2026

The short films and the discussion explore the challenges and responsibilities of independent storytelling in an increasingly polarized and uncertain media landscape. Bringing together documentary filmmakers and journalists, the conversation examines how factual stories are researched, developed, and brought to audiences in environments shaped by political pressure, censorship, legal and financial constraints, digital threats and declining public trust. The speakers reflect on the ethical and practical challenges of documenting reality, protecting sources and contributors, navigating risks, and preserving independent voices and meaningful storytelling.

Films: 

Defending the Future of Free Media
Defending the Future of Free Media, a recent short documentary by the International Press Institute (IPI), gathers voices from across its global network — an homage to the resilience of journalists defending press freedom from Ukraine to Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico, the United States, Gaza, and Hungary.

happiness
A restless video diary unfolds through sleepless nights, screens, and an endless stream of images from Palestine and elsewhere. As activists in Amsterdam follow the news, the film reflects on digital exhaustion, political engagement, and the difficulty of remaining present in a world saturated with distant suffering.

Death of a Fantastic Machine
From the invention of the camera as a tool for recording reality to today’s AI-generated images, Death of a Fantastic Machine traces how economic interests have shaped what we film and why. Through a fast-paced collage of archival footage, amateur videos, livestreams and online images, the film explores the transformation of the camera from an instrument of evidence into a machine designed to capture attention — and asks what remains of our trust in images when almost anything can be fabricated.

Who has the right to tell a story? What responsibility does a storyteller have when filming other people’s experiences, lives, and realities? Drawing on diverse creative perspectives and personal experiences, the panel explores the dilemmas of representation and the relationship between the filmmaker’s position behind the camera and the people portrayed. Where is the line between artistic freedom and representing someone else’s story, and what makes a storyteller and their film authentic?

How can human rights film festivals become more inclusive? In this interactive workshop led by Andrea Pócsik, audiences can meet the participants of the international curatorial workshop and explore questions of representation, decolonisation and audience engagement together.

Registration is required. The workshop will be held in English and Hungarian.

This masterclass explores what it is like to make films in a country other than your own. It looks at the creative and practical challenges of working in a different cultural and professional environment, and how living and working away from home can shape a filmmaker’s perspective, creative process and approach to filmmaking.

How can documentary filmmaking become a tool for social change? Following an introduction by Andrea Pócsik, the programme features a screening of the Kenyan documentary #ThePeopleShall. Afterwards, co-director Mark Maina joins an online discussion to share their experiences and insights from the film's impact campaign.

This roundtable is an important part of this year's Roma focus at Verzió, offering an exceptional opportunity to jointly examine the productive encounters between different artistic disciplines (film, visual arts, theatre) through the work of the invited participants. Following an introductory lecture by art historian Tímea Junghaus, we will reflect together on the international and Hungarian experiences of the institutionalisation of Roma culture. What practical results have emerged recently from collaborations between “majority” institutions organising major visual arts events (such as documenta in Kassel, OFF-Biennale, the Cannes Film Festival and the European Film Academy) and ERIAC? What are the experiences regarding the issues outlined in the introductory lecture? Where, what and how should things be further improved?

Tímea Junghaus's keynote:
The next paradigm shift in European documentary cinema is not about improving the representation of marginalized communities, but fundamentally transforming who controls the image, the narrative, and the means of production. Drawing on two decades of curatorial and institutional work, from grassroots Roma cinema to the Cannes film market, Timea Junghaus challenges the documentary tradition of speaking about communities rather than enabling them to define their own cinematic languages. Decolonizing or revolutionising film in Central and Eastern Europe requires more than visibility or inclusion: it demands a redistribution of authorship, resources, institutional power, and the authority and creativity to imagine the future.

In the masterclass, Bill Morrison will track the arc of his career and show how his work has gradually moved from the metaphorical to the forensic. He will also demonstrate how social justice has become an increasingly visible theme throughout his work, and the role the Archive plays in accountability.

Participating in international workshops can bring valuable visibility and fresh perspectives to a film in development. But beyond many workshops, opinions, and suggestions, how can the directors decide which opportunities are right for their projects, and which feedback is worth integrating into their work.

In this panel, we will explore how feedback shapes both the film and the filmmaker. How do directors navigate different opinions, decide what to incorporate and what to leave behind, and protect their own creative vision throughout the process? Our invited directors will share their personal experiences, reflecting on the challenges, discoveries, and lasting effects of taking their projects into the international workshop circuit.

Discover the World and Make Films! – This is the conclusion to Mark Cousins’ monumental The Story of Documentary Film, a work that traces the history of non-fiction film up to the present day. The final chapter offers a richly detailed account of how documentary film has evolved since 2020, using the techniques of DIY collage filmmaking. At once informative and liberating, it presents documentary filmmaking as a way of discovering the world and preserving our sense of curiosity. At the DocAcademy event, we will watch the chapter together and then explore the questions it raises: what possibilities does contemporary documentary filmmaking hold, and how is the digital age transforming the genre?

Scottish filmmaker, critic and film historian Mark Cousins combines passionate knowledge-sharing with innovative collage-film techniques. Following The Story of Looking, his work returns to Verzió: the first four chapters of his monumental 16-part series The Story of Documentary Film will be screened at the festival, while the final chapter will be presented as part of DocPro Academy.

Making a feature film is like running a marathon. It is a long, exhausting journey, and every new stage can feel harder than the previous one. By the time you reach the end of your energy, you may still be only halfway through. Asia Dér will talk about the process of making a film from a director’s point of view, using Her Mothers, Howling on Your Own and I Won’t Die as case studies. Breaking down the long creative process into the stages of development, production, editing and distribution, she will share the things that helped her stay sane in the chaos of international festival trends, pitches and workshops, advice from tutors and colleagues, the fight for funding, and finding a distribution path for your film in the ocean of films being made around the world.