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Rosie Garthwaite is the producer of the multi award-winning film The Workers Cup that premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2017 and was screened in the 15th Verzio Film Festival. We talked to her about the shooting, and her insights of the immigrant workers’ situation in Qatar.

Entering CEU last Friday evening was a very different experience from the usual serene atmosphere that one is used to just before the weekend. Loud chitchat, people waiting outside the auditorium, and nervous excitement in the air – it was the End-of-Semester Documentary Film Screening. These screenings have grown into a somewhat friendly tradition at the university where students have the unique opportunity to share their hard work with the CEU and wider community. After months of sweat and tears, sharing your work on a huge screen in front of a big audience can be a very daunting experience, particularly for the majority of students who never expressed themselves visually before. A completely packed auditorium arguably did not ease the worries of these fresh filmmakers either…

Marish is a modern day slave in Hungary, owned by a lady, Eta, who is proud to “own” multiple servants in her home. Growing up in the heart of the more developed parts of Asia in Singapore and Hong Kong, where the domestic helper industry is large, I did not find it bizarre to have someone living in the house and doing all the cooking and cleaning.

No Obvious Signs (Alina Gorlova, 2017) won 5 awards, but what makes this movie really worth to watch is its in-depth content, a honest, natural portrait of a traumatised person. The first salient thing we notice is Alina Gorlova’s line of vision: there is a notable non-large-scale lens shot with a camera, which creates the emotion of claustrophobia, belonging to the protagonist.
 

Complicit is not merely documenting injustice, will to survive and a fight for human rights; this heart-breaking, eyes-opening documentary is asking you to take action on that. The movie is a wake-up call to anyone who has been dormant on the situation of occupational diseases and exploitation of labour in China so far.

In the Croatian coastal city of Rijeka, a theatrical play is about to start. It is called Aleksandra Zecand represents the murder of this 12-year-old Croatian Serb, who was executed along with her parents in Zagreb during the Croatian War of Independence in December 1991. At the entrance of the theater, a small group of ultraconservatives are demonstrating against the organizing of this event. “86 kids from Vukovar” or “When will the Croatian victims have their own theatre play?” are some of the slogans they carry. Croatia is still a very polarized society nowadays, so everything that has something to do with the Serbian community generates controversy. 

The idea of doors and their representation is often an inviting, interesting choice for symbolism. They can be there or not; if they’re not, their absence is still meaningful, as it says something to us about the nature, practicalities, and inhabitants, of a certain space. On the other hand, their presence does the same thing, but conditioned by the position that they’re in; whether they’re open or closed, being opened or being closed, by whom, in what situation, and when. The metaphorical potentials stemming from this seemingly simple everyday item are thus almost endless. However, rarely are they represented in more than a supporting role for some kind of a bigger statement or idea to be made, perhaps because of a single, but very well-hidden quality they possess – the implied control one has over them.

While Verzió celebrates its fifteenth birthday this year, the generation born in the 2000s is slowly growing up. They will face challenges that are not yet clearly defined. In his newest work, Fernand Melgar, a director whose earlier film trilogy depicted life as a Swiss refugee, tackles the delicate and always relevant topic of people living with mental disabilities.

We talked to the director of A Woman Captured, Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, about the birth of the multi-award winning movie, her relationship with the movie’s protagonist, and modern-day slavery.

Since last year CEU has been offering documentary filmmaking courses for its students. Each semester without any prior experience students can delve into the hard work of making a documentary and expand their academic interest. Ana Lolua together with Danielle Johnson created their first documentary titled Contact. The film is a black and white poetic exploration of contact dance that with the help of interviews brings closer to the audience not only the art form but a particular lifestyle as well. We asked Ana about her experiences as a filmmaker starting from zero.