Hungarian Premiere

A Golden Life

Boubacar Sangaré is a filmmaker, author, and director from Burkina Faso. He directed four short films and co-directed a feature documentary for television. A Golden Life is his first feature documentary for cinema. He is currently developing several other projects, including a road movie documentary, Djéliya, Memory of Manding (selected for La Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde, in Cannes Film Festival 2022, Miradas Doc, and Hot Docs Forum), and two feature-length fiction films: Le nom qu’on te donne and Les dieux délinquants.

Hollywoodgate

Ibrahim Nash’at (born 1990, in Jeddah) is an Egyptian documentary filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany. His career in journalism spans various formats as he has worked with several international channels and online platforms, such as Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, AJ+, Voice of America, and others. Ibrahim holds a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Met Film School. He co-edited Academy Award-nominated director Talal Derki’s latest film, Under the Sky of Damascus, which premiered at the Panorama section of Berlinale 2023, and won the Golden Alexander at the 25th Thessaloniki Doc Festival. Ibrahim has directed A Moment With the Wind, Home Away from Home and Berlin's Diversity, short films selected for multiple festivals around the world. Hollywoodgate is Ibrahim’s first feature-length film.

Ininnawa: an Island Calling

Arfan is a respected Indonesian documentary filmmaker, and alumni of Indonesia’s InDocs institute. Born in Makassar, he holds an academic degree in biology. His passion for cinematography led him to documentary filmmaking, which he has pursued for 15 years. Arfan’s debut short documentary, Suster Apung, won Best Film at the Eagle Awards in 2006. His debut feature documentary, The Flame, premiered at Visions du Reel in 2021, in the Latitudes section, and was nominated in 2021 as Best Feature Documentary at Festival Film Indonesia. Arfan’s films are known for having a strong visual aesthetic and for uncovering powerful, unique, and colourful characters with whom audiences feel a personal connection. Both The Flame and Ininnawa: An Island Calling share a sense that large, important, and timely stories can be told through individual accounts of inspiring protagonists.

Hawar, Our Banished Children

Pascale Bourgaux has covered all of the conflicts and crises in the Middle East in recent years. She has won numerous international awards for her reports, documentaries and books in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

The Dmitriev Affair

Jessica Gorter is a Dutch documentary filmmaker. She studied directing and editing at the Dutch Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. She lived in the United States as a teenager, and after completing her studies, worked and traveled in Russia for a longer period of time. Her experiences in both of these worlds, coupled with her passion for photography, form an important basis for her further works. Her award-winning films have been screened worldwide at film festivals and universities, and have been theatrically released and broadcast internationally. She has also directed for Dutch television (Human, VPRO) and worked as an editor for various documentaries. Her documentary, 900 Days (2011), was awarded best Dutch film at IDFA 2011.

A Still Small Voice

Luke Lorentzen is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and a graduate of Stanford University's Department of Art and Art History. His film, Midnight Family, tells the story of a family-run ambulance business in Mexico City. The film has won over 35 awards from film festivals and organizations around the world, including a Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Editing from the International Documentary Association, and the Golden Frog for Best Documentary from Camerimage. Midnight Family was shortlisted for the 2020 Best Documentary Oscar, and was a New York Times “Critics’ Pick”. Luke’s other works as a director and cinematographer include the Netflix original series, Last Chance U, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary in 2020. Luke co-founded the independent production company, Hedgehog Films, with Kellen Quinn.

5 Seasons of Revolution

Born in Damascus, Lina is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and camerawoman. She has documented events in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey over the past ten years. She holds a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Essex University. Lina made short and medium-length documentaries, and her debut feature, 5 Seasons of Revolution, premiered at the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition in 2023.

What's to Be Done?

Goran Dević studied law, archaeology, and film art at the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, Croatia, where he currently teaches documentary film. His documentaries and fiction films have won awards in Pula, Cottbus, Prizren, Prague, Sarajevo, Oberhausen, Leipzig, Motovun, and Zagreb. His feature film debut, The Blacks, co-directed and written with Zvonimir Jurić, was critically acclaimed. Retrospectives of his documentaries have been featured at Arsenal Berlin, MAXXI Roma, Crossing Europe Film festival Linz, Beldocs, and Zagreb. He co-founded the production company, Petnaesta umjetnost.

Nothing Compares

Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson is an award-winning director and writer. After a decade of focusing on short-form work centered on identity, gender politics, and community, she recently completed her first feature documentary Nothing Compares about musician Sinéad O’Connor, which premiered at Sundance 2022. The film has screened globally, been theatrically released, and has won multiple awards, including Best Feature Documentary and Best Debut Director in Feature Documentary at this year's BIFA Awards. In addition, in 2022, Kathryn was awarded the BFI & Chanel Award for Creative Audacity for a first-time feature director. As well as working as a documentary filmmaker, Kathryn works as a commercial and music video director with a range of clients including Nike, Selfridges, Girls Who Code, Amnesty International, Dove, and Air France, and artists such as Lady Gaga, Neneh Cherry, and Villagers.

We Will Not Fade Away

Born in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, in 1987, Alisa Kovalenko studied documentary filmmaking at the Karpenko-Kary University in Kyiv, and at the Wajda School in Warsaw, Poland. Her first feature-length documentary Alisa in Warland premiered at IDFA in 2015. Home Games screened at over 100 festivals and won numerous awards. She is the programmer for the international documentary competition of the Molodist film festival in Kyiv. After the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Alisa left the editing room of We Will Not Fade Away, and joined a volunteer unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), where she fought on the frontline in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions. She fought in the trenches for four months before returning to finish We Will Not Fade Away, which premiered at Berlinale Generation 2023. Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine continued, Alisa presented a project supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures and Netflix, based on footage filmed during her time in combat, at the IDFA Forum 2022.

23rd Verzió

17-25 NOVEMBER 2026.