Czech film festival One World, one of the biggest in Europe dealing with human rights issues, is going East to Bucharest this week, under the patronage of former anticommunist dissident Vaclav Havel.

Under the motto "Choose to care", One World Romania will showcase from Thursday 32 new and awarded documentaries from around the world, organizing public debates, photo exhibitions and a fair trade corner.

"Not long ago, we marked the anniversary of historic changes that brought freedom to millions of people," Havel wrote in his introduction to the festival referring to the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe just over 20 years ago.

"The One World festival of documentary film draws our attention to the fact that our freedoms are neither a given nor eternal," the former Czech president added.

Projections at One World Romania will be divided into six sections illustrating different human rights issues. Among them, "David versus Goliath" will feature battles "that seemed impossible", like the huge environmental trial opposing 30,000 Ecuadorians from indigenous tribes to oil giant Chevron ("Crude" by US filmmaker Joe Berlinger).

Specific sections will also deal with justice and memories of the past, with among others "Rabbit à la Berlin" an atypical Polish documentary on the Berlin Wall or "Goodbye, how are you" (Boris Mitic) about the effects of war and political corruption in the former Yugoslavia.

"Such festivals are even more important in post-communist countries like Romania or the Czech Republic because it is a long process to build up a working and critical civil society in a former dictatorship," festival director in Romania Monika Stepanova told AFP.

"Documentary movies are a perfect tool to educate even the youngest generations," she added.

In the Czech Republic, One World supports 2600 schools to use human rights documentary films in their educational programs.

The Bucharest festival also aims to support the new generation of Romanian documentary filmmakers. "It is very difficult for them to finance their films here in Romania, so we will have a special workshop to help them get European cofinancing", Romanian documentary filmmaker Alexandru Solomon told AFP.