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Call for Entries: Dealing with the Past – True Stories Market 2024
The selected project will receive a €10,000 award, courtesy of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Southeast Europe Dialogue
Since 2016, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Dealing with the Past program has encouraged meaningful dialogue across the former Yugoslav countries, still grappling with the enduring impacts of war. Through a diverse array of artistic expressions, this program presents compelling voices and stories that confront unresolved war crimes and the lasting effects of conflict. Notable participants have included esteemed filmmakers like Joshua Oppenheimer, Ari Folman, Michael Winterbottom, Rithy Panh, Ron Haviv, Ognjen Glavonić, Mila Turajlić, and many others.
As part of this initiative, the Sarajevo Film Festival launched the True Stories Market, a unique event connecting filmmakers with organizations that document the war’s history in the former Yugoslavia. In the previous edition, six powerful stories were introduced. To further support these stories’ journey to the screen, we are pleased to announce an open call for filmmakers interested in creating films based on them.
The selected project will receive a €10,000 award, courtesy of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Southeast Europe Dialogue.
Eligibility and Application Requirements
We invite filmmakers and production companies from Southeast Europe to submit proposals for a feature-length film or documentary inspired by one of the stories presented below. Eligible applicants include production companies or filmmakers from Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo*, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine.
To apply, please submit a concept note, a motivation letter, and your biography and filmography.
Send all application materials to dwp@sff.ba.
The deadline for submissions is November 23rd, 2024.
Selected Stories
Each story was first showcased at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival. You can access the corresponding pitch presentations through the links below each story title.
RAB BATTALION
Eli Tauber
RAB BATTALION by ELI TAUBER, a renowned Jewish historian based in Sarajevo, shares the history of Rab Battalion, a unique instance of Jewish armed resistance during World War II, through a retelling of his parents’ personal experience. Going from one checkpoint to another, the story focuses on the Taubers’ journey from various concentration camps located on islands by the Adriatic coastline, now boasting titles of the most desirable tourist locations, ending at the almost completely forgotten concentration camp on the island of Rab. After Italy’s capitulation, Jewish prisoners used the opportunity to form a battalion and join the armed resistance in the people’s liberation war. This unique case, presented with a personal approach, is underscored by thorough research of the subject matter, conducted by Eli Tauber himself.
NOTIONS OF NORMALCY
Esad Boškailo
A world-renowned psychiatrist, professor, and PTSD expert, ESAD BOŠKAILO, MD, recounts his personal experience of imprisonment in six concentration camps during the 90s war. This story begins and ends with basketball. Years before the war, young Boškailo was a healthy young man with a career in professional basketball before focusing on his education and acquiring the title of MD. During the war, he is subjected to horrendous torture at the concentration camp. Focusing on the notions of normal and non-normal, the story highlights two events – the rampant torture of shooting at prisoners through thin hangar walls, expelling bullets in the dark with a blunt nail clipper, and a human reaction to the accidental news of the tragic death of Yugoslavian basketball superstar DRAŽEN PETROVIĆ. Both prisoners and criminals react to the tragic news “normally,” with a healthy dose of grief, despite the evidently non-normal circumstances and context surrounding them.
ZIJO RIBIĆ: RED BLOOD
forumZFD | Vjera Ruljić
ZIJO RIBIĆ, now 40, survived the massacre of nine family members in Skočić, on July 12, 1992. Rescued by JNA soldiers, he spent years in hospitals and orphanages. Despite his tragic past, Zijo promotes forgiveness and reconciliation, traveling across Europe as a Roma peace activist. He now lives in Tuzla with his wife and two children, working as a cook. The 2018 Belgrade Court acquitted the perpetrators of mass murder, but convicted them of other crimes. Zijo, who forgave his attackers, emphasizes love and unity, reminding everyone that all blood is red, symbolizing love and desire for a more united humanity.
MAHMUT
Admir Rahmanović
The film to be focuses on the director’s relationship with his father-in-law, MAHMUT KLJAJIĆ, and their shared traumas and hopes for a better future. Mahmut survived two concentration camps in the 1990s. His family, including the director’s wife, was separated and expelled. The director himself spent 1992-1993 near the “Music school” concentration camp in Zenica. Decades later, both live in Sweden, revisiting these traumas and memories. Despite his past, Mahmut now works with a Croat and a Serb, his closest friends. The film ends with hopes for a peaceful future.
THE CURSE
Ferida Abdagić
FERIDA ABDAGIĆ’s parents built their house with their own hands, but her grandmother cursed it. The house burned down during the war, and Ferida’s brother barely saved a few items. Their father, disabled from his time in the JNA, couldn’t witness the curse materializing. For 30 years, he tended to the ruins, believing in justice and waiting for reconstruction aid that never came. Despite having close ties in the local administration, their house was always mysteriously omitted from aid lists. This felt like a curse on the family. Discovering ancient bones on their land provided a haunting explanation: “No one will return home until we all do.”
MURDERS FOR GREATER GOALS: IS POLITICS HIDING THE KILLERS OF 28 MOSTAR RESIDENTS?
tacno.net’s | Predrag Blagovčanin
In 1994, ZEJNA and JUSUF PIRAGIĆ were murdered in their Mostar apartment. For 23 years, their son NIJAZ has pursued justice, but their case is one of 26 unsolved murders in West Mostar from 1994 to 2003, years after the initial ceasefire and peace treaties were signed. Authorities have failed to resolve these crimes, which many claimed were politically motivated to prevent the return of Bosniaks and Serbs. Despite his never-ending quest for justice, Nijaz manages to lead an almost-normal life, working as a painter, consistently crossing between two sides of the divided city, entering into strangers’ homes with a job to make them better, almost regularly running into people suspected of his parents’ murder. His brother works as a truck driver across the globe, in the USA. Unlike Nijaz, he desires revenge and avoids coming back to Mostar in order to not act on his vengeful urges. Depicting two opposite manifestations of consequences war and trauma have on individuals, this story paints an accurate portrait of a post-conflict society and Mostar today. It is based on a thorough investigative article written by Predrag Blagovčanin, recently re-published in anticipation of the 30th anniversary of the murder of Zejna and Jusuf Piragić.
* This label does not prejudge the status of Kosovo and is in accordance with Resolution 1244 and the opinion of the ICJ on Kosovo's declaration of independence