ZAMEK Culture Centre

One World is a documentary film festival that actively strives to create an inclusive cultural space open to diverse audiences. It’s commitment to ensuring accessibility and fostering diverse audience engagement represents both a demanding task and a meaningful step toward greater inclusion within the cultural sector. To address these challenges, One World Slovakia has adopted a multifaceted approach that combines accessibility measures, targeted outreach, and participatory programming. This includes the systematic introduction of solutions that actively invite diverse audiences to participate. Accessibility and inclusion is designed in cooperation with experts and professionals of diverse talents which ensures that inclusion is not merely a symbolic, "ticking the box" gesture, but a lived and evolving practice, of which main benefits will be presented in our talk. 

We will also reflect on how – based on our experience – the documentary genre may in fact be ideally suited to advance inclusion further. Rooted in real human experiences and often focused on social issues, documentary film encourages reflection, understanding, and emotional connection. Its capacity to represent lived realities, challenge stereotypes, and give voice to marginalized communities aligns directly with the goals of inclusive cultural practice.  When diverse audiences engage with documentary cinema, they bring new perspectives, foster empathy, and stimulate dialogue across linguistic, sensory and social divides. In result, participation and inclusion in this context prove to be essential sources of enrichment for the entire cultural documentary film ecosystem, as we will aim to explore in our contribution.

This case study discusses these challenges and the strategies developed to overcome them, focusing mainly on less traditional groups of documentary festival audiences such as unhoused people, women has suffered violence or parents of small children. It also explores the specific benefits that documentary film offers to audiences with disabilities and argues that the genre serves as a particularly effective tool for advancing inclusion both within the cultural sector and in society more broadly.

Film can be a tool for integrating people with migration experience and promoting their knowledge of the Polish language, while cinemas can readily become a familiar space for the new residents of our cities. The biggest challenge in getting such meetings off the ground is reaching the target group. This presentation will draw on several years of experience in the field, which saw both small successes and failures, and showed that the needs of the audience require constant attention.

A case study of Matchbox Cine’s use of content notes for Weird Weekend, their festival of cult film festival, which presents strange and unseen cinema from around the world, celebrating the film world’s orphans, outcasts and outliers. Matchbox Cine will share insight into why they use content notes and how they approach creating them.

Graphic. On a grey background, right in the centre, there is a photograph showing smiling faces of people during a cinema event in the Cinema Room. Above the photograph is the logo of Forum Without Barriers and a caption which reads: Presentations. Below is the title of the event: Extended Accessibility—Cinema as a Tool of Inclusion.