Romania film festival focuses on Holocaust

The One World international human rights documentary film festival which opens in Bucharest on Tuesday will give special focus to the Holocaust to highlight the devastating consequences of hatred and intolerance. "The 6th edition of the (One World Romania) festival aims to be an antidote to hatred", organisers said. "The amount of hatred and intolerance per square meter has grown exponentially since the previous edition of One World Romania", festival director Alexandru Solomon said. "That's why we decided to give special focus to the Holocaust which was the most vicious manifestation of hatred in recent history", he added. Romanian filmmaker Florin Iepan will present as a world premiere his documentary "Odessa" which focuses on one of the largest mass executions of Jews in the Second World War. About 22,000 Jews were killed in Odessa in 1941 by Romanian-led forces. "To what extent are my compatriots willing to reflect on this particular episode?", Iepan wonders as the Holocaust often remained taboo under the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Bulgaria's parliament admitted only last week for the first time having failed to save over 11,000 Jews from territories under its control in Serbia, Greece and Macedonia. But the festival's main section "Hatred is bad for your health" will also highlight the discrimination faced by Roma and Vietnamese minorities in a Czech village (On Decency, by Radovan Sibrt) or by homosexuals in Uganda (Call me Kuchu, By Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worral). "We also carefully chose six powerful films about people with so-called disabilities in order to raise acceptance in society", Solomon said. A total of 60 documentaries from around the globe will be shown until Sunday in Bucharest in one of the biggest documentary film festivals in eastern Europe. One World Romania was created under the patronage of late Czech president Vaclav Havel, the icon of the anticommunist movement in many Eastern European countries. A similar festival called One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is based in Prague and has its annual event from March 4-13.