16-03-2017

Life Begins at 100 wins Audience Award at One World 2017

    Vigorous 104-year-old blogger Dagny Carlsson from Sweden enchanted audiences at the 19th annual One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. The documentary about her active experience of extreme old age Life Begins at 100 won this year's AVAST Foundation Audience Award. The film easily held onto first place throughout the entire festival. Its final score in the voting was 1.22.

    Prague audiences can see the film today at 17:00 in the large auditorium of the Světozor cinema. The film will then travel to the regional festivals, where it will be screened at 18 of the 32 festival cities.

    The AVAST Foundation Audience Award and six other awards from the festival juries will be presented at the closing ceremony of the One World Festival tonight in the Lucerna cinema. The director of Life Begins at 100 Asa Blanck and Dagny Carlsson will connect with Lucerna via Skype.

    Synopsis:

    Swedish Dagny has her own blog, where she posts daily. She writes about ordinary things, exchanges messages with friends, and sometimes peruses dating ads. In the evenings she attends parties, never turning down a glass of bubbly. She is a regular on TV shows; people recognise her on the street. The fact that blogger Dagny was born in 1912 seems irrelevant. She says that being active and willing to learn new things is not a question of age. Although fate hasn't always served her well, she refuses to drown in the past and looks forward to whatever comes. The message contained in her story says: Cast off apprehension and trepidation – life is too short!

    The runner-up in the audience voting was the documentary film Tickling Giants by American director Sara Taksler. The film follows the rise and fall of Egyptian doctor Bássem Júsef, who after the outbreak of the Arab Spring became the host of a satirical talk show along the lines of Jon Stewart and reached an audience of 30 million. In the audience voting the film received a total score of 1.24.

    Tickling Giants will be screened in Prague for the last time today at 18:00 in the small auditorium of the Atlas cinema. It will then travel to nine other festival cities.

    Third place in the audience voting went to the documentary Who's Gonna Love Me Now? about an HIV positive gay man from an Orthodox Israeli family, who despite his relatives' condemnation is trying to find a way back to them after years apart. The protagonist Saar Maoz was in Prague to personally present the film and talked with adult and school-age audiences about issues of HIV prevention. Audiences gave the film a total score of 1.26. In the weeks to come the film will be presented in six other festival cities.

    For more information, please contact the festival's media coordinator Zuzana Gruberová at 770 101 158 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

    Last modified on 16-03-2017