Awards

Best Human Rights Film: Transit Havana
Best Student Film: Right Side of Cello
Audience Award: Sonita

Best Human Rights Film

Verzio involves university students in discussing and evaluating human rights films in the festival program. The Jury is selected on a competitive basis from a pool of candidates with commitment to human rights and academic excellence.

"We the student jury of the 13th Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival unanimously decided to award the Best Human Rights Film to Transit Havana. Among the documentaries, we find its cinematic treatment of the issue outstanding. Given that trans issues do not end up in front pages, we find it critical that these stories be told. With this choice, we reaffirm that trans rights, which include access to healthcare and medication, employment, education and other social services, are human rights. Although this film was made in Cuba, it is part of an on-going conversation across national borders. We congratulate the director and all the other people behind the production of Transit Havana and we hope that this will inspire others to use the form of documentaries to reflect on and explore global human rights challenges." 

Student Jury: Cleve Arguelles, Viktória Bach, Giuseppe Montagnese, Sophia Seawell

 

Best Student Film

International Jury awards the best debut or student film.

Notes of the ZOOM IN International Jury:

"We want to congratulate the festival with the high level of films which were part of the Zoom In International Student Competition. All eleven films showed great passion and commitment of their makers, and there was great diversity of topics from all over the world with very different approaches."

The Jury decided to award three special mentions:

Tiny Little Delicate Foreign Castles by director Rob Key, a short documentary that is capable to combine a serious message with a healthy dose of humor. 

The Barber by director Anna Biak Tha Mawi from Myanmar, a film that brings us a character with amazing insight from a place in the world we don’t often hear from.

Where To, Miss? from Manuela Bastian, a film that takes a long-term look at a profound story about women’s rights in India. 

Winner of the Best Student Film AwardRight Side of Cello by Aleksandra Rek

- a film that contains all elements of a strong and professional documentary – an inspiring character, a compelling story, strong visuals and most of all, emotion.

Congratulations!

 

Audience Award

Verzio gives the Audience Award to the film which gets the highest rating on a 1-10 scale. The audience could vote for every film in the International and Hungarian Panorama in Toldi Cinema. 

We are happy to announce, that the audience favorite of 13th Verzio was Sonita (director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami)!

2nd favorite: Balu
3rd favorite: Train to Adulthood
4th favorite: A Day in the Life
5th favorite: Once upon a time there were two ballerinas

Thank you for voting!!! ;) Congratulations to all!