I saw the film but understood that I did not get it all. Especially who was who in this three generation family drama, that takes place in Uzice in Serbia. I went back to the MacBook this morning and watched it again and understood everything, including how great a film it is. I am sure it will be loved by the audience at Sarajevo Film Festival. It is entertaining AND touching with an absolute star as protagonist, the aunt Gordana, around whom all the other characters circle, first of all her grown-up children Mladen and Marija, but also the sisters of Gordana, Biljana and Mira, and their mother… and many others, also grandchildren.

In one of the key scenes where Gordana is confronted by her daughter, Marija, her little son sitting in the middle of the sofa says to Bojana, the director behind the camera – save your batteries, stop filming, it’s gonna be an ugly film… From a child’s perspective he is right, there are so many hideous stories from the past of Gordana and, in this case, her daughter, that comes to the surface. Abuse.

Bojana comes back to Serbia from Hollywood, she is an actress, she wants to stay with her aunt, with whom she spent very little time when a child, before she and her parents went to Australia, where she grew up. As a child she was not allowed to see Gordana, who was an alcoholic and lived a life full of parties, having relationships to many men, leaving her two children alone – just like she she, Gordana, was pretty much alone as a child.

There are photos from their respective childhoods but the brave and wise solution by Bojana is to reenact scenes from the past. She does so inspired by Gordana´s obsession with tv soaps. The editing functions perfectly, and it is fun to watch. There is for instance a scene, where Gordana – being the third child – sits with her two sisters and does not eat… her father has told her that she should sit and “inhale” the smells from their food, that would make her full!

It is the face and presence of Gordana and her – being sober now – extraordinary helpfulness to older people around her, AND her story as a successful hairdresser with her own salon that took my attention. She won a competition and was invited to become a superb hairdresser. She said no. “Do you know what it means to be damaged”, she says in one of the many fine intimate conversations she has with Bojana. It turns out that Bojana also has had a problem with drinking; at a point she says – or is it Gordana – that she does not want to be like her aunt.

Who openly says that she destroyed the life of her children. For two years, they say, they were alone, I did not have a mother, says Mladen. But she is now, the film shows, a caring grandmother – and what was Gordana’s salon is now a salon of Marija!

A soap opera as the poster says, yes, with the word documentary in focus, hybrid, does not matter. A complex structure unfolded to become a Great film!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Serbia, Australia, 85 mins.

“Artist Dragana Jurišić travels to the town of Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to stage a short film in the style of a mythical cult Western director Hari Džekson (Harry Jackson). In an attempt to uncover the story of Hari’s life and legacy, Dragana embarks on making a Western with the local community. She meets his former collaborators, family members, and local residents, piecing together memories of Hari’s town before the war and getting to know its inhabitants today. The resulting documentary film becomes an exploration of the impact of war on Hari, herself and the town. It also asks the question if the spirit of Hari Dzekson still exists today.”

This is what the film is about. It is entertaining to watch, especially her Western auditions with kids and grown-ups, many knew Hari, described him as a nice guy, “he was always chasing justice”, worked with him on his westerns, knew how to hold a gun and how to operate it. So it is a looking-back film with Dragana Jurišić, who lives in Ireland, contemplating on nationalism, “the ideology of idiots” as one says. There is an interview with the journalist Yusuf, who was captured and tortured by the warlord Arkan and his group – “noone has until today been held accountable for what Arkan did when he was in Bijeljina”. And the shocking photos of Ron Haviv are shown. You can go to the internet to take a look, I can’t afford to show them here.

I prefer to stay with the director and skilled photographer Dragana, who finds a location in the countryside, where Darko lives, a bachelor, who invites the film crew to come and shoot the western in memory of Harry Jackson at his place.

Hari stayed in Bijeljina but sent his family – wife and kids – abroad.

Nationalism… there is a short clip from Dublin, from a demonstration against foreigners coming to Ireland, “send them back”. Alas, could have been Copenhagen…

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Ireland, Croatia, 2026, 93 mins.

There is a bitterness in the face of the charismatic elderly Roko Markovina. “There is no justice in the world, nothing is fair”. He lives on an island and goes with a stick. He is doing gardening. Let me quote from the always competent publicist Dimitra Kouzi’s synopsis:

“Roko Markovina was a socialist member of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. A respected and widely loved public figure, he believed that, when war
came, it was his moral duty to lead by example and remain in Mostar with his family, even as the city was torn apart by ethnic conflict. They were soon driven out by nationalists from their own ethnic community, who branded Roko a traitor and seized their home. Although the family eventually recovered the house, they never returned.”

Why not, says one of his children, Dragan, “I lost my hometown” – the other son Damir is the one, who made the film – they are both in the film’s central scene that takes place at the dinner table and present is also the wife and mother of the two, Zinaida. I don´t want to live in a divided city, father Roko says, Mostar is full of hate. You exiled us, say mother and sons, and yet says the wife, whenever you have been there to visit, you come home telling that you met so many old friends, says Zinaida… and enemies, says Roko.

Excellent archive material shows Roko Markovina speaking in the BiH parliament, powerful he is and strong in his argumentation for a non-nationalistic country. He was appointed Head of Civil Defense in Mostar during the war, “I buried 386 people”, he says.

The 13th of October 1993 the family left their apartment in Mostar, actually they were thrown out by the winning Croat nationalistic party.

The film’s director, Damir, states in an interview with publicist Kouzi that “Reflecting on how best to portray the war we lived through in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I realised that my family is by no means alone in a struggle to accept the new post-war society and its rules. After nearly fifty years of living together, many families in BiH found themselves excluded by the new nationalist divides and factions.” He does not take a stand against his father, although he and the brother Dragan indeed reproach him for being so untouchably stubborn – your position had consequences for your family.

There is a lot of images from the childhood of Damir and Dragan, home video clips that are inserted into footage of today and archive from Sarajevo during the war is strongly there, so the place for the premiere is of course obvious.

There are not many smiles from Roko Markovina, and yet, watch the film and enjoy the ending scene with him and the director…

Croatia, 2026, 75 mins.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

“The idea of making a film first came to me after the death of my close friend and brother-in-arms, 20-year-old Artem. I really wanted him to be remembered. My brothers-in-arms, who had by then become like family, accepted the idea. But during that period there was almost no time for “just filming” — in war there is constant work and no days off. I did not film secret operations. I did not take the camera to combat positions. I filmed only when it was possible and when it did not interfere with service…” A quote from an interview with Helena Maksyom from the website of Ukrainian festival DocuDays, where the film had its premiere and won two awards, for Best Film and for the editing. Artem is on the photo taken from the interview, “provided by the director”.

Helena is at the funeral of Artem filming – cleverly thought – flowers being brought to the grave and from a distance – respect! – the sorrow of his family. The emotional response from Helena comes after, a cut to her with a rifle firing several shots, I see it as getting the aggression out.

The film, as a whole, is far from aggression. With Helena in picture talking to the camera giving comments to the situation and/or talking to her frail mother, who in the beginning of the film says to Helena “take your passport and get out of the country” – Helena answers why she wants to stay in her country, we spectators do not doubt her attachment to her country.

The film has a non-sensationalistic tone, where we spectators are with Helena and her family, as she called it in the interview, when they are in places waiting for the next call for battle, when they are evacuating a family (I will never forget the wee boy with big curious eyes turning around for the camera, when he and his family goes for the car for evacuation), when she has conversations with the young soldiers, when we see soldiers being treated for wounds in the field hospital etc.

The approach is respectful and for me beautiful, the film is likewise a personal documentation of high quality.

Ukraine, Romania, Germany, The Netherlands 2026, 104 min.