What is a film dealing with animal rights doing in a human rights documentary film festival? You could, in fact, have multiple possible answers to this question. However, Everything Needs to Live does, on its own, have a well-deserved place in the 22nd edition of Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival partly for the very reason that it is not a film solely about animal...

Lidija Zelovic’s documentary Home Game (2024) offers an intricate, emotionally layered exploration of what “home” means for migrants whose lives are defined by displacement, and the long aftershock of political conflicts. Through a combination of intimate family footage, contemporary observational scenes, and reflective narration, Zelovic constructs a beautiful cinematic work that extends beyond...

Everything Needs to Live tells a powerful story about a strong – both physically and mentally – woman and her struggles with everyday life during the Ukrainian war. The movie brings up so many topics and related moral questions, giving the viewer something to think about for the next few days.

Militantropos starts with a gloomy sky that morphs into dark grey smoke from a burning forest. People are looking up at the cloud of smoke, but they don’t seem to be panicked or surprised; they simply stand there and watch it all unfold. Throughout the film, nature and war are frequently juxtaposed. This depiction gives strong meaning to the idea of war as something natural, inevitable, and...

The essence of Arjun Talwar’s Letters from Wolf Street lies primarily in the filmmaker himself, whose sensitive gaze reveals Warsaw and its inhabitants to the viewer. His substantial yet not distracting presence throughout the film – a presence that also allows those in front of his camera to appear so natural – makes watching his documentary an absorbing experience.

Watching Cutting Through Rocks, I went through a range of emotions: from hope to frustration to admiration to anger. It was very easy for me to become attached to the character of Sara Shahverdi, a strong woman with bold, pioneering convictions for the village she lives in. The directors of the documentary, Sara Khaki and Mohammad Reza Eyni, take us on an inspiring and beautifully crafted...

What could be more glamorous than being a radical lesbian? If you're wondering, just watch Sally! by Deborah Craig, Ondine Rarey and Jörg Fockele, and you'll realise that the question is rhetorical. There she is, vibrant, overwhelming and proudly lesbian: Sally Gearhart.

The opening sequence of Redlight to Limelight shows a young man sitting on a bed in a small room. Together with his friend, they’re testing out their camera, following birds and painted trees. The director Bipuljit Basu follows Rabin and his friends, self-taught filmmakers, during the process of making their own fiction film about the life of a sex worker in Kolkata. The men are not sex workers...

Luuk Bouwman in his film, The Propagandist revives fragments of history on the silver screen, encouraging us to reflect on whether the past is ever fully behind us. Today’s digital environment offers a wide range of possibilities when filmmakers working with analogue and digitized moving images. Contemporary documentaries tend to reinterpret the use of archival materials.

Arjun Talwar’s Letters from Wolf Street is the Indian-born, Polish-based director’s attempt at a dialogue between his Indian and immigrant selves and between his artistic and political selves, through filmmaking— simultaneously inscribing itself into both Indian and Polish cinema’s histories.