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Introducing the Kinoscope Programme of 29th Sarajevo Film Festivala

The Kinoscope programme of the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival will include a total of 18 film screenings of which six belong to Kinoscope section, six to Kinoscope Real section and six to Kinoscope Surreal section.

„Our Kinoscope programme is broken into three different parts, Kinoscope Real, which tackles our reality either through fiction or documentary; Kinoscope, in which we present the arthouse films we deem most impressive from the current year; and Kinoscope Surreal, where we show genre films with distinctive original narrative and stylistic elements“, said Mathilde Henrot and Alessandro Raja, programmers of the Kinoscope programme.

KINOSCOPE PROGRAMME:

BAAN
Portugal, 2023, 101 min.
Director: Leonor Teles
Cast: Carolina Miragaia, Meghna Lall

When home stops feeling like home, wandering becomes routine. Time, space, and emotions implode, blurring Lisbon with Bangkok. Past, present, or perhaps future intertwine in a story that begins when L meets K.

DISCO BOY
France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, 2023, 91 min.
Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese
Cast: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev, Matteo Olivetti, Robert Więckiewicz, Michał Balicki

After a long and difficult journey through Europe, Aleksei arrives in Paris to join the Foreign Legion. Looking for a new life, he is ready for anything in order to obtain the promised passport. On the Niger River delta, Jomo fights the oil multinationals that threaten life in his village. One day, while he is at the head of an armed group, he kidnaps French citizens. To intervene is a command of the Foreign Legion, led by Aleksei. The meeting between these two will have unexpected implications. Aleksei and Jomo’s destinies will overlap, continuing beyond borders, bodies, life, and death.

FEMME
United Kingdom, 2023, 99 min.
Director: Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Cast: George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett

FEMME follows Jules, who is targeted in a horrific homophobic attack, destroying his life and career. Some time after that event he encounters Preston, one of his attackers, in a gay sauna. Jules wants revenge.

SAINT OMER
France, 2022, 122 min.
Director: Alice Diop
Cast:  Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit, Xavier Maly, Robert Cantarella

The Saint Omer court of law. Young novelist Rama attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement.

THE VANISHING SOLDIER
Israel, 2023, 98 min.
Director: Dani Rosenberg
Cast: Ido Tako, Mika Reiss, Efrat Ben Zur, Tiki Dayan, Shmulik Cohen

A year from today. Shlomi, an eighteen-year-old soldier, flees the Gaza battlefield and makes his way back to his girlfriend, Shiri. When Shlomi discovers that the military elite is convinced he was kidnapped during the fog of war, he no longer hides from the soldiers he believed were chasing him, but instead from his own identity, which has become a trap. In spite of his parents’ pleas that he return to his unit before it’s too late, Shlomi takes a desperate chance on love, with dramatic consequences.

TOTEM
Mexico, Denmark, France, 2023, 95 min.
Director: Lila Avilés
Cast: Naíma Sentíes, Monserrat Marañon, Marisol Gasé, Saori Gurza, Teresita Sánchez, Mateo García Elizondo

TOTEM is a choral film about life. Seven-year-old Sol spends the day at her grandfather’s home, helping her aunts Nuri and Alejandra with a surprise party they are throwing for Sol’s father, Tonatiuh. As daylight fades, a strange and chaotic atmosphere takes over, shattering the bonds that hold a family together. Sol will come to understand that her world will change dramatically, embracing the essence of letting go and cherishing the breath of life.

KINOSCOPE REAL

APOLONIA, APOLONIA
Denmark, Poland, France, 2023, 116 min.
Režija / Director: Lea Glob

Apolonia was born in an underground theatre in Paris, grew up in an artists' community, and studied at one of the most prestigious art academies in Europe. Over the years, Danish filmmaker Lea Glob filmed Apolonia and her struggle to find her place in the art world, grappling with the agonies and joys of womanhood, relationships with others, and her own body and creation. As time passes and a special bond grows between Apolonia and Lea, we witness a film being born and a painter rising to fame. Thirteen years on, the two women continue to reflect on each other’s paths in this mesmerising film about art, love, motherhood, sexuality, representation, and how to succeed in a world dominated by patriarchy, capitalism, and war without losing oneself.

FOUR DAUGHTERS / LES FILLES D'OLFA
France, Tunisia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, 2023, 107 min.
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Cast: Hend Sabri, Nour Karoui, Ichraq Matar, Majd Mastoura

The life of Olfa, a Tunisian mother of four daughters, oscillates between light and shadow. One day, her two elder daughters disappear. To fill their absence, director Kaouther Ben Hania calls upon professional actors and sets up an extraordinary film mechanism to unveil the story of Olfa and her daughters. This intimate journey full of hope, rebellion, violence, intergenerational transmission, and sisterhood questions the very foundation of our societies.

MOTHERLAND
Sweden, Ukraine, Norway, 2023, 92 min.
Director: Alexander Mihalkovich, Hanna Badziaka

As young Nikita apprehensively enters his military conscription, Svetlana travels the country looking for justice for her son, who was murdered while in military training. It is 2020, and activists rage in the street against state-led violence rooted in “dedovshchina” – the cruel abuse that supposedly turns boys into soldiers but that is instead the very mechanism of fear and violence the government uses to control its populace.

MY WORST ENEMY / MON PIRE ENNEMI
France, Switzerland, 2023, 82 min.
Director: Mehran Tamadon

Mojtaba, Hamzeh, and Zar are among individuals who have been thrown into prison and ideologically interrogated in Iran. In this documentary, the director wants them to interrogate him as agents of the Islamic Republic might. He would like the real torturer in Iran to see himself through the film, as if in a mirror. The subjects' violent experience of putting themselves in the torturer's headspace confronts them with their own limits and the ambivalence of the project itself.

ORLANDO – MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY / ORLANDO, MA BIOGRAPHIE POLITIQUE
France, 2023, 98 min.
Director: Paul B. Preciado
Cast: Oscar-Roza Miller, Janis Sahraoui, Liz Christin, Elios Levy, Victor Marzouk

In 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote "Orlando", the first novel in which the main character changes gender in the middle of the story. A century later, trans writer and activist Paul B. Preciado decides to send a film letter to Woolf: her Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined.

THE PERMANENT PICTURE / LA IMATGE PERMANENT
Spain, France, 2023, 94 min.
Director: Laura Ferrés
Cast: María Luengo, Rosario Ortega, Saraida Llamas, Claudia Fimia, Mila Collado, Dolores Martínez

In rural southern Spain, Antonia, a teenage mother, disappears in the middle of the night. Fifty years later and much further north, Carmen, an introverted casting director, is looking for people to share their memories when they arrive in a new city. In her search, she meets Antonia, whose impulsiveness intrudes into Carmen’s solitude. Who said time heals all wounds

KINOSCOPE SURREAL

ANIMAL KINGDOM / LE RÈGNE ANIMAL
France, 2023, 130 min.
Director: Thomas Cailley
Cast: Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Kircher, Jean Boronat

In a world hit by a wave of mutations that are gradually transforming some humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife, who is affected by the mysterious condition. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, François embarks with Emile, his sixteen-year-old son, on a quest that will change their lives forever.

INFINITY POOL
Canada, Hungary, Croatia, 2022, 117 min.
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, Thomas Kretschmann, Jeffrey Ricketts, John Ralston, Amanda Brugel, Caroline Boulton

While staying at an isolated island resort, James and Em enjoy a perfect vacation of pristine beaches, exceptional staff, and soaking up the sun. But guided by the seductive and mysterious Gabi, they venture outside the resort grounds and find themselves in a culture filled with violence, hedonism, and untold horror. A tragic accident leaves them facing a zero tolerance policy for crime: either you’ll be executed, or, if you’re rich enough to afford it, you can watch yourself die instead.

OMEN / AUGURE
Belgium, Netherlands, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, South Africa, 2023, 90 min.
Director: Baloji
Cast: Eliane Umuhire, Marc Zinga, Lucie Debay, Yves-Marina Gnahoua

Four people are accused of being witches and sorcerers. Despite their misfortune, they find a way to guide each other away from their socially imposed destinies and into the phantasmagoria of Africa.

PERPETRATOR
USA, France, 2023, 100 min.
Director: Jennifer Reeder
Cast: Kiah McKirnan, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Lowell, Melanie Liburd, Ireon Roach

Jonny Baptiste, a reckless teenager, is sent to live with her estranged Aunt Hildie. On her eighteenth birthday, Jonny experiences a radical metamorphosis: a family spell called Forevering, which redefines her. When several teen girls go missing at her new school, a mythically feral Jonny goes after the Perpetrator.

SUPERPOSITION
Denmark, 2023, 105 min.
Director: Karoline Lyngbye
Cast: Marie Bach Hansen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Mihlo Olsen

The creative couple Stine and Teit and their young son Nemo leave their urban life in Copenhagen behind in favour of an isolated forest in Sweden, where they hope to find themselves as individuals while documenting their new lifestyle in an ongoing podcast series. Regretfully, they realise there is couple across the lake, who are surprisingly like themselves. Soon, old grudges and selfish desires begin to take over, forcing the family to confront their own egos.

VINCENT MUST DIE / VINCENT DOIT MOURIR
France, Belgium, 2023, 108 min.
Director: Stéphan Castang
Cast: Vimala Pons, Karim Leklou

Random strangers have suddenly started attacking Vincent with murderous intent. His life as an unremarkable man is upended and, as things spiral violently out of control, he is forced to flee and change his life completely.

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