Verzio Budapest

“This year marks the 20th edition of the Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. From 22 to 29 November, the prominent film festival, a cinematic reflection of our current world, will present a renewed logo, a fresh image to match this year’s focus theme and an exceptionally rich program of 82 films. The key question this year is: Where are we headed?“

The film program is impressive with “We will not Fade Away” by Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko opening the festival in a couple of days and closing with “Nothing Compares” as a fine homage to Sinéad O’Connor made by Kathryn Ferguson. There is a section called Anthropocene where you find strong film as “Against the Tide” by Sarvnik Kaur and “Matter out of Place” by Nikolaus Geyerhalter. In a section named “Viewfinder” the festival has been looking for films that are “Exploring and expanding the dynamic concept of documentary, (where) the filmmakers are continuously experimenting with expressive ways of grasping reality with and through images. The films in this program look for novel approaches to storytelling, using both archival and contemporary images…”. Of course Lea Glob is there with “Apolonia,Apolonia” and Mark Cousins with “The March on Rome” and Alecu Solomon with “Arsenie. An Amazin Afterlife”.

And there are concerts, educational activities, a “young critic workshop” run by Pamela Cohn, one of the best critics and moderators, who are helping film festivals around the world and a DocLab that I will write about separately as I am part of it. I saw the guest list, many directors of the films to be shown will be there celebrating 20 years of a festival taking place in a European country full of political controversies towards the rest of the EU – but in a city with history and beauty. Congratulations with the two decades!

The website: https://verzio.org/en/2023/catalog

Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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