Whenever my wife and I need a break (she from Netflix series, me from documentaries), we watch the Fawlty Towers series with John Cleese. His wife Sybil does what she can to make the hotel owner Basil (Cleese) behave but he can not resist to humiliate German guests – ”don’t mention the war”, she says, but he does – and the French get their treatment as well, when one of them complain about the wine. Hilarious. Still wonderful even if 40 years old.

John Cleese (photo), master of silly walking, got the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Film Festival the other day. So well deserved for his long contribution to film and television.

But many others got awards as well – I focus on documentaries and documentarians:

The Bulgarian cat activists (see post above) Mina Mileva and Vezela Kazakova got €6000, the Arte International Relations Cinelink Award for their project ”Cat in the Wall”, Macedonian producer Atanas Georgiev and his directors Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska got €30.000 from TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) for their ”Honeyland” which is in post-production. I saw material from the film at the RoughCut Boutique, looked good, very promising. As is another one presented at the Boutique event, ”What Comes Around” by Reem Saleh, a close-up of a poor family in a poor district of Cairo. It got the Restart Award, €20.000 in kind support.

My friends in the documentary jury Gitte Hansen (First Hand Films) and Claas Danielsen (CEO of MDM in Leipzig) chose together with renowned Serbian director Zelimir Zilnik to play safe and go for both aesthetics and content with ”City of the Sun” by Rati Oneli from Georgia and ”Kinders” by Brothers Riahi from Austria/Iran. You can read about all the awards on link below.

http://www.sff.ba/en/news/10756/23rd-sarajevo-film-festival-awards 

 

 

Back from Sarajevo, now here comes important info that waited some days to be brought. Namely the information about who were the winners at the DokuFest in Prizren. I bring some of the categories with the jury motivations – always appreciate when festivals publish them. This is not that often I am afraid. But the great people down there in Kosovo do:

INT’L DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION/FEATURE DOX – WINNER

EL MAR LA MAR by Joshua Bonnetta, J.P. Sniadecki.

Jury: Carmen Gray, Cíntia Gli, Melody Gilbert, Rodolfo Castillo-Morales, Wood LIN.

Statement: With 16mm film, the filmmakers gaze into time and the desert landscape at the border between U.S. and Mexico. Signs of human life are barely visible, but the empty desert along with the soundscape serves as a vivid metaphor of everything invisible, yet influential, to our daily lives. The geographical, ideological and political aspects are also illuminated through the narrative structure as the journey unfolds. El Mar La Mar is a beautiful poem and a highly political statement in the contemporary context with sincerity.

The same jury gave the “Special Mention” to 69 MINUTES OF 86 DAYS by Egil Håskjold Larsen.

Statement: A sensitive film that depicts the journey of a family through innocent eyes, in difficult and uncertain times of both political and social unrest, where many approaches towards the core of this film, proper or problematic could be interpreted.

HUMAN RIGHTS – WINNER:

THE WAR SHOW by Andreas Dalsgaard, Obaidah Zytoon

Jury: Laura Limani, Mante Valiunaite, Miranda Pennel

Statement: The jury was impressed by the film’s well-crafted form, intimacy of its camera and reflective quality of its narration.
The film manages to provide a close view of the resistance in Syria; it is a beautiful homage to political activism and ultimately, an intimate story of friendships lost too soon. What begins as a personal story transforms into a tale of journalistic courage and a commitment to document the brutal impacts of war on human lives from up-close.

The same jury gave the “Special Mention” for the HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD to A FEELING GREATER THAN LOVE by Mary Jirmanus Saba.

Statement: An important and timely investigation of labor histories and working class solidarity in Lebanon in the period shortly before the civil wars.

BALKAN DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION – WINNER:

BUFFET ELJEZARA by Goran Dević

Jury: Karen Cirillo, Mimi Brody, Ognjen Glavonić,

Statement: We award BUFFET ELJEZARA (Steel Mill Café) as an expertly crafted portrait of a community grappling with the economic realities of a dwindling population. It deftly captures the café’s owners and visitors with subtle humor and an intimacy that conveys how difficult it is to say goodbye to one’s home.

The same jury gave the “Special Mention” to ONI SAMO DOLAZE I ODLAZE by Boris Poljak.

Statement: ONI SAMO DOLAZE I ODLAZE /THEY JUST COME AND GO is a visually playful and jaw-dropping allegory, dedicated to subtly painting a world in which, from dawn to dusk, human life in different stages of desire and uncertainty is captured in all its directionless interweaving.

The same jury gave the BEST BALKAN NEWCOMER AWARD to MY LIFE WITHOUT AIR by Bojana Burnać.

Statement: We award MY LIFE WITHOUT AIR for its fresh and original visual approach and striking cinematography. With an assurance not often seen in a debut film, Bojana Burnac trusts her subject and audience and lets the story slowly unfold to reveal the personality and reality of a very private world-record holder.

The same jury gave the “Special Mention” to Gora by Stefan Malešević.

Statement: A special mention goes to Stefan Malešević’s visually striking and effortlessly rich meditation on a community of mountains and nature, animals and men. The time, tradition, rhythm and rules of life at GORA are, with the author’s curiosity and observation, brought closer and more familiar to those who might never have a chance to visit this part of the world.

More winners on:

www.dokufest.com 

The wonderful film couple Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova, Bulgarians, who with their fine films “Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Serviceand “The Beast is Still Alive” have raised discussions and anger in their home country, run a company called Activist 38. The other day they demonstrated their activism in quite another field. This is what Mileva wrote on her FB wall:

When entering Sarajevo for the CineLink Industry Days we found these brothers. We’ve had to rescue them from underneath a massive lorry. The ginger one was ready to be flattened curled up right under the huge tire. We’re supposed to talk about “Cat in the wall” here but what to do with these two?

We had a drink with the two yesterday. Mina Mileva told us how she survives as an animation artist in London, Vesela Kazakova lives in Sofia, is an actress, has performed on theatre and in films and of course in “The Beast…”.

But they are almost never in their homes travelling as they do to festivals and markets raising money for the next project – or saving animals… Bravo! Below links to reviews of their two films:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3672/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2747/

First a brief intro for those who don’t know about the excellent Rough Cut Boutique initiative, that is a joint programme created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Balkan Documentary Center, focused on documentary films from the region of South East Europe and Caucasus, films in post-production. 5 chosen projects are offered tailor made coaching by editors and other documentary experts.

After a session in Sofia (where the Balkan Documentary Center is placed, run by Martichka Bozhilova) the Boutique, that worked for days in a room in Hotel Europe, led by Rada Sesic, presented the 5 projects to documentary interested people at the Sarajevo Film Festival, including me.

Sorry to say, I was not really impressed by the quality. The simple question you put to yourself, when you attend a pitching/presentation like this: Woiuld I like to see that film when finished? Do the films have cinematic quality, do they play with many layers…

One did, one stood out – ”Srbenka” by Nebosja Slijejcevic from

Croatia, produced by the company Restart. The synopsis goes like this – In the winter of 1991 a 12-year old girl Aleksandra Zec was killed. She was Serbian. Although the perpetrators admitted the crime, nobody was ever sentenced for it. 25 years later, theatre director Oliver Frljic prepares a theatre play about the case. The work process brings out to the surface hidden traumas: rehearsals become a collective psychotherapy, and 12-year old actress Nina (who is Serbian but has problems to say so, from that the title) feels as if the war had never ended…

Beautiful in form and content, I am curious to see the final result. Here I was presented with 10 minutes.

The other projects were two from Hungary ”Ghetto Balboa” (Arpad Bogdan), great cinematography but… and ”Paying a Visit to Fortuna” (Matyas Kalman) about lotto winners, need more filmic sense… and Hungarian/Romanian ”Hands of God” (Laszlo Barna) about a roma violonist who has Parkinson… and ”The Other Side of the Medal” from Romania (Denisa Morariu) about the gymnast Andreea Raducan, who won Gold at the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 but was disqualified because of doping = a substance found in a flu pill. The filmmakers behind this had not found their form yet.

Photo from one of the sessions here in Sarajevo.

www.sff.ba

… was a public presentation of 9 stories by different organisations, which are Dealing with the Past. It took place yesterday at Hotel Europe, the centre for the Industry part of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The manager of the project Masa Markovic formulates “that the purpose is evident in its name. We believe that an open and honest discussion about our painful recent past is a prerequisite if we want to resolve the problems stemming from the wars in the former Yugoslavia that continue to be a burden on us…”

It would be wrong to say that it was a pleasure to attend the 90 minutes presentation – one horror story after the other – to an audience of – among others – filmmakers, who might be interested in turning the stories into films.

These are stories with many layers, said the moderator, Croatian

filmmaker Robert Zuber, who stressed that the people up here at the panel have done the research, dear filmmakers…

Let me mention two of the stories presented by Milica Kostic from the regional Humanitarian Law Centre, which is situated in Belgrade. A long quote from the text in the catalogue:

The fall of the UN’s “safe haven” of Srebrenica into the hands of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) commenced with the entry into the town of soldiers from the 10th Sabotage Detachment of the VRS on 11 July, 1995. Over the followjing days, VRS soldiers systematically captured and executed Bosniak men and boys found in Srebrenica, including many who were hunted down while they tried to flee. By 16 July, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were executed. Some men managed to escape and reached the border at the Drina River, hoping they would be allowed to cross into Serbia and find protection there. However, their attempt to cross the border was prevented by the border guards of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, who returned them to the VRS to be executed. By 1 August 1, at least 30 Bosniak men had been captured by border guards and turned over to the VRS.

The remains of 15 of these deported men were found in mass graves in Srebrenica; nine others are still reported missing; only six managed to survive…

In an emotionally strong interview, that Milica Kostic showed a clip from, the son of one of the missing persons – at the time he was 11 years old – remembers when he was taken away from his father: Normally people say goodbye when they split…

There is a film to be done here as there is about the work that they do at the Humanitarian Law Centre. When in preparation meetings for the presentations, that I took part in, Robert Zuber suggested that a film could be made about the Centre thus getting into some of the cases that Kostic mentioned. For instance they have just filed a criminal complaint against Serbian former members of the State Security Service.

Other organisations present were Centre for Civic Education, that came up with an interesting story about the concentration camp Mamula on an island in Montenegro which is on the edge of being turned into a holiday resort. And the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia with “Serbia and Kosovo: Intercultural Icebreakers”. And Medica Zenica with a story about Zehra, a survivor of war time rape. And Association for Social Research and Communications with a touching story about Edhem, who was killed but could have been part of an prisoner exchange. A quote from the catalogue:

On October 13, Radio of Bosnia and Herzegovina reported on a prisoner exchange, as part of which the prisoners of the Batković prison camp were to be released. At that moment, Senija was at work on her new job at Himzo Bajrić’s hair salon in Gračanica. She was shaving a customer when the radio reported that 180 men from Brčko had been exchanged and that only Edhem was not among them. A few tears rolled down her cheeks, but nobody at the salon realised what was happening. She did not tell anyone. She thought she might have misunderstood the reporter or that maybe the reporter was wrong. However, in a new report broadcast at 11am, the reporter repeated that Edhem had been killed…

Finally there were 3 projects presented by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that last year presented a project that became “Restless Dreams” which was shown at this year’s festival.

www.sff.ba

One hour is too little time, Joshua Oppenheimer said to me, when we met to prepare the masterclass with him here in Sarajevo, where a tribute was given to him in connection with the festival’s Dealing With the Past theme and program, organised by Masa Markovic.

I was to be the moderator, the easiest job I have had for a long time, as Oppenheimer is such a brilliant speaker – and we got almost 2 hours for the class, that followed just after the screening of The Look of Silence, described as the companion piece to ”Act of Killing” that was shown the day before. How can a man, who has met his audience hundreds of times in the decade he has been making these Indonesian films, keep on being so committed and enthusiastic and respectful to his audience. Amazing!

He talked a lot about the gentle, sympathetic Adi (photo), the protagonist of The Look of Silence, the alter ego of Oppenheimer, and the way he was able to make the perpetrators talk about the killings they performed in 1965, including the one on Adi’s brother. The film is full of intimate, long silent scenes with the camera on the beautiful face of Adi, and for me – having seen the film several times – especially the scenes with Adi and his mother and father are emotionally so strong. The father who at the end does not know where he is without knowing that Adi is his son.

About lies, boasting, why Anwar suffers every night from what he has done – that he shows in ”Act of Killing” – and much much more from the intelligent Oppenheimer. Read all the words we have written on these two masterpieces here:

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/2729/

www.sff.ba

There we are in the middle of the street that leads to cinemas and Festival Square in Sarajevo on a quiet sunday afternoon. A couple is waving at us from the pavement opposite us. We meet, it is dear friend Rada Sesic and her husband John. It’s my birthday, she says, we have to make a photo. John takes the picture, it is Rada in the middle, Ellen my wife to the left and me. Congratulations!

Rada Sesic is here, there and everywhere during the festival. She is running, together with Martichka Bozhilova the Rough Cut sessions at the Hotel Europe and she has selected the documentary competition films, where she makes introductions and Q&A sessions. Semper ardens!

www.sff.ba