Our School

OUR SCHOOL had synchronized European premieres at One World Prague and Thessalonki Dok Fest in March 2011, concomitant with the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers review of the compliance of the Czech Republic and Greece with the a landmark European Court of Human Rights judgment which found that segregation of Roma children into special schools is a violation of human rights. In the United States, OUR SCHOOL premiered in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival, and went on to Silverdocs, where it won the grand jury prize for best US feature. While in the DC area for Silverdocs, OUR SCHOOL had a Capitol Hill screening hosted by the US Helsinki Commission, co-presented by the Roma Education Fund and the Open Society Institute, with the participation of the State Department and the USAID. Since its release in March, OUR SCHOOL has screened in 25 film festivals on three continents, and has been nominated for a Silver Eye award for best Eastern European feature documentary and an Amnesty Award at CPH:DOX. It has been taken up by partner organizations such as Amnesty International, which began organizing advocacy and community screenings following our premieres in Greece, Switzerland, Denmark, and Slovakia, the One World networks of school film clubs in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania, and other national networks using film for awareness-raising in Poland, Hungary and Germany. For 2012, OUR SCHOOL is planning screenings in the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the OSCE offices in Vienna and Warsaw, screenings in national parliaments and teacher-training institutions in Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, to begin with, as well as theatrical and semi-theatrical runs in several territories in Europe.