Just like in previous years, the International Competition of Verzió features the finest documentaries employing the most powerful artistic means to create deep and sensitive imprints of contemporary phenomena, social problems, and the state of the world. Furthermore, the program strives for diversity, with films revealing the multiplicity of human existence across the globe from different perspectives and realities.
An Iranian female councilor fights the patriarchy in Cutting Through Rocks, while Khartoum weaves the lives of five Sudanese characters together, with unusual animations depicting their search for freedom under civil war. As 9-Month Contract surveys the limits of poverty and the struggles a Georgian single mother experienced during surrogacy, Flophouse America examines family addiction and the opportunities for life reform through a young boy’s story. It is grief’s alienating power that Holding Liat uncovers in a kidnapping tragedy, but Cuba & Alaska emphasizes the necessity of interdependence for front-line survival, as it recounts, filled with humor and hope, the darkest moments of two Ukrainian field medics. The Family Approach provides insight into the challenges of child protection, parental love, and bureaucracy, while With Hasan in Gaza and Immortals explore stories of remembrance, loss, and resistance from a sensitive and personal point of view. These films are at once raw and deeply compassionate, reminding us that even under the harshest circumstances, the force of human connections and determination prevails.
In the most difficult situations, humor often becomes the strongest instrument of survival. Therefore, besides the films addressing demanding, heart-wrenching themes, the program also includes documentaries that strike a lighter, more cheerful tone even against the backdrop of the grim realities of their stories. At the same time, we looked for inner perspectives. In Niñxs, Khartoum, Letters from Wolf Street, Redlight to Limelight, Immortals, Militantropos, and many others, members of affected communities tell their stories, offering authentic points of view.
