RUSSIAN ACTIVIST AWARDED AT ONE WORLD FILM FESTIVAL
Prague Daily Monitor, Czech Republic
March 1 2007
Prague, Feb 28 (CTK) – Russian film maker Svetlana Gannushkina was
awarded the prize Homo homini at the beginning of the ninth Czech
festival of documentary films One World today.
The festival is held in two places in Prague.
Gannushkina deals with the human rights abuse in the former Soviet
Union.
"I greatly esteem the award from the People in Need, one of the
first organisations to have helped Chechnya," Gannushkina, a trained
mathematician, said.
She highlights the growing xenophobia in Russia. As early as 1990 she
established the first organisation dealing with the problems of war
victims in Nagorno Karabakh and further conflicts. Three years later,
she helped found the association Memorial and at present she heads
the project Migration and Law.
Human right abuses in Russia is the theme of the film Operation
by German film director Kerstin Nickig, shown after the prize Homo
homini was awarded. The film takes place in the autonomous republic
Bashkortostan in December 2006, when almost 350 people spent a night
in a police cell without any apparent reason.
The festival One World, staged by the group People in Need, offers
123 documentaries from almost 40 countries, seminar, concerts and
exhibitions.