particularities of author documentaries. Throughout the festival, each of the watched films will be discussed in detail at three meetings, under the guidance of the two tutors.

Tutors' Biographies

Nicoleta Fotiade is an expert in communication and a trainer in media and digital education. Over the past 20 years, she has coordinated media education programs for non-governmental organizations in Romania and Europe. She has taught media education to students in Pedagogy at the University of Bucharest and trains teachers and librarians to include media education in their communities. She is the (co)author of several media research studies and educational resources, including two high school textbooks. She is the president of the Mediawise Society (mediawise.ro), co-founder, and president of the International Association for Media Education (iame.education).

Ionuț Mareș is a journalist and film critic who writes for online magazines such as Films in Frame and Ziarul Metropolis. He also collaborates as a selector or discussion moderator with several film festivals in Romania. He has been a guest critic in media education programs Education à l'image and CinEd.