There he was on screen and in persona among the audience, 22 year old Amir Śeśic, whose story was presented by Mirna Buljugic from BIRN, that stands for Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. And what a story: Amir has never seen his father, who was one of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. When he was 3 months old, his mother left him, he grew up in an orphanage, was with a new family, fought to understand what a mother could be, does not want to have anything to do with his own mother AND has written a book.

It took me 2 years to write it, he said, the young energetic man, who is now going around launching the book, that many at the presentation done by Mirna Buljugic told him to make in an English version as well. Buljugic told us that the book is a very emotional experience, describing also what the stay in the orphanage meant for Amir, who regularly visits his father’s grave in Srebrenica.

http://birn.eu.com/network/birn-bosnia-and-herzegovina/

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!

In an article by Vladan Petkovic for Screen Daily, link below, the stories delivered to a full hall Monday afternoon at the Hotel Europe are described. Read that and let me introduce the panel on the photo:

From right colleague tutor and here moderator Robert Zuber and on stage Goran Zoric, Edin Ramulic, Mediha Haskic who translated for Edin, Augustina Rahmanovic, Sabiha Husic and Mirna Buljugic.

https://www.screendaily.com/news/sarajevos-true-stories-market-opens-competition-for-producers/5131637.article

The theme was how to deal with archives in a creative way; it was a bit more than one hour skype conversation with Mila Turajlic talking to us from her home in Belgrade – the flat those of us, who have seen “The Other Side of Everything” know so well. Turajlic was excused not to be in Sarajevo, because of illness but as the fighter she is, she had prepared clips for the presentation and the conversation went very well giving the audience of primarily young people inspiration to their film work.

The first clip brought us back to the film Turajlic made in 2010, “Cinema Komunisto”, the scene from the partisan feature film (Battle of Neretva, 1969) where Tito has given the order

to blow up the Neretva Bridge. In the clip you see how Turajlic mixes fiction and documentary having wonderful interviews with a couple of film people, who took part in the film. How did you get “the old boys” to agree to take part, I asked. I met them again and again and had them talk about how it was and finally I had their ok. In the clip shown you also see how this place today is – with Turajlic’s words – a place of memory and commemoration.

From “The Other Side of Everything” Turajlic showed the scene, where the mother and friends at the dinner table talks about “Hafner’s Finger”, referring to the event in Parliament, where the old parliament member is warning Comrade Milosevic that Yugoslavia could fall apart if he proceeds with his Great Serbia politics. For Turajlic this scene makes her mother Srbijanka Turajlic become “the guide” for reading the archive of this excellent film (I have written a review of the film: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4090/)

Third film is coming up – the trailer for the film about the lovely old cameraman Stevan Labudovic – working title “The Labudovic Reels” – that is, with Turajlic words, “an archival road trip with Stevan Labudovic, cameraman to Yugoslav President Tito and cinematic eye of the Algerian revolution, investigating the role of cinema in the liberation struggles of the Third World and reconstructing the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement…”. The trailer shown is wonderful, can’t wait to see the final result!

And finally some photos from the video installations made for MOMA in New York, “a commission to contextualise the story of Yugoslav architecture and modernisation”… well to have made two films, have one that soon is coming up and to be at one of the most famous museums in the world, Bravo, and thanks for the conversation, where we also had the chance to say hello to her mother Srbijanka. More about Mila Turajlic on

http://www.dissimila.rs/bio.html

As part of the “Dealing With the Past” there was a talk with producer Siniša Juricic, who co-produced and was a character in “Chris, the Swiss”, a film that was taken to the Cannes Film Festival, a film not loved by Croatian film and tv authorities, they don’t like to see it as a film from Croatia, but not the only film that Juricic has made as a producer; he has not been able to get funding from the Croatian Audiovisual Fund for three years. He was service provider for the Danish production “15 Minutes. The Dvor Massacre” and for this he was “accused of being a traitor” and “blacklisted” at the Fund.

The talk had the long title “Working with films that tackle sensitive issuses from the past” and Juricic, well prepared, had brought along clips/trailers from his filmography: “Dead Man Walking”, “Velvet Terrorists”, the mentioned two films, “Houston, we have a Problem” as well as a clip from a new film about a cartoonist, who was killed by the partisans in Belgrade 1944. It looked very fascinating. Juricic, interviewed by Robert Zuber, said that he now “seriously considers to make comedies” – I don’t believe him having seen his talent as a producer not only for the mentioned films but also for fine works as “Cash and Marry”, one of my favourites from my time at the training programme Ex Oriente, and “Sofia’s Last Ambulance” that is a small masterpiece. What comes out of a talk like this is sadness, well anger that the Croatian film and tv authorities are so scared of anything that is controversial and finds it necessary to blacklist a talent like Juricic. At the discussion after “Srbenka”, the director Nebojša Slijepcevic was asked if the film would end up on Croatian television. With a smile, he said that this would not happen. Something is rotten, not only in the state of Denmark…  

 

Sarajevo hosts an amazing film festival. The variety of programs and projects is overwhelming. Films in many cinemas, discussions and presentations after the screenings, and in the Hotel Europe where workshops take place and the Atrium has full houses for presentations linked to industry matters.

I am happy to say that documentaries have a visible and important place in

the festival. I have already reviewed some of the films in the competition before the festival, now I have had the chance to be in the cinema for film screenings of some of the films that have been included in the “Dealing With the Past” section of the festival.

Full house for the screening of “The Other Side of Everything” by Mila Turajlic, with a short discussion after the film with producer Carine Chichkowsky and HBO’s Hanka Kastelicovà, in the absence of the director, who had to stay in Belgrade because of illness. The film has been written about many times on this site, here is one link http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4096/

And full house for “Chris, the Swiss” by Anja Kofmel with Sinisa Juricic as co-producer and character in a film that I can only characterize as a masterpiece. The story about the Swiss journalist, who goes to Yugoslavia to cover the war and ends up being killed, when he joins a paramilitary group with the ambition to get material for a book. The screening was transmitted, in collaboration with the Rotterdam IFF, to 8 places in neighbouring countries with Q&A with Anja Kofmel and Sinisa Juricic, led by my tutor colleague Robert Zuber from the “Dealing With the Past”. The film is a superb example of how you can connect animation (the director is animator) with interviews, archive material from the war and footage of the wo going around to the places, where “it” happened. I had seen it before on my computer, it is a total different experience to sit in a full cinema – the music, the sound score.

And full house for Nebojsa Slijepcevic and his “Srbenka”, where I had the pleasure to lead the discussion after the film, more than half an hour, and I dare say that the film was well received by the audience. My review can be read on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4308/

The film had the regional premiere here in Sarajevo and it was obvious to ask the director: What will happen when the film is premiered in cinemas in Croatia – will it raise tensions as did the theatre play did when it was performed in Rijeka in Croatia. Let’s see, the director answered. The film is a piece of art, so well put together, so many interesting cinematic solutions, and because of that the story about being a Serb in Croatia is so touching and thought-provoking. It is universal, I was thinking, easy to refer it to how it must be to be a muslim in Denmark today. And it is about theatre, what an interesting director Oliver Frljic is, and a very controversial character in his home country, a provocateur some called him at the screening.

And full house for “Occupation” (review on http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4300/), the omnibus film, where the Polish director Magdalena Szymkow and Hungarian producer Ágnes Horváth-Szabó took part in the Q&A. Szymkow told the audience how she started with archive material from the music festival where many artists left as a protest against the invasion by the Warsaw Pact countries and then found the love story that made the title of the film appear, “I’m Writing to You My Love”.

Four strong films, all well received, by an audience, mostly young people; there is hope for creative documentaries as long as there is an attendance as here.

https://www.sff.ba/novost/10863/dealing-with-the-past

 

 

 

 

This is a copy paste of a text from the website of the Sarajevo Film Festival to show you a photo taken by the wonderful Turkish director:

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers, will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival. Ceylan will receive the Award in recognition of outstanding contribution to the art of film and support of Sarajevo Film Festival. Ceylan is also the honorary guest of the 24th Sarajevo Film Festival’s Tribute to programme.

The opening of the exibition Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Turkey Cinemascope will be held on Saturday, 11th August 2018 at noon, in Art Galerry of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ceylan’s photographs, just like his films, encourage the observer to think. They provide no obvious answers, but rather mere hints of emotion. The expressions on the faces of his subjects – both in film and in photography – are always ambivalent, reflecting the complexity of life and the human soul, and confirming Ceylan’s status as a talented narrator and a profoundly important and ethical artist.

https://www.sff.ba/en

Surprise me, give me something extraordinary, make the form important, challenge me, make me learn something new. This Turkish film, 45 minutes long, fulfilled the wishes of this old documentary addict. It has many layers and instead of me trying to give a summary of the content, here is the description from the filmmakers as I read it after watching the vimeo link:

Araf is an essayistic road movie and diary of a ghostly character, Nayia, who

travels between Srebrenica, Sarajevo, and Mostar in Bosnia. She has been in exile since the war and returns for the 22nd memorial of the Srebrenica genocide. The film is guided by her diary notes of the journey, which merge with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus – Icarus being the name given to the winner of a bridge diving competition in her home country. The story of Icarus and Daedalus, a myth symbolic of man’s over-ambition and inevitable failure, is woven throughout the film as a way to think about exorcizing the vicious cycle of such events happening in the future and of a possible reconciliation. Nayia also thinks of Icarus from a different perspective, that of seeing the optimism of such a leap, his braveness in taking a leap into the unknown in this era of radical instability, that perhaps Icarus wanted to write a different narrative. Araf thus traces these paradoxes through Nayia’s displacement and her return to her home country post-war – that of a constant terror and a permanent standstill, and the friction between displacement and permanence.

But film is a very concrete medium so let me try to describe the form, the aesthetic choices that the director has chosen to make the film so impressive as a Film. As Cinema. She works with a literary diary text – unfortunately, my only objection, sometimes with an English language that is difficult to understand – she has filmed in b/w, uses slow motion, uses a structure where she goes back to the jumper/diver/Icarus from the Mostar bridge to film that from all angles, creating a lyrical tone, ending up in Srebrenica where you watch the faces and hands and movements of the visitors in mourning. It goes with a beautiful choice of music and a sound score that is in perfect sync with the images. It is beautiful and emotional, when you hear the names mentioned of the victims of the massacre. As it is said “… 22 years after there are still tombs to be filled…”. There is also some sarcasm in the text, when you see a wall on which UN is written, “… they call UN United Nothing here…”

PS. I had to go to Wikipedia to get to know the meaning of the title “Araf”: A’raf (Arabic: الأعراف‎) is the Muslim separator realm or borderland between heaven and hell,^[1] inhabited by the people who are evenly balanced in their sins and virtues. This place may be described as a kind of beneficent purgatory with privation but without suffering. The word is literally translated as “The Heights” in English. The realm is described as a high curtain between hell and paradise.^[2] Ibn Kathir described A’raf as a wall that contains a gate.^[3] In this high wall lived people who witness the terror of hell and the beauty of paradise. They yearn to enter paradise, but their sins and virtues are evenly balanced. Yet with the mercy of God, they will be one of the last people to enter the paradise.

Turkey, 2017, 45 mins.

The film, that has its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival August 14, is a psychological drama featuring a young man and his mother with the young man’s girlfriend as an important side-character. I wrote man but take a look at the picture, he is a playful boy, happy, full of life, in love with the girl, he wants to marry her, he belongs to the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, gets drafted and chooses to go with the Ukrainian army. Much against his mother’s wish. She is the one, who suffers, wants him to stay at home, is happy but worried, when he is home for leave and relieved, when he finally finishes his military duty. After nine months, a reborn child.

The playful boy becomes a disillusioned young man. And the film shows that, indeed it does show, what damage on the soul a war can do. Letting us viewers look at his face. Built up in a very simple way, the film is based on shootings from the family’s house in a village, and the cell phone material that Jani, the son, shoots, when sent to the war between Ukraine and Russia. A lot is the soldier’s life – fun, shooting his pals, and other’s is deadly serious footage from the combat zone in Eastern Ukraine. The story he tells about the pal who is killed next to him is what changes him completely. It sent him to hospital and made him strongly wanting to go home “missing mum”.

At home he is lying on the sofa watching the material he shot, he is bored and does not know, what to do with his life. It seems like he does not want to marry the girlfriend he proposed to nine months earlier – on camera.

The return of a soldier to normal life, there are loads of films dealing with this topic, fiction and documentary, however this one has an interesting character approach – mother and son/girlfriend – and a clever set-up with the two very different cinematic takes, with the calm observation of the family life in the village contrasting the nervous, hectic soldier life shot by the young boy turned man – that shifts from being just a funny boy-game to a question of life and death, leaving scars on the soul.

Hungary, 2018, 73 mins.