DocPro

Participating in international workshops can bring valuable visibility and fresh perspectives to a film in development. But beyond many workshops, opinions, and suggestions, how can the directors decide which opportunities are right for their projects, and which feedback is worth integrating into their work.

In this panel, we will explore how feedback shapes both the film and the filmmaker. How do directors navigate different opinions, decide what to incorporate and what to leave behind, and protect their own creative vision throughout the process? Our invited directors will share their personal experiences, reflecting on the challenges, discoveries, and lasting effects of taking their projects into the international workshop circuit.

Discover the World and Make Films! – This is the conclusion to Mark Cousins’ monumental The Story of Documentary Film, a work that traces the history of non-fiction film up to the present day. The final chapter offers a richly detailed account of how documentary film has evolved since 2020, using the techniques of DIY collage filmmaking. At once informative and liberating, it presents documentary filmmaking as a way of discovering the world and preserving our sense of curiosity. At the DocAcademy event, we will watch the chapter together and then explore the questions it raises: what possibilities does contemporary documentary filmmaking hold, and how is the digital age transforming the genre?

Scottish filmmaker, critic and film historian Mark Cousins combines passionate knowledge-sharing with innovative collage-film techniques. Following The Story of Looking, his work returns to Verzió: the first four chapters of his monumental 16-part series The Story of Documentary Film will be screened at the festival, while the final chapter will be presented as part of DocPro Academy.

Making a feature film is like running a marathon. It is a long, exhausting journey, and every new stage can feel harder than the previous one. By the time you reach the end of your energy, you may still be only halfway through. Asia Dér will talk about the process of making a film from a director’s point of view, using Her Mothers, Howling on Your Own and I Won’t Die as case studies. Breaking down the long creative process into the stages of development, production, editing and distribution, she will share the things that helped her stay sane in the chaos of international festival trends, pitches and workshops, advice from tutors and colleagues, the fight for funding, and finding a distribution path for your film in the ocean of films being made around the world.

An  open-ended masterclass with Austrian filmmaker, cinematographer and producer Nikolaus Geyrhalter, known for his precise observational documentaries. Through selected scenes from his films, the session explores his creative process, the realities behind the camera and the decisions that shape his work. Audience questions and suggestions are welcome. Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s masterclass is a session with no predictable outcome.