Screening Human Rights Documentaries in Hungary for More than 20 Years- Enikő Gyureskó on Verzió Festival's Mission in Human Rights and Education

RevDem Podcast

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Enikő Gyureskó- the Festival Director of VerzióInternational Human Rights Documentary Film Festival – discusses the program of the Verzió Film Festival, which will take place between 6-13 November; the rationale of choosing specific foci in this year's program; the importance of documentaries in raising awareness about contemporary human rights issues; the collaborations between Verzió with other European festivals to promote human rights; the relevance of educational initiatives and university partnerships to foster critical engagement in Hungary.

Enikő Gyureskó has been a key figure at the Verzió Film Festival since 2016. Starting as Festival Coordinator, she became Managing Director in 2021 and was appointed Festival Director in 2024. Enikő is responsible for the festival's development strategy, team management, fundraising, partnerships, and grants. Since 2022, she has also been a board member of MADOKE, the Hungarian Documentary Association. Enikő holds a BA in Liberal Arts, with a major in Art History and a minor in Philosophy, from Pázmány Péter Catholic University (2013), and an MA in Design and Art Management from Budapest Metropolitan University (2017).

Verzió created a much-needed platform in Hungary for international documentary films focused on human rights. Over 20 years, the festival has attracted more than 250,000 attendees. In 2020, it launched its online streaming platform, Verziotheque, offering films nationwide between festival editions. Verzió is a crucial gathering point for the documentary film community, hosting screenings, discussions, and events in Budapest and across Hungary. The festival partners with cinemas and cultural spaces in cities like Pécs, Szeged, and Debrecen. This year, the festival will run between 6th and 13th of November.

Adrian Matus: Verzió has become a key platform for raising awareness on pressing human rights issues through documentary filmmaking. Could you introduce us to the agenda of the Verzió Film Festival? How do you view its significance within the global landscape of human rights film festivals? What does it share with other such festivals and what might make it rather special?

Enikő Gyureskó: Verzió has been one of the steadiest festivals running in Hungary. This will be the 21st edition, and it takes place every year in November, not just in Budapest but currently in six other towns and online as well. It has a large regular audience that comes back to our editions yearly. At the same time, we also try to reach out to new audiences with each edition. Currently, about 20000 people participate yearly if we consider both offline venues and online audiences.

Regarding its international embedment, we are part of the Human Rights Film Network, which consists of over 40 human rights festivals globally. This network raises awareness of human rights and filmmakers in danger, or festival partners who operate in dangerous circumstances, such as Belarus or Central Asia, where democratic institutions do not exist, or people who work with human rights and social issues are under constant surveillance or harassment. Within this network, we try to provide support and raise international awareness whenever one of our members gets into trouble. It also serves as an exchange of experiences and a learning platform for all of us to improve our festivals. We are also trying to build strong relationships with several European festivals that are regionally closer to us. For example, the One World festival in Czechia has been one of our oldest partners. They were founded just a few years before Verzió and even inspired us when our festival was created. There are many similarities in how we think and do our programs. They (One World) also have many discussions, panel talks, and roundtables. Besides the screenings, just like Verzió, they try to cooperate with civil organizations and involve them in public debates. Watch Docs from Poland is an excellent example in this regard, being operated by Helsinki Foundation.

We regularly apply together to European funds. One of the major sponsors of film festivals is the Creative Europe program by the European Union. In the past couple of years, this program initiated a funding scheme that provides grants to festival networks. Thus, now we are in the Doc Around Europe network for the second year, which includes partners from Spain, Germany, Italy, and North Macedonia. We are focusing together on mentoring emerging talents and better circulating their works on a European level. These are similarities that we share.

One of our programs. funded through grant schemes such as Creative Europe Media and European Documentary Film Festival Network. is called Verzió DocLab. It focuses on developing documentaries which have a social aspect or human rights focus and takes place at the CEU's Budapest campus. As well, the Young Critics Workshop, funded through this grant scheme, will take place for the third time at CEU during Verzió. This workshop wants to improve the skills of emerging writers and critics interested in the documentary genre. These international programs are free; we provide everything from travel to accommodation.

AM: Which are the main foci and highlights of this year's festival? What documentaries stand out as particularly powerful to you from this year's program?

EG: Our curatorial team is really excited about this year's program! All the films stand out and we encourage everybody to try to watch as many films as their time allows. We try to screen every film twice during the festival's eight days. Of course, we have some highlights that have already won outstanding awards internationally. If I have to name one, I will mention I'm Not Everything I Want To Be - a Czech film about a photographer discovered recently in the international art scene. Her photographs were unknown before; she was photographing everyday life and the people around her. She lived in a socialist country and worked in a factory because she had to and not because she wanted to. In this context, she took pictures of workers. At the same time, she identified herself as queer and went to illegal queer bars where she took photographs. Of course, these bars were illegal then, and she tried to hide these pictures. She also travelled to Berlin and witnessed the wall falling in 1989. She lived through exciting times and was present at important historic events.

This film consists solely of her photographs and has no single moving image. There are only photographs- about 3,000 of them - yet the team managed to edit it so that it does not become boring or monotonic. Even though the pictures are black and white, it is still such a powerful, visual, and empowering storytelling. I can only praise the editors who had to work hard to make it happen. We will have a Q& A session with the director, Klára Tasovská, who is coming to Verzió on the 9th of November so that you can catch her at Toldi Cinema.

This film also inspired our visuals this year. Every year, Verzió changes its visuals- our posters, our website, and our social media communications use still images from one particular movie. This year will be I'm Not Everything I Want to Be- our visuals play with a plastic foil, a plastic wrap that comes off and underneath these pictures emerge. In a way, it also references what happened in Hungary. I think last year, a new law came into action where people under 18 were not allowed anymore to open, in bookstores, books which talked about the lives of LGBT people or that depicted anything related to homosexuality. We disagree with this situation and are referencing this issue in our visuals this year.

AM: More generally, how do you select the movies? What kind of balance do you aim at between artistic merit and the urgency of the issues addressed?

EG: I think a good film always keeps its value through time. Perhaps from the technical standpoint, the approaches are evolving. The picture quality and the cameras used are often of much better quality. At the same time, some films are made with cell phones, not only with the best equipment. Not every filmmaker has access to such equipment.

However, it is not about that any more. The films have become more and more personal, focusing a lot on individual stories and embedding them in broader societal movements. This is the best way to make an emotional effect and draw the viewer closer to a story. In this way, the individuals are protagonists in these films and share intimate parts of their lives. These directors gain close access to many of the characters. Filmmakers also film about their own lives, and they are the protagonists in their films. The heaviness of these topics has always been a focal point since the festival's first year. The particularity of the program remains the same, and every year, we try to bring films that deal with urgent topics.

War in Ukraine has been in our focus for several years now. This year, we have amazing, excellent films that stand out, not just because of their heavy topic but their genuinely outstanding qualities. For example, Intercepted or Songs of a Slow Burning Earth are films that I recommend. The director of Flowers of Ukraine will also come to present the movie. This film was not initially about the war but about gentrification. As she proceeded to film, the war broke out, and it was always in the background. In other words, you cannot make a film without excluding the bigger reality. These films also show personal stories of how war affects people's everyday lives. In Intercepted, for example, we can listen to the phone calls of Russian soldiers, which were - as the title suggests - intercepted by the secret services in Ukraine. It is chilly to listen while you watch pictures of destroyed cities and the actual effects of their actions.

The Armenian focus this year was not initially planned, but we decided to have it because we found these powerful films coming out of Armenia. 1489 is the title of one of the films that also won the Best Film award at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam last November. One particularity of this movie is that the director was filming with her phone. As mentioned, there are still films that were initially not intended to be a movie but just started to document an event. Later on, they decided to make it a movie. In this context, this director chose to film her own family. The story focuses on her brother, who disappeared in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Together with her father, they are trying to find him. This is a profound and personal story. The director, Shoghakat Vardanyan, is also coming to the festival.

The British focus might come as a surprise. The reason for this focus is Brexit, which has caused less attention to British documentaries at European festivals in the last few years. We also wanted to cooperate with the British Council in Budapest and the British Embassy because we felt that there is less money now in the soft power of Britain to promote their culture in this part of the world. British cultural products are not as present as they used to be. We wanted to show a selection of recent British documentaries and found four feature lengths.

We also have a VR section called Vektor VR. The exhibition is at Adaptér, a lovely communal space run by the local municipality, where you can sit down and watch VR documentaries. This year, the representation of the body is the focus, particularly how we experience our body in virtual reality and how it helps us understand how others might feel in their body.

AM: You have a broad variety of movies, and my curiosity is: how do you select the movies? What kind of balance do you aim at between artistic merit and the urgency of the issues addressed?

EG: We are trying to find the films that excel in this balance. Both these points are essential aspects of the selection. We work as a team; we watch all the films together