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Competition Programme - Documentary Film 2024
Rada Šešić, programmer of the Competition Programme – Documentary Film, picked 21 films for the programme.
Nineteen films are competing for awards: 3 will have their world premieres, 5 their international premieres, 1 its European premiere, 8 their regional premieres, and 2 their Bosnian and Herzegovinian premieres in Sarajevo. Two films will be shown out of competition: one will have its world premiere, and one its Bosnian and Herzegovinian premiere.
Jury:
Mandy Chang, Founder and Creative Director, Undeniable, Fremantle's label, USA
Marek Hovorka, Founder and Director, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Czech Republic
Wang Xiaoshuai, Director, writer and producer, China
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
1.BIANG BIANG EXPRESS / MIÀN MIÀN JÙ DÀO, Nikola Stojanović (Serbia, China, 2024, 10 min.) – World premiere
BIANG BIANG EXPRESS follows food-crafters from Xi’an, the capital city of China's Shaanxi Province, through the entire process of making a local specialty–biang biang noodles, among them wheat farmers, factory workers who mill flour, cooks, and guests of noodle restaurants who enjoy making and eating biang biang noodles.
2. DAD'S LULLABY / TATOVA KOLYSKOVA, Lesia Diak (Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, 2024, 78 min.) - World premiere
The unseen damage inflicted by war on personal relationships casts its shadow over the homecoming of Serhiy, a veteran haunted by loss. He finds himself increasingly isolated as he battles to reconnect with his wife, Nadiia, and their three sons, Sasha, Artem and Nikita. The film takes an unexpected turn when Serhiy turns the camera on its director. This role reversal creates a space for vulnerable dialogue about love and human relationships as the filmmaker shares her own experience of break-up with another war veteran.
3. YOUR LIFE WITHOUT ME / AZ ÉLETED NÉLKÜLEM, Anna Rubi (Hungary, Sweden, 2024, 72 min.) – World premiere
Sixty-five-year-old Magdi, a strong-willed but lonely caregiver, faces a daunting reality as she grows older: were she to pass away, her disabled thirty-nine-year-old son, Feri would be subjected to the inhumane conditions of the Hungarian state care system and would quickly follow her. Magdi unites with a group of women who are in the same situation and they take legal action against the state.YOUR LIFE WITHOUT ME is a story of the strength and sacrifices of these women, who find their own voices through their community.
4. HETEROTOPIA / HETEROTOPIJA, Nikola Nikolić (Serbia, 2024, 7 min.) – International premiere
A film about space that integrates various categories of time, both through the concept of progress contained in the collective, and through the prism of individual and personal experience.
5. LOXY, Dimitris Zahos, Thanasis Kafetzis (Greece, 2024, 87min.) – International premiere
Loxandra, a young woman with Down syndrome, becomes the first disabled person to sign an acting contract with the National Theatre of Greece. She leaves her city and her familiar everyday life and travels to Athens to become a member of the group of professional actors. For the next six months, Loxy goes to rehearsals and makes friends, falls in love, has fun, gets frustrated, and demands accessibility again and again, breaking through stereotypes one at a time.
6. OUR CHILDREN / NAŠA DJECA, Silvestar Kolbas (Croatia, 2024, 92 min.) – International premiere
At sixty-eight, Silvestar has been the oldest Kolbas in his family for some time. He is married for the second time. He has three children: the eldest, Jakov, from his first marriage; Eva, from his second marriage, born through artificial insemination; and Ante, adopted from a children's home at the age of eight. How do his children affect Kolbas's feelings and attitudes and his relationship with his wife? How does he influence—and how has he influenced—each of his children? What kind of relationship does he have with each child? Does he give each of them an equal amount of love? Do his children change him? Do they each change him in a different way? How do the children see him and his wife? How do they see their relationships to themselves?
7. THE SEAGULL / GALEB, David Lušičić (Croatia, 2024, 29 min.) – International premiere
THE SEAGULL chronicles the final attempt at a reconstruction of the Galeb, Yugoslav President Tito's yacht, which was used from the 1950s until his death in 1980, followed by the breakdown of Yugoslavia. The vessel played a crucial role in keeping the peace between the Eastern and Western blocs, and in promoting the Non-Aligned Movement. The film provides insight into the unique life of a sailor through the testimony of an officer involved in the Galeb's final voyage. While the yacht is being reconstructed near the shipyard, the local population concludes a carnival-like ritual by symbolically burning an effigy. This symbolises the end of winter and aims to dispel the perceived evils believed to have shaped their past.
8. WHAT WE ASK OF A STATUE IS THAT IT DOESN'T MOVE / AFTO POU ZITAME APO ENA AGALMA INE NA MIN KINITE, Daphné Hérétakis (Greece, France, 2024, 31 min.) – International premiere
Nothing seems to be moving in Athens and the people are as still as statues. But, elsewhere in the city, a caryatid escapes the museum and a groupuscule demands the destruction of all antiquities. Perhaps filming is the only way to avoid turning into stone.
9. RE:VISITING JASENOVAC, Admir Rahmanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden, 2023, 12 min.) – European premiere
This meditative short documentary returns to the site of one of the worst atrocities that took place in Yugoslavia during World War II in order to probe complicated questions about the nature of remembering, bearing witness, and forgetting. While depicting the contemporary landscape of the grounds of the former concentration camp in Jasenovac in haunting black-and-white photography, the film asks what it means to “never forget” and how these words continue to resonate today.
10. ALICE ON & OFF, Isabela Tent (Romania, 2024, 86 min.) – Regional premiere
Shot over the course of ten years, ALICE ON & OFF revolves around sixteen-year-old Alice, who becomes a mother to Aristo, a child conceived out of her deep affection for Dorian despite their remarkable thirty-five-year age difference. Trajectories quickly separate, however, compelling Alice to make the heart-rending choice of parting ways with both Dorian and Aristo. Confronted with feelings of fear and isolation, Alice seeks refuge and solace by expressing herself through painting, with a video camera as her witness. In this process, she not only finds comfort but also rediscovers love. Mirroring the actions of her own parents, Alice sporadically appears in Aristo's life throughout the years.
11. A PICTURE TO REMEMBER / FOTO NA PAM'YAT, Olga Chernykh (Ukraine, France, Germany, 2023, 72 min.) – Regional premiere
A PICTURE TO REMEMBER is an essayistic account of a family's lengthy journey through wartime. It chronicles their search for a way to handle the terrible and recurring losses experienced by three generations of Ukrainian women – those of the director, her mother, and her grandmother. A moving exploration of identity, heritage, and the power of storytelling to connect us in times of upheaval.
12. BETWEEN DELICATE AND VIOLENT / ZARAFET VE ŞIDDET ARASINDA, Şirin Bahar Demirel (Turkey, Netherlands, 2023, 15 min.) – Regional premiere
This experimental documentary considers hands as places of remembrance that can both accumulate and transfer memories. Through hands and their creations, BETWEEN DELICATE AND VIOLENT imagines unearthing lost memories that have not been included in performative, socially acceptable family albums. Can we see the violence of a painter's hands in their brushstrokes? Could cross-stitch be an alphabet of some sort? The video connects with the director's past through imagination and creation, while opening up to larger human experiences such as domestic violence and intergenerational trauma and resistance.
13. CENT'ANNI, Maja Prelog (Slovenia, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Austria, 2024, 87 min.) – Regional premiere
After surviving a terminal illness diagnosis, Blaž sets off on a gruelling celebratory Giro d’Italia. Tasked with capturing the triumphant biking tour is his partner, filmmaker Maja Doroteja Prelog,. What was initially planned as a ride from the Dolomites to Sicily to reclaim control of life and celebrate overcoming the greatest of fears soon becomes a journey of self-discovery for the couple. Things shift so that Maja’s experience and needs hold the focus of lens. While the camera turns inward, the relationship unravels, revealing a brave examination of self and what it truly means to be together. CENT’ANNI is an unfiltered testament to love and change; an emotional rollercoaster with heart-rending confessions and poetic visuals in the midst of beautiful natural scenery.
14. FRAGMENTS OF ICE / FRAHMENTY LIODU, Maria Stoianova (Ukraine, Norway, 2024, 95 min.) – Regional premiere
Personal, political, and social developments unfold in FRAGMENTS OF ICE, which is edited together from fifteen VHS tapes covering the period 1986 to 1994: video diaries shot by the director’s father, a champion figure-skater, on his foreign tours with the Ukrainian Ensemble Ballet on Ice, and in his own home. As we follow director Maria Stoianova growing up, we witness the collapse of the Soviet Union in parallel with Ukraine’s journey towards regaining independence and its transition to a market economy. Expectations reflected in the glamorous footage of the West contrast starkly with home-video footage of peeling walls, collapsed ceilings, and cockroaches at the family flat. The film captures the broad sweep of history as well as its impact on the lives of real people, ending with a new upheaval—the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
15. ... NED, TASSOT, YOSSOT …, Brigitte Weich (Austria, 2023, 99 min.) – Regional premiere
About five years after the release of her film HANA, DUL, SED …, filmmaker Brigitte Weich returns to North Korea to ask four women on the national football team how their lives have evolved. In a friendly and congenial co-operation between the filmmaker and the participants, a work arises that not only tells about the daily life of a professional athlete in North Korea but also asks questions about the images we make of ourselves to give meaning to our lives and the world.
16. PAIN / BOL, Ivan Faktor (Croatia, 2024, 22 min.) – Regional premiere
Ivan Faktor decided to visualise his state of living with Parkinson's disease with a mobile phone camera. After 50 years of making films, his passion for art and life persists. He films himself, his wife, the yard, the street, the studio, and the light that plays in his house. Faktor records everyday life but disrupts the routine structure by intervening, using light or optical obstacles like his trembling fingers. Through these interventions into documentary situations, he creates a surprising inner world of an artist imprisoned in space.
17. PAVILION 6 / PAVILJON 6, Goran Dević (Croatia, 2024, 69 min.) – Regional premiere
The long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine brings a glimmer of hope. Through candid conversations with people waiting in line for vaccination, this globally relatable film reveals the disorientation and skepticism that permeate the collective experience. Serving as collective therapy for the post-COVID era, this humorous and humane snapshot of a unique moment in time uncovers the threads of resilience and connection that bind us, reminding us of our common humanity in the face of unprecedented challenges.
18. AT THE DOOR OF THE HOUSE WHO WILL COME KNOCKING / KO ĆE POKUCATI NA VRATA MOG DOMA, Maja Novaković (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, 2024, 85 min.) - B&H premiere
In the heart of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a house at the edge of a village near Srebrenica, lives Emin. In his twilight years, he toils alongside his faithful horse. The monotonous rhythm of Emin's daily life hides a deep wound. He breaks through the snow and strong wind or works for long hours in the bitter cold, embracing the harshness of nature and finding little solace in the warmth of his stove. He seeks relief and a brief respite from his grief in fleeting conversations.
19. LIKE A SICK YELLOW / SI E VERDHË E SËMUR, Norika Sefa (Kosovo*, 2024, 23 min.) - B&H premiere
She was afraid of bad luck. They used to tell her, “Let your mind be peaceful; don’t put bad thoughts in your head; if it’s meant to be, it will be. That's luck.” Nora was happy. She was afraid something might happen to change this.
20. PRASLOVAN, Slobodan Maksimović (Slovenia, Croatia, 2024, 112 min.) – World premiere, out of competition
PRASLOVAN is an emotional biographical drama about the life and career of Zoran Predin, one of the most important singer-songwriters of the former Yugoslavia. The film follows his journey from his early days in Maribor through fame with the band Lačni Franz and his solo career. Through a retrospective of his greatest hits, PRASLOVAN shows how his songs reflected both social changes and personal transformations. It concludes with an intimate look at Predin's life, including his ups and downs and the impact he had on his family and friends. The film features prominent figures like Đorđe Balašević, Branko Đurić, Gabi Novak, among others.
21. BEKIM FEHMIU, Valmir Tertini (Albania, 2023, 66 min.) – B&H premiere, out of competition.
BEKIM FEHMIU is observational, using interviews but no narration, and is shot in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Kosovo, and Serbia. It begins with an apparent suicide, leading to birth, splendour, and a significant acting role. Fame invites misunderstandings and rumours. It explores how an Albanian actor gained fame in the former Yugoslavia, and was admitted to the Academy of Arts despite not knowing Serbian.
The 30th Sarajevo Film Festival will take place from 16 to 23 August 2024.