One World Slovakia – also known locally as Jeden Svet – is the country’s biggest documentary event, offering a platform for films from the region and from around the world to be seen by Slovak audiences. Now in its 26th edition and unspooling from 21-26 October, the festival continues to thrive in spite of the political and funding challenges thrown its way.

Ahead of the festival kick-off on 21 October, Cineuropa spoke to festival director Eva Križková to learn more about this year’s event, the importance of its continuation and how the festival is pushing back against forces seeking to silence its support of marginalised communities and human rights around the globe.

Cineuropa: What does One World Slovakia bring to the landscape of documentary festivals, and indeed other gatherings in Slovakia and the region?
Eva Križková: Our event is the largest and oldest documentary film festival in the country, which gives it a special position in the cultural and audiovisual sphere. It contributes to the development and promotion of documentary film in Slovakia and represents Slovak festivals in an international context, emphasising inclusion, diversity and a non-colonial approach to the presentation of documentary film. We are very proud of our international programming team, which allows us to bring fresh voices from within communities on different continents. I believe we are also among the world leaders in making the festival accessible to communities with disabilities.

What does your festival audience look like in terms of demographics, and how do you engage with them?
One World has a relatively broad audience. The largest group is women between the ages of 35 and 45. However, we also focus on secondary-school students, for whom we organise special screenings. In addition to standard PR campaigns, we reach out to audiences directly through their communities. We reach seniors through municipal senior centres, immigrants through Mareena [a community centre for supporting and integrating refugees and migrants], and audiences with hearing and visual impairments through their associations. We also make select films available online for a week so that people from the more remote parts of Slovakia also have the opportunity to participate in the festival.

2025 marks the festival’s 26th edition. What’s new, different or unique about it this year?
Our audience will encounter a number of small innovations and improvements this year, but perhaps the most significant is the new European Glitch section, which aims to highlight the work of emerging European documentary filmmakers. We are particularly interested in perspectives that focus on certain ruptures in the system, as it is precisely these ruptures that create space for new perspectives and bold visions for the future. This approach is characteristic of this year's festival as a whole. For the first time in several years, we did not receive any support from the [Slovak] Audiovisual Fund, despite the recommendations of the expert committee. For this reason, we faced a major financial and, as a result, curatorial challenge. We tried to make the most of this situation, and I believe we succeeded.

Notably, Slovakia’s Ministry of Culture has severely cut support to the arts sector, especially for projects in defence of creative expression and LGBTQ+ rights, among other causes. How has this affected the festival, and what are you doing in response?
Destructive measures taken by the leadership of our far-right Ministry of Culture have caused a great deal of damage to high-quality independent cultural projects in Slovakia this year. Many of them have ceased to exist owing to a lack of support. [As mentioned,] we received no support from the Audiovisual Fund this year, but fortunately, we were supported by our partners in the private sector and by viewers, through a crowdfunding campaign. We survived, albeit with a significantly lower budget than in previous years. As the situation in Slovakia does not bode well for at least the next two years, until the parliamentary elections, European funding will be crucial for us. We are prepared not to give up under any circumstances.

The festival falls under the purview of People in Peril, an NGO. How does the gathering align with and uplift the organisation’s mission of assisting those affected by conflict, disasters or poverty?
The documentaries in our programme largely represent authorial and artistic perspectives on conflicts and humanitarian crises in which NGOs such as ours operate. We often draw on the experiences of our colleagues from People in Peril when organising post-film discussions, for example. This year, we are holding an afterparty with charity tattooing, where the proceeds will go to our organisation's humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza.

People in Peril also places great emphasis on social inclusion, which is reflected in the way we design and produce our festival. We subtitle all films into Slovak, and for many of them, we also provide audio description for the visually impaired and descriptive subtitles for the hearing-impaired. This is followed by the process of selecting partners and communities for the direct marketing of each film, as well as creating a very specific accompanying programme for each movie.