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The Fantastic, a documentary film by Maija Blåfield, explores the cataclysmic moment in which North Korean interviewees first experienced a foreign film. It is a moment that the majority of us living in democratic nations will take for granted, not least recall with such wonder and private fervour. Whilst the film is shot on location, all interviews take place anonymously in South Korea. We only hear the interviewees’ voices, juxtaposed with stills of the grey, barren cityscapes of North Korea; of communist concrete blocks and other more chilling and beautiful scenes of woodland buried beneath snow. Without so much as seeing their faces, and with filming restricted, we are invited directly into the imaginations of the speakers. 

Verzió awarded six creators of outstanding documentary films at the annual awards ceremony on 20 November. The members of the three juries presented the winners online, calling from various countries in order to be able to congratulate the happy filmmakers. Read their statements here! 

Oksana Sarkisova in conversation with Hao Wu, director of 76 Days, the opening film of Verzió on the Wuhan lockdown due to the outbreak of Covid-19.

Central Bus Station by filmmaker Tomáš Elšík is an unsettling and elegiac study of identity, belonging and anthropology. The documentary focuses on one of the largest bus stations in the world: The Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, a concrete jungle that is virtually indestructible. The filmmaker is relatively silent instead telling the story primarily through its central protagonist, Yonathon Mishal, who has found something of a home in the station.

Information wars are constantly fought in the backdrop of our lives. After Russia provided military and financial support to start the war in Ukraine, it used every platform it could to deny connections between Putin’s government and those mysterious “little green men” with Russian weapons in Ukraine. There is one group, however, that disproves the lies of corrupt regimes and uncovers serious abuses on a regular basis.

You are immense, our good Mother: Truth,
You are immense and so is your Power,
You scratch the sky, like a giant mountain,
Wide as the seas,
As prosperous, as urban cities,
Impenetrable like a forest;
One hundred years would not suffice
To explore what you have to offer,
He who sees you, must raise his hat.

- Tolstoy

The protagonist of Dávid Kresalek’s 2007 documentary, Hacked, instigates a media hack from his living room; he creates a fake news item, which then appears on several mainstream media channels (in printed and online press, and on television), without any background or fact checks into the truthfulness of the content.

In the time of post-truth, as media systems around us change, the question of whether reality can truly be depicted arises. This is the case for documentary film as well, which we would usually expect to be investigative and accurate. But for decades, filmmakers have been shaping the emotional narrative and the purportedly objective perspective of documentaries—making them personal, or abstract and poetic.

On October 30, 2015, a fire broke out in a club in Bucharest. That evening, a spark from a firework caught the club’s plastic soundproofing insulation, setting off a rapidly-spreading fire that devoured the highly-flammable material in less than 2.5 minutes. Of the 400 people who were trapped in the club that night without access to emergency exits, 27 people died on the scene, and  38 people succumbed to injuries and infections in the weeks and months following at various hospitals.

It’s a strange time we live in. As the coronavirus spreads across the globe, human systems and movement, as we have known them, have been put on hold. People all over the world are keeping each other posted on their safety, worries and needs. In a time that can be scary and strange, initiatives have been launched to support each other. Those with time on their hands offer to volunteer, make arts and crafts and send birthday cards to strangers who can’t receive visitors. Despite these acts of beauty, the sadness of the situation cannot be overlooked. At Verzió, we are aware of the impact this virus has, especially on those who cannot afford or have no access to proper healthcare. Our hearts go out to those families for whom this is an extra frightening time.