About Open Eyes
Open Eyes – Human Rights Films for Schools is the educational school film project of the International Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival in cooperation with the Filmhaus Nürnberg. The programme combines cultural and political education in an innovative way. In contrast to NIHRFF, the Open Eyes school film project takes place on an annual basis.
Open Eyes has been supported by Stabilo International GmbH since 2007.
The next edition of Open Eyes – Human Rights Films for Schools will take place from October 13 to 24, 2025 as part of the 14th Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival. Information on the films and screening times will be published here at the beginning of the 2025/2026 school year.
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Profil
The most important component of the project are the Open Eyes school screenings: As a low-threshold offer, the medium of film and the learning venue of cinema are intended to sensitise young people to human rights issues and at the same time strengthen their media skills. All film screenings take place in the morning or early afternoon and are accompanied pedagogically. For each screening there is a short introduction to the topic of human rights in general and then to the topic and the film in particular. After the screening, either filmmakers, protagonists or experts discuss the film with the young people. All films – if they are not available in a German version – are translated and subtitled or spoken live during the screening to ensure maximum understanding of the films for all young people.
Open Eyes-Jugendjury
In addition, Open Eyes offers interested young people the opportunity to engage intensively with selected festival films as members of the Open Eyes Youth Jury and to independently select the film that they believe is best suited for human rights education in schools. During the festival awards ceremony, the jury will then read out their self-written laudatory speech and present the Open Eyes Youth Jury Award, which is endowed with 1,000 euros and donated by Stabilo International GmbH. The work of the youth jury is also supervised pedagogically throughout.
Open Eyes-Jugendreporter*innen
Since 2009, the Open Eyes youth reporters have formed the third pillar of the project. The aim of this project module is to get young people interested in human rights films by informing and inspiring them about these films from their peers.
In cooperation with the editorial team of the Nürnberger Nachrichten’s extra pages, young people were able to publish film reviews of festival films in the newspaper.
We are currently cooperating with the local radio station FreeSpirit JugendRadio. The youth reporters learn the basics of radio production, report on the festival, interview filmmakers and guests and create their own radio programmes.