Baltic Sea Docs 2022: Four films were screened made by Ukrainian directors and/or about Ukraine directly or indirectly. And at the pitching forum there were projects like “Little People” by Ivan Sautkin, “Iron Man (One Day I Wish to see You Happy)” by Maryna Nikolcheva and “The Blessed Ones” by Andrii Lysetskyi. One of the tutors was Roman Bondarchuk who was there with Darya Averchenko and their youngest child Luka, 18 months. So naturally there was a focus on the country at war, also “outside” the film event with a photo exhibition portraying Ukrainian refugees in Latvia; the mayor of Riga talked as did the Danish photographer of the portraits, the director of the Danish Cultural Institute in the Baltic countries with long speeches by the Latvian and Danish foreign ministers, all condemning the war – outside on the square facing the Russian embassy.

All three film projects named were awarded at the closing ceremony on a boat on the Daugava river, “Iron Man” through an invitation to the producer Oleksandra Kravchenko to come back to Baltic Sea Docs… She was there before with what became the amazing “Roses. Film Cabaret”.

I got a copy of “Estonian Film”, a special edition made for the Cannes Film Festival with a focus on Ukrainian Film, excellent with articles/interviews with filmmakers from the country including two important documentary voices, producer and industry head of DocuDays Darya Bassel and veteran Serhiy Bukovsky, whose last masterpiece on composer Silvestrov was reviewed on this site (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4714/)

A couple of quotes from the interviews made by Maria Ulfsak and film consultant at the Estonian Film Institute Filipp Kruusvall:

… While big businesses are leaving Russia, while governments stop buying Russian gas and coal, film festivals and other cultural events seem to be totally disconnected from reality. They say we are “above” this, culture is not politics. You know what I think about this? It’s a luxury to have the possibility to take such a position. You don’t have the luxury of being apolitical, or think that art and films exist in another universe, where we all can calmly reflect as friends on the genocide that is happening right now in front of our eyes. When it’s about your life or death, you don’t have this luxury. You know deep inside that culture is politics… (Darya Bassel)

… I guess documentaries will rocket. This genre already reacts quickly to current events in life. Also, in feature films, the theme of war becomes the main one. In many cases, this will be rather superficial, declarative. It will take decades for a deeper artistic understanding of this subject… We continue to meet with our students online. Many are filming what is happening right now. Hopefully, soon we will collect all the filmed material into one extensive war anthology… (Serhiy Bukovsky).

Slava Ukraini!

… in the Times of War” was the title of a seminar at the Baltic Sea Docs. Including as moderator Rebecca Day, Ukrainian filmmakers Roman Bondarchuk, Ivan Sautkin, Anna Machukh, CEO of Odesa International Film Festival and Latvian producer and cinematographer Uldis Cekulis. The seminar took place at the Welton Riverside Hotel that faces the Daugava river with a fine look to the impressive very much discussed National Library, which I find a fascinating piece of architecture.

Roman Bondarchuk said that his problem was to re-find the level of sensitivity, when you and your family are trying to establish a peaceful life and when you can only plan two years ahead, being in exile.

Ivan Sautkin told that he during Maidan for the first time had seen a dead body, that he had sleepless nights, that he and his family – four kids – were trying to do their best in a situation, where there is no job and thus no money. (Anna Machukh presented results of a survey that documented that 44% of the Ukrainian film people were without job) he was referring to the Babylon’13 site where you can find lots of visual material from and about the war but also about Maidan and Ukrainian culture. Short documentaries.

Bondarchuk told about how the organisers of the DocuDays festival were in constant contact organising and informing, and about the war archive that is being built, including evidence of the war crimes committed and being committed by the Russians. “We try not to think about our mental health”. My comment: It is indeed impressive how active the DocuDays people are in conveying information, trying also to convince festivals around the world that there are numerous competent film curators who can help putting together programs with Ukrainian documentaries.  

Uldis Cekulis showed clips from “Ukrainian Sheriffs” (director Bondarchuk) with my favourite protagonist, the mayor of the village where the film takes place… the mayor who was kidnapped and tortured by the enemy. He and his wife are now living in Latvia.

The seminar was organised by Lelda Ozola Creative Europe Latvia together with her colleagues from Lithuania and Estonia. Well done! 

Life People Reality Subjectivity Perspective Rhythm Observation Truth Poetic World Imagination Discovery Unfiltered Raw Story Real Unique Relationship Experiences History Time Communication Values Changes Memory Passion Revelation Era Generation Commitment Achievement Care Psychology Environment Makedox

What are the three words that come to your mind when I say documentary? Was the question I put to the participants of the development workshop in Skopje, arranged by the brilliant team of Makedox led by Petra Seliskar.

Greek producer Mina Dreki put together a small essay from these words, that came out as a kind of a manifest – a gift to the festival from its participants:

“Documentary filmmaking is not about the truth, it is a poetic commitment and creation, unfiltered or not. Through our subjectivity and perspective, we observe, we experience, we communicate our reality. Through our imagination and passion, we discover the connection between time and changes, people and relationships, experiences, and history. We act as a bridge between raw stories and revelations, our job is to add rhythm and share it with the audience and our era, as if we share our own values. Our world, all generations need unique stories. Documentary filmmaking cares about life, people, and us.”

From, tutoring together with Ieva Ubele, producer from Latvia and head of the Beldocs Industry.

To safeguard the truth about us, were the words architect Richter used, when he presented his plan for a Museum of the Revolution to be built in Belgrade in 1961… Director Srdan Keca takes this – with great propaganda archive material – as the starting point for his version of the truth as he sees it in a film that is quite as unconventional as Richter wanted the museum to be. Keca works with several layers surrounding three people, who live in and around the basement of the museum, that is what was left of a vision, conveyed in magic luminous sequences of light coming in to the place, light spots of hope, where Milica and her mother Vera stays together with the old woman Mara, who has no contact to her daughter, who she “gave away” to the social system. In the darkness of poverty they are. Kecha stresses this with compassion, when his camera caresses them, often by taking away the sound staying long on their faces. 

The love relationship between Milica and her mother is beautiful, their life is a constant struggle to survive as polishers of car windows to earn some money to send to the father, who is in prison. The architectural point of view stays in the picture: Modern conventional ugly buildings are constructed now in Belgrade along the river of Sava. Keca paints with his camera in a film that asks the question: Is this what we want to safeguard?

Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, 2021, 91 mins.

Zahra and Fatima are twins and the protagonists of the Dutch film that was shown last night at the one year old Cineplex that is now the main screening venue for the Sarajevo Film Festival. The film’s title is “Along the Way” and it was shown as part of the Dealing With the Past program. I had the pleasure of introducing the film and moderate the discussion with the assistant director Natascha Erfanipour. An easy job as the young Dutch woman with Iranian roots spoke lively about how the film came to become the drama it is, a drama yes, but with so much authenticity that I took for a documentary the first time I saw it. But the twins are acting and they are acting so well – but it took time to get to this, explained Erfanipour with a smile. But all – almost all – is based on their own stories, told to the film team, made into a precise script to be followed. In some scenes they had to be angry with each other, that was difficult for them…

The story is one of those, we have met so many times in these hard times, a refugee story: the twins buy themselves way to Istanbul, get separated from mother and siblings, work to save money for the ocean trip from Turkey to Lesbos, they succeed, they get to the camp everyone knows, Moria, and they reach Athens to have a very emotional meeting with the mother and the daughter. In Istanbul they meet Rahim, a young man, who is a smuggler and for whom Zahra works to collect money to cross the EU…

There are more to be experienced, some personal statements from refugees not to be revealed here but I hope you get the chance to watch this fine film “based on a true story” with Zahra and Fatima, who in real life are now waiting for getting asylum in Germany and at a longer perspective to be filmmakers. Wish them all the best!

The Netherlands, 2021, 80 mins. 

It was presentation day for the four stories at the TSM, True Stories Market. It took place at the Atrium of Hotel Europe; four people, two women, two men on stage and a full house of interested people, among them film producers and directors, who might be interested to make the stories into films or tv programmes.

Moderator was film director and journalist Croatian Robert Zuber, who had a fine way of connecting the four stories and asked the right questions at the right moment.

First in line was Enes Hodzic, journalist from BIRN (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network). Working title for the story “Forbidden Monument” referring to the fact that the local authorities do not want a memorial to be raised in the city of Prijedor, where 102 children were killed during the war in the beginning of the 90’es. Hodzic showed a very emotional interview clip with Ešef Dzananovic, who survived three concentration camps to know afterwards that two sons, 4- and 9-year-old, his sister, 17, his wife and his mother had all been killed. 30 years later he is still searching for their remains – the neighbours witnessed what happened, he says, but do not want to tell anything… Unbearable!

Also from BIRN was Aida Trepanic, whose story also is from Prijedor in the North East of Bosnia, in Bijeljina where notorious Akran and his Serbian Volunteer Guard killed, among others the husband of the woman, who witnessed the murders taking place – also caught by the camera of the photographer Ron Haviv. The woman does not want to be seen, she is afraid of the consequences her children could meet visiting the street, that now bears the name Street of Serbian Voluntary Guard!!! With a manipulated voice she is telling her story. Amazing and touching.

Serbian Jovana Blanusa from a company called Next Game in Belgrade told the fascinating story about Marino Zurli, a journalist, filmmaker, writer, who after the Second WW committed his working life to bring families together, who had been split because of the war. He conveyed his discoveries through the paper Arena with photos and texts, but he also made films from his discoveries – as the company of Jovana did, one was shown as part of the presentation. “The Hero from Arena” is the working title of a film to be about “a discreet hero of great deeds”.

Finally filmmaker Mladen Ivanovic from Montenegro, studying at the Zagreb film academy, showed a 7 minutes long clip from a film he has almost finished but wants to extend to a feature or eventually use as a pilot for a series about pits in former Yugoslavia. Pits which are difficult to recognize as nature has done “its job”, covering the killing fields, the concentration camps where – in this story – the Ustasha fascists came to pick up the people to bring them to a place to be executed. Ivanovic is definitely a talented filmmaker, the film he showed, from which the 7 minutes were taken could go to festivals when finished and from that he can make a longer film than this “Depths of Velebit”.

Tough stories, yes, but should be told as many have said after the presentation as the right-wing politicians in this region and elsewhere want to rewrite history and erase stories like these from the collective memory.