Nowhere to Hide from Verzio

The opening film of Verzio tells the story of an Iraqi hospital nurse and how he survived the war between ISIS and the Iraqi militia. It is an expressive opening of a festival tackling contemporary social issues, and offering us to face burdens of the past as well as our own humanity.

 

Every day is a new opportunity to observe the world around us. When walking the streets, we are affected by the ever-present social tension even when we are not aware of it. People’s lives from the neighbourhood, certain scenes in the streets, tragedies happening in our locality are symptoms of an era we live in, and consequences of the past we can never really leave behind.

The world however is larger and broader than our neighbourhoods, and sooner or later, events of remote locations will show their effects on us. Be it food waste on the other side of the world, war-torn reality of distant countries or dictatorships still haunting to this day, these are part of our very lives.

Verzio is a possibility to immerse ourselves in various real-life issues, and to take notice of other people and their vulnerability, their abandonment, their poverty, their sorrow. To see that the world is, in fact, all upside down. It is a possibility to confront our views, our past, our present and potential future(s).

Still, this confrontation is not depressing - because it can be followed by actions. If we really pay attention to people and events, we can understand them more deeply. If we look around and realize just how many things are happening all around us, we get a chance to have an impact on the events in our own lives.

Once we understand people and their behaviour, we can make sense of it, and give an informed opinion. If we do not make the effort to truly understand the world around us, there is a risk that we are mislead by our prejudices. Although it seems easier to not make an effort at all, at the end, it is not fair to ourselves. If we find time to watch these documentaries, we might get closer to our curious self, and, having deeply understood the events, we get a chance to form an autonomous opinion about them.

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Verzio is a possibility to observe the country’s and the world’s most important questions along with other people, and to see a great deal of exciting, painful, encouraging and depressing stories. The more we see, the more we will feel lost, but only that temporary feeling of being lost can be the source of autonomy. Let’s face these possibilities bravely - after all, there is nowhere to hide.

 

 

 Attila Szabó