Here we are after the presentation of 4 stories that take its start in the past: From Left Nataša Damnjanovic (tutor and editor of visuals), Ishak Jalimam (organiser), me (tutor), the four storytellers Mirna Buljugic, Senija Jakupovic, Iva Radic and Aleksandar Zolja, Robert Zuber (tutor and moderator). Staša Bajac (tutor) and the mother of the Dealing with the Past project at the festival Maša Markovic were missing.

After… 90 minutes of emotionally strong stories presented in a full house Atrium in Hotel Europe: festival participants, filmmakers, who might be interested in picking up the stories and develop them into films.

For four days we were together talking about the stories and about how to

present them in a way that is understandable. A pitch you could call it or stories that need to be brought to a wider audience by people, who are close to them and/or have lived them. Survivors who talk about those who did not survive. Stories from the past seen through the present.

Aleksandar Zolja told about the ”living library” project, where, through the organisation Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, he is one of those who organisers that survivors of the war in Bosnia meet with young people, for instance high school students. They talk about their (horrible) experiences, the aim is to get rid of prejudices among the young ones, or call it aim for reconciliation. Zolja told the story of Fikret Bacic, who returned from working in Germany to see that his whole family had been executed. Bacic, one of the living books, was in the audience being welcomed with a big applause.

Senija Jakupovic was the next presenter, a true charismatic storyteller, whose own story is of great interest, with a Danish angle, as she left for Denmark after her husband was taken to a camp. In Denmark, in Stubbekøbing, she was continuing her job as a teacher for a couple of years, returning to Bosnia, where she met Selma Cengic, the protagonist of a story that could be turned into a documentary film or a feature. Cengic, present in the audience, was in Germany, when she decided to return to fight in the Bosnian army as the only woman. Her experience in the army, meeting a Serbian Bosnian, who had been in the Bosnian army right from the beginning, made her leave hatred and work for reconciliation.

In this writing I am simplifying and I can’t show you the visuals that accompanied the presentations, so well put together by Serbian Nataša Damnjanovic and Staša Bajac.

Much of the visual material come from the archive collected by Birn, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, whose Mirna Buljugic took us to a story about a man, who was next in line during a massacre at the Koricani Cliffs. The man, now living in Norway, decided “to jump into life”, down the cliffs where he woke up later surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies. Incredible story, the man became one of the main witnesses at the Tribunal in Hague, where perpetrators like Radovan Karadzic were convicted.

Finally Iva Radic told her own story “Iva Radic, who is still searching for the remains of her father killed in Vukovar”… in a passionate heartbreaking way.

I will quote from the catalogue: “…Iva Radić has spent the past twenty-eight years searching for her father. Radić was born to a Serb mother and a Croat father, who did not fight in the Croatian War of Independence. When the war reached Vukovar, the Radić family fled. “My father Mijo had relatives in Split, who told him they would welcome him and me, but neither my mother nor the children from her first marriage. After that, we all went to Serbia, but soon we decided to return to our hometown. Upon our return to Vukovar, soldiers of the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army stopped our car not far from the Velepromet storage facility, which had been converted into a makeshift prison camp. They ordered my mother, my sister – who had just reached legal age – my physically disabled father, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, and me out of the car, and took us to be interrogated. They separated my father from the rest of us, and took him to be questioned in nearby Negoslavci. That was the last time we saw him. After ten days, they put my mother, my sister and me on a bus to Serbia,” recalls Radic, citing events from November of 1991, when she was eight years old…”

In the accompanying visuals you saw Iva Radic confronting a man, who according to her was the one who drove the father away. Quite dramatic scenes – for me first of all a love story between a daughter and her father, ”my guardian angle”, ahh she spoke so beautifully about him, the daughter who now lives in Belgrade and has a 15 year old son and a mother, who is worried for the daughter and her mission.

Thank you Maša Markovic for including me, coming from outside the region, in this important initiative, that is supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung. Unforgettable.

www.sff.ba

Documentaries at the Sarajevo FF is Rada Sesic. She selects the competition program, she runs the Docu Rough Boutique (together with Martichka Bozhilova), the DocuCorner, running from place to place… And she is semper ardens as you can read in the special catalogue/poster, she has made for the documentaries in order to avoid the genre to be hidden in all the feature films that fill the catalogues here.

Full of superlatives she presents the films under the headline ”Women Shine on the Documentary Scene in Our Region ». She explains that ”out of 16 films (in the competition section), 10 are directed or co-directed by women. Hooray for the strong talented She directors from the region”. Voila!

The competition program opens today with – of course – ”Honeyland” by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, the Bosnian premiere of a film that also opened Magnificent7 in Belgrade, CinéDoc in Georgia and won man yawards including the main award at DocsBarcelona. Definitely – together with Kossakovsky’s ”Aquarela” – the documentary of 2019.

Also I want to mention the wonderful Greek film by Marianna Economou, ”When Tomatoes Met Wagner” and the 13 minutes long ”In Between” by Samir Karahoda from Kosovo. To be mentioned for sure is Rada Sesic passion for the short film.

The majority of the jury for the competition, however, is male: Nenad Puhovski, ZagrebDox & Orwa Nyrabia, IDFA together with Emilie Bujes from Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Lots to watch, lost of magical documentary moments.

www.sff.ba

Well, I have not yet been through all the catalogues to find out, why the festival speaks French! But indeed it sounds and looks nice!

I am here again at the big festival for features and documentaries and shorts with a very strong industry section. It opens tonight and goes on until August 23. Competition programmes, a Human Rights Day, Honorary Hearts to Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Isabelle Huppert and Pawel Pawlikowski.

For the latter I have been asked to moderate a Q&A with the Polish director, who in the 90’es lived in England and made films for the BBC. At a time where the broadcaster apparently still were open to non-formatted documentaries. To be prepared I enjoyed the four documentary films that will be screened here in Sarajevo tomorrow Saturday: Dostoevsky’s Travels, From Moscow to Pietushi: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev, Tripping With Zhirinovski, and Serbian Epics. Films that are still interesting to watch today because of their humour, the often satirical approach and playfulness. Far away from the fictional masterpieces the director made in Poland, Ida and Cold War, that will also be screened at the festival as well as other feature films by the director.

The Pawlikowski documentaries are part of the ”Dealing With the Past” program that also includes films like ”Meeting Gorbachev” by André Singer and Werner Herzog and ”Privacy of Wounds” by Dalia Kury. AND a section, the True Stories Market, where a handful of stories from the Yugoslav Wars will be presented to filmmakers, who are invited ”to execute a project inspired by one of the selected stories”, as Maša Markovic, the manager of the program says in the catalogue. I have been invited to take part in the project preparation for preparation, we had the first meeting today, amazing stories – I will tell you about them later but my first impression is like the one I had last year:

” Back in Copenhagen. Thinking of the many documentary adventures I take with me from the Sarajevo Film Festival. To be part of the training team of representatives from ngo’s and human rights organizations was the experience for me. Engaged, committed people who every day deal with human beings who suffer from the consequences of the wars in the 1990’es – and try to help them. Respect!”. Written in August 2018.

Will report more from this inviting and well organised festival.

www.sff.ba

Prizren, Kosovo. The 18th edition of a documentary festival (it ended four days ago) that filmkommentaren has covered since 2010. Always with words of praise and in persona  in 2016, where I was invited to be a juror in the Human Rights Section, where the extraordinary 5 hour long “Homeland, Iraq Year Zero” got the award; director is Abbas Fahdel, who I had the pleasure to meet on that occasion and who is one of those (too few) who constantly brings photos and texts from film history to the FB pages. But that’s another story!

This year the Human Rights Dox winning film was Dina Nasser’s “Tiny Souls”,

that was also at DocsBarcelona, happy to say so as programmer of that festival. The jury’s motivation is as follows: “… (it) is a film which brings us the story of children displaced because of conflict. The film invests agency in its protagonists, reimagining life in dire conditions. It avoids victimization and allows the authentic voice of childhood to emerge. The director genuinely engages her protagonists as co-creators in telling their own story. This brave film upends stereotypes to bring us a story of great joy as well as deep pain…” I agree.

The Fest in Prizren included “106 films, representing 40 countries, ran for awards in 7 competitive categories, as well as the audience award. The 9-day festival activities included the screening of 282 films, workshops, panels, debates, masterclasses, exhibitions and a series of live acts under the DokuNights with world stars such as Caterina Barbieri, ByeTone, LegoWelt, and many others performing…” Big festival in a small city. High quality, a lot of local activities and focus on children, outdoor screenings. A proud festival that has the right to be proud!

You can read about all the awards by clicking below, here is a couple more with motivations:

In the Green Film category the winning film was “Earth” by Nikolaus Geyerhalter, because:

… (it is) a strong philosophical statement about human nature. With his astounding visual language combined with carefully chosen interviews, the director leaves us with our inherent paradox: while we cherish and respect the environment we depend on, we are still violent towards it, driven by an inevitable materialistic urge.

The same jury gave the ‘Special Mention’ to “Acid Forest” directed by Rugilė Barzdiukaitė, because “…Barzdiukaitė makes a subtle comparison between our resentment towards an unwanted bird species and our reluctance to accept people of other cultures. What first appears a humorous nature film becomes a sombre portrait of our times. »

Both of these films have been reviewed via this site:

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/en/zemlja.php

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4379/

https://dokufest.com/2019/

It’s in Skopje end of August (21-28) and it’s organised by Petra Seliskar and her family. Those who have been to the festival will agree with my impression: The hospitality is second to none, the atmosphere is relaxed, there is all the time to talk long and deep, and there are outdoor screenings late at night as being outside during the day is not a good idea because of the heat. Screenings of the best of the best!

It’s number 10 and a bit to my surprise, Seliskar has introduced a Forum, i.e. a commercial element to a festival that is non-commercial in its heart. Anyhow, the purpose is simple and fine: Better Regional Co-Production of Documentary Films. Invited are film projects from the Balkan countries, who will meet representatives from 11 regional funds (are there really that many), 3 Scandinavian funds and 2 major televisions… Wishing the festival all the best luck with this first initiative, new for the festival.

But film art is also represented, indeed, ”Aquarela” by Viktor Kossakovsky will be screened and the director will be present to give a masterclass. Knowing him, he will love to come to North Macedonia, and if the audience does not like the film, it’s their own fault!  

http://makedox.mk/mk/en/