versions

As the third film festival of the week, Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival brings more than 50 films, in original language with English subtitles, to 3 Hungarian cinemas, for almost a week. The festival, which was inspired by Prague's OneWorld Festival, still the biggest human rights documentary film festival in the world, had its 10th anniversary this year (feel free to check out who made the promo video :-). Featuring documentaries in four different sections, Verzió offers a journey for you to travel through time and space and wake up from your life which is too comfortable for you to realize. Think of the Guinean students who fail to have the luxury not only of the computer and internet you are now using but they even lack such a basic utility like electricity. In the evening they need to travel to a gas station or to the airport, to study. Would you go that far, every night, so you can learn to speak English?

 

Or imagine being an albino in Tanzania. Not only does the sun damage your skin, your face, and your vision, but your neighbors are also hunting you, because they believe, thanks to the local witch doctors, that you are the incarnation of the devil and owning parts of your body brings fortune. Can you imagine that you cannot go to school, work, or simply fall asleep unguarded, because you may wake up like some of your fellows: without an arm or cut up into pieces?

Or do you know how it feels not to remember your name, recognize your mother's face, recall the fact that you had children, or to forget whatever you were so busy to achieve in your life and collect on your CV? Can you imagine to live without memory? To live without a past, only in the present? Don't we define ourselves through yesterday and tomorrow?

I hope you didn't miss out on these previously described festivals, not only for the sake of language practice, but also for the sake of gaining insights into the diversity of the wide world and your own micro universe.