Magnificent7 Welcome to Belgrade

Riga, very early morning. Because of crutch – pain, waiting for a hip replacement – chair-assistance in the airport and help from co-tutor at the Baltic Sea Docs, editor Phil Jandaly, who was on his way to another workshop.

One day in Copenhagen in the allotment garden (Danish kolonihave, German Schrebergarten) and then my wife and I went for Belgrade, for the 19th edition of Magnificent7, a unique festival in its format: 7 films, 7 days and a formidable hospitality from the side of the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. That started already when we were met by – as always – Ema, who this year is helped by Katarina. They took us to the hotel and provided us with “survival kits”… biscuits in many different versions, juice, water, tissues – absolutely needed as it is hot in Belgrade.

Just had breakfast in the fine hotel that is 5 minutes from the cinema MTS Dvorana, where the opening film “All Men Become Brothers” by Robert Kirchhoff will be screened at 8pm. One of my heroes, Alexander Dubcek, is the one Kirchhoff describes – here is my intro to a review I wrote on filmkommentaren.dk, a scene that is not in the film: …I am sure many of you remember the iconic moment from  November 1989, when Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek stand on a balcony in the Wenceslas Square in Prague being welcomed enthusiastically by hundreds of thousands. It was the days of the Velvet revolution and the hero of 1968 and the hero of 1989 were there together. I get tears in my eyes whenever I see that clip with Dubcek with embracing the crowd with his arms…

Anyway, the film is here and it is a great film, another quote: …  Thanks to Slovak Robert Kirchhoff there is now a detailed, well composed cinematic essay, a huge work that has taken him years of research and contemplation on how to tell the story about the man, who wanted “socialism with a human face”.

The festival has a focus on directors, several of them arrive today and stay to watch the films of their colleagues. They will not regret to be at this totally non-commercial festival with no industry event attached. For me coming from an excellent Baltic Sea Docs that dealt with film projects in progress and development a perfect change to film watching together with an audience.

https://magnificent7festival.org/en/

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade

All Men Become Brothers

It´s not easy. The selection of 7 films. For a good and a bad reason. The good is that today so many good documentaries are available in Belgrade. It was not like that 19 years ago, when the first edition of Magnificent7 took off. Today there are several festivals that show documentaries in the city and television also programs creative documentaries. My colleagues, the festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic have mentioned that several documentaries from M7 have now been broadcasted. So there are many options for the Belgraders, also the platforms for home screenings. The bad reason, no, continue reading:

For we have made a fine selection also for this year. For what are M7 looking for… the same as always – films with a subject that is relevant for an audience that demands to to be treated with special care and attention, and with a focus on artistic quality. With a special look on us human beings and the way we behave and treat each other.

I am happy and proud on behalf of the festival that the opening film is “All Men Become Brothers” about Alexander Dubcek, the legendary Slovak politician, who presented his politically democratic ambition for “socialism with a human face”. In 1968, the Prague Spring it was named, that was crushed by military invention from the Warsaw countries led by USSR. It is a great film and I dare say an important message to send also today, the humanistic approach.

The same goes for the two Nordic documentaries in the program. “Vintersaga” by Carl Olsson, who was here before with “Patrimonium”, portraying Swedish people in situations that sometimes are conveyed full of irony, sometimes “just” a pure homage to how we are, good and bad. In “Mr. Graversen” the son Michael returns to his childhood home and reaches to – with warmth, love and understanding – help his parents to come back to the life they once had. 

The same theme comes up in “Housewitz”, where Dutch Oeke Hoogendijk does what she can to make her old mother, a holocaust survivor, live a decent life, in a film full of light and dark tones. And Love.

You can also love food, as the one who writes these lines does, and if you are financially unable to visit a Michelin restaurant you can watch “She Chef” by Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel, who were here before with the film on El Buli, a culinaric uhmm pleasure on screen with Agnes as the chef, who grows in the hierarchy, could have stayed in the big établissements but preferred “the human face” in a small restaurant in the Faroese Islands.

Climate and the way we treat the nature with an “inhuman face” is indirectly, what is the theme of the most surprising film of the 2023 edition – “A Year in the Field” by British Christopher Morris, who in an interview in Guardian said “I’ve never strapped myself to a tree, never even been on a protest march. That’s not in my nature, that’s not me. But standing quietly in a field, a sort of one-man direct action seemed kind of appealing to me.” And to the audience, it’s actually a very political film!

And finally ”Meine Schweizer Armee” by Luka Popadić, a film that we have discussed with Luka in several meetings at M7, me first time saying “… oh you have an army in Switzerland!”, they have and Luka is there and have made with respect a film, where he also talks to his fellow soldiers about “what is your homeland”, not being born in Switzerland, looking for your identity in other words, with respect. Podapic arrives in (?) his homeland with three officers “with a human face”.

Can’t wait to be back in Belgrade!

Tue Steen Müller

Skopje

August 22 2023

European Film Academy Shortlists 14 Documentaries

Press release of today:

”With 14 powerful feature-length documentary films the European Film Academy is presenting a strong Documentary Film Selection for the European Film Awards 2023. The Academy has revealed the titles today. A committee consisting of a diverse range of invited European experts has chosen these 14 productions that have been recommended for nomination for the European Film Awards 2023. The European Film Awards, honouring the greatest achievements in European cinema, will be presented on 9 December in Berlin.

With 16 European countries represented – both EU and non-EU – the selection demonstrates the great diversity in European cinema.

Please find the list of all selected documentaries here as well as further information on all films including synopsis, cast, credits, and statements of directors (if available).

Eligible for the European Film Awards are European documentaries which, among other criteria, had their first official screening between 1 June 2022 and 31 May 2023 and have a European director*. Additional titles of documentary films premiering at summer festivals might be added and announced in September…”

In the coming weeks, the 4,600 members of the European Film Academy will start to watch the selected films and after the final announcement of all films vote on the nominations in the category ‘European Documentary’. Based on the votes of all members, the nominations will be made public on 7 November 2023. The members of the European Film Academy will then vote for the winner who will be announced at the European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin on 9 December 2023.

Favourites? My guess is ”Apolonia,Apolonia” by Lea Glob, “On the Adamant” by Nicolas Philibert, “We Will not Fade Away” by Alisa Kovalenko, “Our Body” by Claire Simon but there are also cph:dox winner “Motherland” by Hanna Badziaka, Alexander Mihalkovich and MakeDOX winner “Between Revolutions” by Vlad Petri or DocsBarcelona winner “Who I am not” by Tunde Skovran. Click above and get them all.

MakeDox Goodbye

I am sitting in the lobby of the Bushi Hotel, which, with all its corridors and many rooms, has been a nice escape spot from the heat outside after long workshop days, a few outdoor screenings, meals in the bazaar and on the big square with Alexander the Great statue in the middle.

”Kurshumli an” is the name of the outdoor cinema, where the audience gathers at 9pm in the evening in front of a big screen with a superb projection. And there is a huge audience, many of them stays for the second screening as well, at 11pm. It’s scheduled for 300 but there are more and there is space enough. As two nights before where the festival director Petra Seliskar’s new fim “Body” was to be screened. I came to greet Petra and her protagonist, did not want to see the film again as I had already watched it in Sarajevo the week before. A very good film full of passion and warmth circling around Urška Ristić, the woman – an understatement – who has gone through so much trouble with illness in her body but survived due to her will and strength. And Lust for Life.

The screening started after some crazy moments during a short film before “Body”. Dogs are also in the audience and Petra and her family has a wonderful collie, who is running around being welcomed by everyone. Except for a unwanted stray dog, was it a cane Corso or ?, who suddenly entered and ran directly towards the collie to attack. Lots of fight of barking sounds, Petra’s family in action getting the aggressor out and consoling their own dog. Not nice, I needed another raki. And the dog water and carressing.

I could have needed one (a raki) as well the next day, where a pitching forum took place at MKC, a youth center. 11 projects were pitched, I had some moments where I fell asleep because of the heat, no ac in the room, but maybe also because of the quality of the projects, where most of them were at a “very very early” stage, so would it not have been better to wait with the pitch? Except for Hanis Bagashov’s “I Don’t Want” that I knew from a workshop last year – he has a feeling for cinema – and the Kosovo project “Adelina” by Aurela Berila with Eroll Bilibani I did not find any obvious talent in the trailers. You can find more on the projects on the website of the festival: http://makedox.mk

And then last night at the cinema I was sitting with dear friends from Georgia, Mariam Chacia and Nik Voigt, whose film “Magic Mountain” will be screened tonight, to watch and enjoy Nicolas Philibert’s masterpiece “On the Adamant”. The place where people – patients and doctors and therapists et al. meet – to talk, engage themselves in creative matters, writing, painting, composing, playing music, singing, talking about football – being there to be with other people, to escape loneliness. To be alive, “to live, to give” as Neil Young has been singing. It was an extraordinary film to watch and to talk about over a nice dinner in the bazaar. And the conversation continued today at lunch with Serge Tréfaut, the French/Portuguese director, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, where his last documentary “Paraiso” is filmed. An extraordinary homage to human life at an old age.

THANKS MakeDox to give so much.

MakeDox: Main Program

It is a very competent and exciting selection the North (!) Macedonian festival in Skopje, edition number 14, offers its audience in 3 outdoor screening venues. Screenings start after the 9.15 calls from the minarets in the city. And the audience is big. The weather is of course a dangerous player under these circumstances but this year it treats the festival well. Last year I remember that the masterpiece “Nelly and Nadine” by Swedish Magnus Gertten, edited by Danish Jesper Osmund – who performs here at an editing workshop with me on the sideline – was screened long after midnight because of heavy rain…

Back to the main program that includes the emotionally beautiful “Eternal Memory” by Chilean Maite Alberdi (photo of her on top of this page), the two films by Serbian Mila Turajlic with and about the late cinematographer Labutovic, who was the cameraman of Tito, followed him around and was sent by him to Algeria to follow and support the Algerian Liberation Front in their fight against the French to obtain independence – they got it in 1962. Both of these films are shown today, the 20th, whereas the festival director Petra Seliskar’s wonderful “Body”, that was also at the Sarajevo FF last week is on tomorrow. And then on the 22nd I will be in the plastic chair in Kurshumli An to enjoy master Nicolas Philibert’s new film “On the Adamant”.

I mentioned a handful, I could have gone on with other sections, check the www.makedox.mk

Aleksandar Reljic: Mamula All Inclusive

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Mamula… never heard about it, and I was not the only one in the over-full cinema hall 2 in Cineplex at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Now I do thanks to the fine film of Aleksandar Reljic. That was presented today as part of the Dealing With the Past section. At the Q&A after the film, that was received with strong applause, Rejlic told the audience that his interest in making the film came, when Daliborka Uljarevic from Montenegro presented the story in 2017 at the True Story Market at the Sarajevo FF. He met his good friend Dragan Gmizić, who said you have to make that film and who was able to raise some small funding to start the shooting that lasted until today.

The Q&A with the three mentioned, and with me on the side as moderator, raised many interesting comments and positive reactions. There was a big Bravo directed several times to Leila Dedic from Al Jazeera Balkans for the financial support, which also brought Croatian Robert Zuber to comment on the poor support situation of the public broadcasters in the region – Robert being an active producer and director and now also a festival director – and the leading character of the True Stories Market, from where “Mamula” came.

The film has several layers but what I would like to highlight is that it (also) is a tribute to an old war veteran Ivo Markovic, who passed away a couple of years ago. To see him visually described by Reljic, coming year after year came to commemorate the victory over the Italian occupation in WW2 is moving, a strong man fighting his way up the stairs to the fortress. insisting to call Mamula what it was, a camp and not a prison as another veteran wanted. The family of Ivo Markovic was present at the premiere.

Daliborka Uljarevic told the audience that the film will be shown in Montenegro and will raise strong debate in the polarized country that now has a modern hotel and restaurant on the island… I am not going to eat in a place, where human beings, children and grown-ups, have been starving and tortured…

Serbia, 2023, 58 mins.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Sarajevo FF CineLink Industry focus on Docs

partnerships with Balkan Documentary Center, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, and Documentary Campus which provide fresh vigor and the potential to promote documentary filmmakers. Given Sarajevo’s reputation for curated projects and the caliber of guests we attract, CineLink’s documentary activities create a space to be recognised. Here, those with a distinct outlook – who may not tread the conventional market path, like a HONEYLAND (two times Ocars nominated film in 2019) – find their voices amplified, which is why CineLink Industry Days diverge from the contours of the ordinary documentary market. Through three sections, CineLink Work in Progress, Docu Rough Cut Boutique, and Docu Talents from the East, Cinelink Industry Days present 15 projects in production or post-production stages.

Participants are offered chances to secure coveted prizes, promising networking, collaboration, and valuable takeaways. Docu Rough Cut Boutique projects vie for awards, including the Avanpost Award (€20,000 post-production services), CAT&Docs Award (€2,000), HBO Max Award (€2,000), DOK Leipzig Preview Award (invitation to present at DOK Leipzig 2023), AJB DOC Award (€2,000), and East Silver Caravan Award (€3,500 distribution service). The CineLink Work in Progress program offers opportunities for two esteemed awards: the Post Republic Award (€30,000 in-kind support) and the Turkish National Radio Television Award (€25,000 cash prize). In 2023 CineLink Industry Days introduced the inaugural CineLink Impact Award by Think-Film Impact Production. This award is open to post-production phase projects actively participating in CineLink Work-in-Progress or Docu Rough Cut Boutique. Its aim is comprehensive impact campaign support for the most promising project, offering €20,000 in-kind consultation services. In the Docu Talents from the East program, promising projects compete for the Current Time TV Docu Talent Award ($5,000) and Doc Alliance Distribution Award (€3,000 in-kind support).

An overview of documentary projects presented at CineLink Industry Days:

CineLink Work in Progress:

SUSPENDED: DIARIES FROM LEBANON / LB, FR
Director: Myriam El Hajj
Production companies: Abbout Productions, Gogogo Films

Using weapons, voting booths, or revolting in the streets of Beirut. These are the choices of GEORGES, JOUMANA, and PERLA: three intersecting destinies, three generations, and the same desire to change a sick country, Lebanon. As various crises unfold, they face a dilemma: Save the world or save themselves?

THE SINNER AND THE SAINT / BG
Director: Boris Despodov
Production company: Arthouse Blockbusters

While searching for the Light, he was drawn into the Darkness.

Docu Rough Cut Boutique:

ADELINA: SYMPHONY OF LONGING AND ESTRANGEMENT / GE
Director: Rati Tsiteladze
Production company: ArtWay Film

It is an intimate journey into the world and minds of two lost souls, mother and daughter, who have become outcasts, one in the centre of Europe and the other in a tiny village in Georgia.

ALICE ON&OFF / RO
Director: Isabela von Tent
Production company: Luna Film

How to teach someone to love if no one has taught you?

DAD´S LULLABY / UA, RO
Director: Lesia Diak
Production company: FilmWays, DramaFree
Co-production company: FilmWays, DramaFree, Delirium Films

SERHIY fought for his country in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but now he needs to fight his family. A film about the aftermath of war.

PAVILLON 6 / HR
Director: Goran Dević
Production company: 15th Art Productions Intimate conversations in the vaccination line.

YOUR LIFE WITHOUT ME / HU, SE
Director: Anna Rubi
Production company: Somnus Film
Co-production company: Cinenic Film

For their children to survive, a group of elderly mothers must fight the state.

Docu Talents from the East program

AN ALMOST PERFECT FAMILY / RO
Director: Tudor Platon
Production company: microFILM

After 30 years of marriage, my parents told me they were separating. I fell in love and started my own family during this painful process. The film explores the different shapes that love can take between parents and children and children who become parents.

80 ANGRY JOURNALISTS / HU, DE
Directors: András Földes, Anna Kiss
Production company: Filmdough

Viktor Orbán’s government seizes Hungary’s top independent media outlet, Index.hu. Journalists fight back by re-signing and forming a new entity but face familiar toxicity. Can healthy communities survive in a corrupt system? Possible answers are revealed through the lives of three ex-Index.hu employees as they navigate challenges.

CHRONICLE / SK, CZ
Director: Martin Kollar
Production company: Punkchart films
Co-production company: Somatic Films

A documentary observation essay creates a portrayal of ir- retrievably disappearing realities.

DREAMING OF EL DORADO / HR
Director: Alan Stanković
Production company: Studio devet d.o.o.
Co-production company: Event Film Ltd

A film about a young girl FATIMA ZAHRO from Senegal, who took her destiny into her own hands and decided to move to Croatia.

HAVEL SPEAKING, CAN YOU HEAR ME? / CZ
Director: Petr Jančárek
Production company: Endorfilm

Leaving and the ever-necessary presence of the playwright, prisoner of conscience, citizen, statesman and shy director of his own life.

A PICTURE TO REMEMBER / UA, FR, DE
Director: Olga Chernykh
Co-production companies: Reinvent Studios, Promenades Films

Thrown into the void of an unknown future, the director and film narrator dives into a kaleidoscope of memories and chronicles her personal and collective familial search for something to hold on to amid turbulent times.

RUNA / PL
Director: Agnieszka Zwiefka
Production company: Chilli Productions
Co-production company: Real Lava

After her mom’s tragic death on the Polish-Belarussian border, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl, RUNA, has to become a mother to her four younger brothers as the family deals with trauma and tries to establish a new life in Europe.

ROOT / BA, TR
Director and producer: Deniz Čelebić Co-producer: Yeliz Čelebić
Production company: Kapiya Production

As the diary of a woman who carries ancestral memory of displacement from home because of the war, the documentary ROOT shows her journey of becoming rooted through the garden she cultivated on the land of the Other.

CineLink Industry has steadily evolved over the years into a home and thriving hub for documentary professionals. This year’s 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will feature an extensive lineup of documentary-focused activities with a focus on captivating storytelling. From deeply personal stories to global issues that demand attention, the selected films are a testament to the power of visual storytelling. The diverse range of documentaries explores various themes, shedding light on the human experience and the world we inhabit.

CineLink’s journey in supporting filmmakers began 21 years ago, primarily focused on providing assistance to fictional films. However, over time, our path has evolved and expanded. Central to this change are our strategic 

Sarajevo FF Docu Talents from the East 2023

Docu Talents from the East – the closely watched presentation of the most remarkable documentary films in post-production from Central and Eastern Europe will take place on August 13 at Sarajevo FF. 

Eight new creative documentary projects will be presented as part CineLink Industry Day on August 13, the presentation will take place at Hotel Europe – Atrium from 14.30 – 15.45. The award ceremony will take place on the same day at Sarajevo Producers’ Hub / Manifesto Gallery starting at 21.30.

The most promising project will receive the Docu Talent Award in co-operation with Current Time TV. The award is accompanied by a cash prize in the amount of 5,000 USD. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award will  cover services in the amount of €3000 inculding international VOD release on DAFilms.com for two years.

“One for all, or one against all? The protagonists of the presented films are exploring their family roots and cultural background, striving for a fairer and more open world, and trying to secure their own place in it – often in spite of global and political influences. The films in  progress, in which they appear, thus closely and often mercilessly depict the world in which we live and which we are shaping together. In line with tradition, Docu Talents from the East presents formally diverse and thematically significant documentary films at the completion stage made by prominent filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe“, says Marek Hovorka, director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, which has organised and curated the Docu Talents since 2005.

In the last 19 years, Docu Talents have served as a launchpad for documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe. Below is the selection of this year’s most remarkable documentary projects from the region:

HAVEL SPEAKING, CAN YOU HEAR ME?

Czech Republic | 90’
Director: Petr Jančárek
Producer: Jiří Konečný
Production Company: Endorfilm
 
Leaving. And the ever-necessary presence of the playwright, prisoner of conscience, citizen, statesman
and a shy director of his own life.
 
ROOT
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Turkey | USA | 50’
Director: Deniz Čelebić
Producer: Deniz Čelebić
Production Company: Kapiya Production
 
As the diary of a woman who carries ancestral memory of displacement from home because of the war,
the documentary Root shows her journey of becoming rooted through the garden she cultivated on the
land of the Other.
 
DREAMING OF EL DORADO
Croatia | 60’
Director: Alan Stanković
Producer: Boris Veličan
Production Company: Event Film Ltd.
 
Film about a young girl Fatima Zahro from Senegal who took her destiny into her own hands and decided
to move to Croatia.
 
80 ANGRY JOURNALISTS
Hungary | Germany | 80’
Directors: András Földes and Anna Kis
Producer: Loránd Balázs Imre
Production Company: filmDOUGH
 
Viktor Orbán’s government seizes Hungary’s top independent media outlet, Index.hu. Journalists fight back by resigning and forming a new entity but face familiar toxicity. Can healthy communities survive in a corrupt system? Possible answers are revealed through the lives of three ex-Index.hu employees as they navigate challenges.

RUNA
Poland | 82’
Director: Agnieszka Zwiefka
Producers: Zofia Kujawska and Agnieszka Zwiefka
Production Company: Chilli Productions
 
After her mom’s tragic death on the Polish-Belarussian border, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl Runa has to become a mother for her 4 younger brothers as the family deals with trauma and tries to establish a new life in Europe.

AN ALMOST PERFECT FAMILY
Romania | 90’
Director: Tudor Platon
Producers: Carla Fotea and Ada Solomon
Production Company: microFILM
 
After 30 years of marriage, my parents announced to me that they were separating. In the midst of this painful process, I was falling in love and starting my own family. The film explores the different shapes that love can take between parents and children and children who become parents.
 
CHRONICLE
Slovakia | Czech Republic | 70’
Director: Martin Kollar
Producers: Ivan Ostrochovský, Albert Malinovský and Katarína Tomková
Production company: Punkchart films
 
A documentary observation essay creating a portrayal of irretrievably disappearing realities.
 
A PICTURE TO REMEMBER 
Ukraine | France | Germany | 70’
Director: Olga Chernykh
Producer: Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon
Production Company: Real Pictures LLC
 
A Picture to Remember is an essayistic account of a family’s long journey through the war. It chronicles the search for a way to handle terrible and recurring losses experienced by three generations of Ukrainian women – those of the director, her mother, and of her grandmother.

The programme is held as part of the Visegrad Accelerator supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

MORE INFORMATION:  https://www.ji-hlava.com/docu-talents

Sarajevo FF: Dealing With the Past

The Dealing with the Past programme is an additional platform for testimonies and stories that can serve as a base for developing film scripts, projects and films. The aim of the program is to initiate dialogue in the countries formed from the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and to deal with problems arising as a result of the wars in the region. As part of the “Dealing with the Past” programme, the True Stories Market was launched, the purpose of which is the presentation of stories and collected materials (personal testimonies).

Two films in this year’s programme, MAMULA ALL INCLUSIVE by Aleksandar Reljić and WAR SOUVENIRS by Georg Zeller, will have their world premieres at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival, and both are based on stories that were presented as part of the previous editions of True Stories Market.

The “Dealing with the Past” programme will also host 20 young people from the Western Balkans region as part of the “In Youth Eyes” section, which includes a series of panel discussions, closed conversations and debates on peace activism and reconciliation practices. That part of the programme was organized in cooperation with The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, The Civic Forum for Peace Service – ForumZFD and The PRO-future project of the US Agency for International Development.

The Dealing with the Past programme is supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).

DEALING WITH THE PAST PROGRAMME

CINÉ-GUERRILLAS: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIĆ REELS
Serbia, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Qatar, 2022, 94 min.
Director: Mila Turajlić

CINÉ-GUERRILLAS: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIĆ REELS is a feature-length documentary that take us on an archival road trip through the birth of the Third World project, based on unseen 35mm materials filmed by Stevan Labudović, the cameraman of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. The film plunges us into the media battle that played out during the Algerian War of Independence, where cinema was mobilised as a weapon of political struggle against colonialism. Together with NON-ALIGNED, the film forms a documentary diptych.

DELEGATION / HA’MISHLAHAT
Poland, Israel, Germany, 2023, Colour, 99 min.
Director: Asaf Saban
Cast: Yoav Bavly, Neomi Harari, Leib Lev Levin, Ezra Dagan, Alma Dishy

Three Israeli high-school friends take part in class trip visiting Holocaust sites in Poland – their last time together before going into the army. During the trip, shy Frisch, aspiring artist Nitzan, and class heartthrob Ido deal with issues of love, friendship, and politics against the backdrop of concentration camps and memorial sites. This journey will change them forever.

FACING DARKNESS
France, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2023, 110 min.
Director: Jean-Gabriel Périot

The Siege of Sarajevo lasted from April 1992 to February 1996. Young men were called up to protect their city; a few of them took along their video cameras to face the violence they witnessed throughout those gruelling 1,425 days. Now, thirty years later, they show us their films and share their wartime filming experiences and thoughts on cinema as a means of survival and resistance.

MAMULA ALL INCLUSIVE – World Premiere
Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, 58 min.
Director: Aleksandar Reljić

Ivo Marković, a surviving former inmate of the Mamula prison camp, opposed the decision of Montenegro’s government to build a luxury hotel at the location of a World War II prison camp where countless civilians suffered.

SOUVENIRS OF WAR – World Premiere
Italy, 2023, 75 min.
Director: Georg Zeller

When does a war come to its end? SOUVENIRS OF WAR takes us on a reflective trip around Bosnia and Herzegovina more than two decades after the country was the site of the first post-World War II armed conflict in Europe, where many sites of genuine sorrow have been turned into tourist attractions. A walk along the fine line between dark tourism and an empathetic culture of remembrance, where some enjoy playing war games on the battlefields of a real conflict, while others struggle with turning their very real traumatic legacy into an opportunity.

THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD / NAJSREЌNIOT ČOVEK NA SVETOT
North Macedonia, Belgium, Slovenia, Denmark, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2022, 95 min.
Director: Teona Strugar Mitevska
Cast: Jelena Kordić, Adnan Omerović, Labina Mitevska, Ana Kostovska, Ksenija Marinković, Izudin Bajrović, Irma Alimanović, Vedrana Boinović, Mona Muratović, Nikolina Kujača, Siniša Vidović, Kemal Rizvanović

Asja, a forty-year-old single woman, lives in Sarajevo. In order to meet new people, she ends up spending her Saturday at a speed-dating event. She’s matched with Zoran, a forty-three-year-old banker. However, Zoran is looking not for love but for forgiveness.

THE MARCH ON ROME / MARCIA SU ROMA
Italy, 2022, 98 min.
Director: Mark Cousins
Cast: Alba Rohrwacher

Through little-seen archives and his characteristically cinematic analysis, Mark Cousins narrates the ascent of fascism in Italy and its fallout across 1930s Europe. At once essay film and historical document, the film contextualises history through the now, holding up a mirror to a political landscape of a creeping far right and manipulated media.

THE UNCLE / STRIC
Croatia, Serbia, 2022, 104 min.
Director: Andrija Mardešić, David Kapac
Cast: Miki Manojlović, Ivana Roščić, Goran Bogdan, Roko Sikavica, Kaja Šišmanović

Yugoslavia, late 1980s. A family welcomes their beloved uncle, who is coming home for the holidays from Germany. The joyful Christmas lunch is interrupted by a smartphone ringing. It becomes clear it’s not the 1980s, it’s not Christmastime, and it is not just the festive turkey that can be cut with a knife, but the tension as well.

The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will take place from 11th to 18th of August 2023.

 

Sarajevo FF Documentary Competition/ 2

 

Rada Šešić, programmer of the Competition Programme – Documentary Film has selected 20 titles for this year’s edition. The selection features nine world premieres, one international, seven regional premieres and three B&H premieres.

“This year I was delighted by the authors who managed to transpose individual reminiscence, personal records and memories into the collective one and thus raise the meaning of individual, empirical and experiential to the level of the universal. The authors thus skillfully manage to draw us into very complex life situations, touch on the complexity of the concepts of religion and love, problematise the drama of relationships within the family, as well as philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, the concept of evil and crime, hatred and the search for justice. Films are in many ways inspiring to viewers and even when they present very traumatic truths, they carry within them the energy of positivity. What is important for me as a programmer is to feel the author’s signature in every film, that we as viewers understand the viewpoint of the director and not just observe the life stories of the selected heroes of the film”, says Rada Šešić about this year’s selection. 

Films in the Competition Programme – Documentary Film of the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival are competing for awards:

 

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM 
Award in the amount of €4,000, sponsored by the Government of Switzerland

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM 
Award in the amount of €2,000

HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD 
Award in the amount of €3,000, sponsored by the Kingdom of the Netherlands

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE 
Award in the amount of €2,500 

WORLD PREMIERES

A DAY, 365 HOURS / BIR GÜN, 365 SAAT 
Türkiye, Croatia, 2023, 79 min. 
Director: Eylem Kaftan

Two young women are joined together by their shared experience of being abused. Their unexpected meeting forms a strong bond that gives them the strength both to take on their abusers in court and to help other young women seek justice.

BODY / TELO 
Slovenia, Croatia, North Macedonia, 2023, 91 min. 
Director: Petra Seliškar

BODY is a unique and poetic journey into the most unknown areas of the self, through the testimony of Urška, who spent twenty years struggling between life and death. A professional piano player and a former fashion model, Urška had everything going for her until she was struck by illness. Recovering from encephalitis, she had to get to know herself again and learn to live: to walk, to recognise her daughter, to understand – and love – her body, which seems to want to destroy her.

BOTTLEMEN / FLAŠAROŠI 
Serbia, Slovenia, 2023, 84 min. 
Director: Nemanja Vojinović

On the outskirts of Belgrade, one of the largest landfills in Europe sprawls across the remains of the ancient Vinča civilization. Plastic bottle collectors, a.k.a. “Bottlemen”, eke out a difficult living in this toxic landscape. Now, their vibrant community is facing new and greater threats. Faced with the imminent privatisation of the landfill, an entire community of bottlemen is brought to a dead end, trapped in the gap between technological modernisation and an inadequate social care system. While the environmental impact of the landfill’s modernisation is unknown, the fragile community of collectors will have to face their uncertain destiny on their own.

FAIRY GARDEN / FANNI KERTJE 
Hungary, Romania, Croatia, 2023, 83 min. 
Director: Gergő Somogyvári

Hidden in the heart of the woods of Budapest, an unorthodox father-daughter relationship blossoms between Fanni, a nineteen-year-old transgender teenager, and Laci, a sixty-year-old homeless man. Together, they form a makeshift family, supporting each other through hardship and change. This unconventional coming-of-age documentary unveils their tale of perseverance and acceptance, and the triumph of finding home amidst the struggles of life.

FRAN AND VERKA; OR, A USUAL DAY IN AN ABANDONED VILLAGE 
Kosovo, 2023, 14 min. 
Director: Sovran Nrecaj

Fran and Verka are the sole inhabitants of Vërnakollë—the place they first met many years ago, were married, and have been living ever since. After the 1999 war in Kosovo, everyone but Fran and Verka left the village. Their story is a testament to the unbreakable bonds that tie us to what we call home and where we belong.

HUG / OBJEM 
Slovenia, Croatia, 2023, 14 min. 
Director: Miroslav Mandić

Nature caressed us into being, even taught us how to pat her back as we grew up. Then, we started hitting her hard, using her goods for our progress at her expense. She stares at us reluctantly yet tolerates us, as a mother would. But, occasionally, she freaks out, warns us with an earthquake, a pandemic, or a tsunami. Shall we ever learn not to take advantage of our mom, and instead share her goods with humility, respect, and appreciation?

REQUIEM TO THE HOT DAYS OF SUMMER / REKVIEMI ZAFKHULIS SITSKHIAN DGHEEBS 
Georgia, Greece, 2023, 77 min. 
Director: Giorgi Parkosadze

Guri and his mother, Sanata, have spent all of their lives in a remote mountainous valley in Georgia, distant from nearly any signs of urban civilisation. Farming, beekeeping, and cheese-making have been their routine for decades. While witnessing the daily life of mother and son, the audience is immersed in the non-verbal, contemplative relationship between the two, and through the gentle gaze of the camera, enters effortlessly into rural reality as an inseparable element of their being. Through a touching motherhood story, REQUIEM TO THE HOT DAYS OF SUMMER embraces the sadness, silence, and solitude that follow every human being as the primordial seal of their fate and inspires the reminiscence of a blissful way of life, which is still present in the unconscious memory of humanity.

SILENCE OF REASON / ŠUTNJA RAZUMA 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, 2023, 63 min. 
Director: Kumjana Novakova

Built solely from forensic visual archive and testimonies, Silence of Reason acts as a memory itself: elusive, fluid, rejecting framing, moving in all directions, spatial and temporal. The singular experiences of violence and torture to women from the Foča rape camps during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina become our own collective memories, surpassing time and space.

WHAT’S TO BE DONE? / ŠTO DA SE RADI? 
Croatia, 2023, 79 min. 
Director: Goran Dević

Zeljko is the labour union leader at Gredelj Train Factory. His deputy, Mladen, has committed suicide after massive public protests and inter-union clashes. Zeljko is torn between the guilt he feels over Mladen’s death and workers’ expectations that he will lead a strike that should thwart a plan by the government, acting on the EU’s behest, to declare the factory bankrupt. WHAT’S TO BE DONE? is structured in three acts. The first act uses observational documentary footage; the second, footage filmed a decade later; while the third is fiction. 

INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

MY MUSLIM HUSBAND / SOȚUL MEU MUSULMAN 
Romania, 2023, 70 min. 
Director: Daniel Ioan Bărnuți, Alexandra Lizeta Bărnuți

Alexandra marries Daniel, a young Romanian convert to Islam. She believes that being open to learning about a different culture will enable her new family to find happiness and harmony. But soon, the young couple has to face not only the religious discrimination of society but also other prejudices. Alexandra and Daniel must fight for each other and their relationship, even though it means leaving behind their old selves or cutting off some people from their lives. 

REGIONAL PREMIERES

DE FACTO 
Austria, Germany, 2023, 130 min. 
Director: Selma Doborac 
Cast: Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya

How can cinema engage with complicity in crimes against humanity, extreme violence, and state terror without conniving in it? DE FACTO finds answers to these questions in a meticulously directed play of two actors, a precisely compiled film script and a deliberately reduced setting.

DESERTERS / DEZERTERI 
Croatia, 2023, 45 min. 
Director: Damir Markovina

DESERTERS is a hybrid documentary essay about director Damir Markovina’s generation – Bosnian and Herzegovinian high schoolers from the town of Mostar, struck by a devastating war on the verge of their maturity. This tapestry of their memories of the early nineties is composed of modern-day postcards and silent shots of places where wars used to be waged and which the protagonists of this film were forced to abandon. The serenity of these places today contrasts with emotional excerpts from letters addressed to Markovina from refugee camps scattered all over Europe. The refugees describe their flight across the border, their experiences in refugee camps and their lasting hate of the enemies who took away their home and their youth. A film about a lost generation, exile, and difficult choices, and an answer to the toughest question of any war: to stay or to run?

HORROR VACUI 
Croatia, 2023, 23 min. 
Director: Boris Poljak

The term “horror vacui” was coined by Aristotle, and it means “fear of empty space”. It is used as a metaphor of the fear of the uncertain future that causes feelings of anxiety and loneliness. With its one-take sequences and free-associative editing style, this meditative film sends out a warning of the growing hyper-militarisation of the world we live in, and the impact this has on the human psyche. Due to the space and time of the events taking place in film being blurred, everything can happen everywhere at any time in a globalised world.

NON-ALIGNED: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIĆ REELS 
Serbia, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Qatar, 2023, 100 min. 
Director: Mila Turajlić

NON-ALIGNED: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIĆ REELS takes us on an archival road trip through the birth of the Third World project, based on unseen 35mm materials filmed by Stevan Labudović, the cameraman of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. The film traces the birth of the Non-Aligned movement, examining how a global project of political emancipation was constituted by the cinematic image. Together with CINÉ-GUERRILLAS, the film forms a documentary diptych.

ONE ALOE, ONE FICUS, ONE AVOCADO AND SIX DRACAENAS / АЛОЄ, ФІКУС, АВОКАДО І 6 ДРАЦЕН 
Ukraine, France, 2023, 8 min. 
Director: Marta Smerechynska

What to take, what to leave? How important are material possessions when you’re trying to save your life? Packages from Ukraine – filled with everything and nothing – wait patiently under a bridge to be found, while a voice stirs memories of frivolous and treasured personal effects, in an apparent heart-breaking farewell letter to Kyiv.

SELF-PORTRAIT ALONG THE BORDERLINE / ავტოპორტრეტი ზღვარზე
Georgia, 2023, 50 min. 
Director: Anna Dziapshipa

An abandoned house opens the door to revisiting the past by bringing to life a unique, nearly destroyed image archive from Abkhazia, the unrecognised territory on the border of the Black Sea, a place that is normally inaccessible to Georgians because of the ethnic conflict that happened between Georgia and Abkhazia in 1993. Combining voice, archival, and recent footage, SELF-PORTRAIT ALONG THE BORDERLINE examines a lost and split identity that is stuck between the margins. The audio-visual fragments of this archive are intricately woven together to create a personal and political biography which recalls the complicated and controversial historical past of Georgian-Abkhaz relations.

VALERIJA 
Croatia, 2023, 16 min. 
Director: Sara Jurinčić 
Cast: Lidija Fabulić-Jurinčić, Sara Jurinčić

This hybrid film takes us on a journey into a world without men. Reality and subconscious blend together in the filmmaker’s intimate encounter with her femail ancestors. Silently, she asks: How does it feel to have a family tree consisting only of women? What do our ancestors whisper from their silent portraits? 

B&H PREMIERES

BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS / ÎNTRE REVOLUȚII 
Romania, Croatia, Qatar, Iran, 2023, 70 min. 
Director: Vlad Petri

In 1970s Bucharest, Zahra and Maria form a deep friendship while studying at university. As political turmoil brews in Iran, Zahra is forced to return home, leaving Maria behind. Over the next decade, they maintain their connection through a series of letters, chronicling their struggles as women fighting for a voice and their respective countries moving in divergent directions. Despite the distance and obstacles, their longing for each other remains strong.

HOPE HOTEL PHANTOM 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2023, 22 min. 
Director: Bojan Stojčić

In November 1995, the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia met in Dayton, Ohio, to broker a peace agreement that would end four violent years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Dayton Peace Agreement was negotiated at the Hope Hotel. Twenty-seven years later, an artist flew to the United States and booked a room at the hotel.

WE WILL NOT FADE AWAY / MY NE ZGASNEMO 
Ukraine, France, Poland, USA, 2023, 100 min. 
Director: Alisa Kovalenko

A group of teenagers from Donbas are entering adulthood, and dream of conquering the world. Although they can hear gunshots and explosions in the distance, they do not lose hope. They rebel, ride on the waves of adventure, walk into minefields, and sunbathe by a local lake. They dream of escaping not only from the war but also-like teenagers all over the world-from the boredom of living in a small town. Then, unexpectedly, an opportunity arises for them to embark on a long journey all the way to Nepal. Will their dream of conquering the world come true?