Submissions to the 22nd Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival are open 

The Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is now accepting documentary film submissions to its 22nd edition which will be held 12–19 November 2025, in Budapest and in cities across Hungary. 

Deadline for submissions: May 31, 2025
Festival dates: 12–19 November, 2025 in Budapest, Hungary

About the Festival
Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival will hold its 22nd edition in 2025. Founded in 2004, Verzió is one of the most established film festivals in Hungary, an important meeting place for the documentary film community and a diverse audience of documentary film lovers. Held annually in November in Budapest and throughout Hungary, Verzió showcases 60-80 films yearly, organizes discussions, educational and industry programs and several other accompanying events. Verzió organizes the Verzió DocLab, an international documentary post-production development workshop in the frame of the annual Festival, the Young Critics workshop, regularly co-hosts free screenings in educational settings, film clubs, and festivals throughout the year, and runs a documentary VOD platform called Verziotheque. Among the Festival's education programs are Student Verzió: free screenings and discussions for high schoolers, and UniVerzió: a unique cooperation with university students. For more information, please visit the About section of our website. 

Film program
The program showcases creative documentary films about social and environmental issues and human rights with strong storytelling and cinematic quality.
Documentary films are screened in competitions and non-competitive thematic and focus sections.

Short and feature-length documentary films are also welcome. 

Competitions: 

• International Competition: international competition section showcasing documentary films about social and environmental issues and human rights from all over the world,
• Doc Future Competition – a competition section for first and second documentary films,
• Hungarian Competition – a competition section for documentary films produced or co-produced in Hungary.

We are also accepting submissions of archival, experimental documentaries, and films to be featured in the Student Verzió program for a 14-19 age group. 

Verzió’s programmers may program the selected films into a section of their choice.

If you have any questions regarding the submissions, you can contact us at info@verzio.org. 

Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is organized by the non-profit Verzió Film Foundation and the Blinken OSA Archivum.

Conditions:

• There is no submission fee.
• We accept documentary films of any length (feature-length, mid-length and short documentary films are eligible too). 
• The applicant must provide an online preview link when submitting the film. The online preview link must be accessible for the Verzió’s selection team until 30 September 2025.
• Applications which do not provide an accessible online preview link and working password may be excluded and will not be considered for the program. In case the link and/or the password changes, please contact us via info@verzio.org to let us know. 
• Films that are not in English or in Hungarian are expected to be submitted with English subtitles.
• Shortlisted candidates will be notified until the end of September 2025. 
• The rights holders of the films selected to the program are required to provide an online preview link which Verzió can share with select journalists, and members of the festival crew (subtitle translators, editors, program organizers, moderators, etc.) before and during the Festival.

By submitting this form, you acknowledge and agree to the following:

• To the best of your knowledge, all of the statements in this form are true.
• The film is not subject to nor is threatened by any litigation.
• You are duly authorized to submit this film to Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
• The submitted film does not violate the rights of another person's intellectual property, and the copyrights of any artwork used in the film are cleared. 
• The submitted film does not violate the individual rights of a third party (including the rights to good reputation, likeness, and voice recording), nor does it violate the right to patent, trademark or commercial secret, and there are no conflicting third-party rights that would exclude the film from the submission. 
• If selected, you authorize the Festival to use the film trailer and up to 1 minute film excerpts for promotion purposes.