Ken Loach: British film director (Land and Freedom (1995), Bread and Roses (2000), The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)) 

"War and state terrorism by the most powerful nations on earth are a dominant feature of our age. Consequently the rights that we thought were enshrined in international law and the Geneva Convention are ignored. It is hard to imagine that, yet again, we should have to reassert an opposition to torture, detention without trial and mass killings as a consequence of illegal wars. Your festival was never more timely."

Michael Verhoeven: German film director (o.k. (1970), The White Rose (1982), The Nasty Girl (1990))

"Film is a powerful medium to fight for the most simple and yet seemingly unattainable human rights. NIHRFF has a long-term view, a vision that reaches far beyond borders but also focuses on the obvious and what is closer to home. This festival does not want to be an event for like-minded people, it has to reach out, it has to breach gaps and win over new friends, new co-fighters in the struggle for human rights."

Katja Riemann: German actress (The Pharmacist (1996), Bandits (1996), Runaway Horse (2007))

"It is necessary to observe the world around us from different perspectives, from different angles. The medium film helps us to set an idea of how people live in other countries and in what conditions. We can learn a lot from the stories that these films tell. They can remind us not to look away in our everyday lives but to look at the world with open eyes."

Barbara Lochbihler: Secretary General of amnesty international Germany 1999-2009

"Film can be a medium which denies and covers up but it can also tell previously unknown stories about human suffering and commitment and allows us a deeper insight. This film festival is therefore an important contribution to human rights. The aim of the International Human Rights Film Award is to encourage film producers to continue with their dedicated work on human rights issues and to appeal to us not to close our eyes."

Ulrich Gregor: founder of the Internationales Forum des Jungen Films, Berlin Film Festival, 1971-2001

"The International Human Rights Film Festival in Nuremberg offers a glimmer of hope for all those who expect film to be a medium to inform and to enlighten and will not give up their appreciation of film as an instrument for knowledge. The festival meets a moral requirement but also an actual need to deploy the medium of film in favor of information and testimony, memory, the widening of horizons and the sharpening of viewpoints. Thanks to its programme, the Festival has the chance to make it clear that a critical point of view does indeed go together with convincing and modern film aesthetics and that these films which combine contemporary issues with suitable filmic forms are indeed among the best, most important, and most beautiful films cinema has to offer."