Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival was founded in 2004 by Zsuzsa Zádori, Andrea Pócsik and Oksana Sarkisova, with the institutional support of the OSA Archivum. Since 2005, the Festival is co-organized by the nonprofit Verzió Film Foundation and the Archivum. The founders’ vision was to create a platform, till then missing from Hungary, for international documentary films with a focus on human rights. In 20 years, Verzió programs were attended by more than 250,000 visitors. Since 2020 the Festival's online streaming platform, the Verziotheque, allows access to the festival films from anywhere in the country. More than 60 films are available for rent between two festival editions as well.
Verzió is an important meeting place for the documentary film community and a diverse audience of documentary film lovers. In Budapest, we hold film screenings, discussions and accompanying events with the participation of invited filmmakers and experts at the Toldi and Művész cinemas, the Blinken OSA Archivum and at CEU. Our permanent partners in the countryside are the Apolló Cinema in Pécs, the Grand Café Cinema and the Megálló Community House in Szeged, the Otthon Cinema in Kecskemét, the Savaria Cinema in Szombathely, the AltKöz Association in Debrecen. From 2023 the Kinodomino team organizes Verzió screenings in Miskolc as well.
During the Festival in November, we run two intensive workshops, the Verzió DocLab and the Young Critics, which provide development opportunities for emerging talents with the support of international mentors. In 2024, Verzió DocLab is preparing for its 9th edition, which traditionally includes a pitch forum on the last day to showcase the participants' documentary projects to curators from international film festivals, producers and distributors coming to the Festival. The Young Critics workshop will be held for the 3rd time this year, where film critics at the beginning of their careers can improve their writing and editing skills under the guidance of critics Pamela Cohn and Zsolt Gyenge.
In addition to the annually held Festival in November and the online film library, we are actively involved in the national and international documentary film and cultural scene throughout the year. Every year we organise dozens of free screenings in educational settings, film clubs and cultural or music festivals. Re:Verzió, traditionally held in the Spring, is an encore screening series that re-screens favourites and award-winners from the last festival in the Blinken OSA Archivum. In the spring of 2023, for the first time we have organized the Verzió Vienna mini-festival and in the summer the CEU Rooftop Cinema film club, and in 2024, at the Budapest Spring Festival, we organised the Hungarian premiere screenings of three recent documentaries as part of the Sub/Version programme.