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A Word from our Selectors: Competition Feature Film

Creating New Aesthetics
With this year's selection, the Sarajevo Film Festival Competition Programme has finally reached its total ripeness. Ever since the beginning, our aim has been to discover new talents and encourage filmmaking under the special production circumstances in which the films have indeed been produced in the past ten years and more. It is not an exaggeration to say that the cinema from this region is the cinema that has undergone the most dramatic changes, not only in the structure of production, but in its content as well. The regional production structure has had a lot to deal with as the production schemes had dramatically changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, as we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are also celebrating the birth of new cinema aesthetics coming from our region.

The authors presented in our Competition this year are talented and mainly upcoming filmmakers. They are creating their own worlds and views, their own narrative and non-narrative stories, and their own statements. Their films have a special place in the context of European film and they are and will be influencing the development of not only regional cinema, but world cinema as well.

This year we are presenting ten films that represent the diversity and artistic richness of our regional cinema.  Most of the films are debut features and low budget films, created under difficult circumstances, with an amazing energy and passion for filmmaking. This new generation of filmmakers does not care about limits and borders, rules and funds. They care about film as one of the most beautiful and contemporary way of storytelling and communicating. They are thus pushing the boundaries of storytelling and film language.

The acclaimed screenwriter Răzvan Rădulescu and co-director Melissa de Raaf debut with FIRST OF ALL, FELICIA, a film set in a single day with a minimalistic story; a heartbreaking family drama created upon a generation gap and totally different visions of the world. Asli Özge debuts with MEN ON THE BRIDGE, a film with a documentary-fiction approach that portrays the young generation of Istanbul today. Another film dealing with a similar topic is AUTUMN IN MY STREET, where debutant Miloš Pušić engages with the position of the young generation lost in a small provincial town in Serbia. Kamen Kalev debuts with EASTERN PLAYS, an intimate film portraying Bulgarian society from the point of view of two brothers trying to find their way in the chaotic transitional society. ORDINARY PEOPLE by Vladimir Perišić presents a story about a young man turning into a murderer during one war day, told from a very distant and cold, yet truthful perspective. Croatian film THE BLACKS by debutant Goran Dević and second-time director Zvonimir Jurić, is similar in its topic but different in approach as it tells a story about a whole group of soldiers during the war in Croatia, underlining the nonsense of war.

Antonio Nuić is with us again with his second feature DONKEY. The film is set in a village, a scarred family reuniting during the war and their encounter with ghosts from the past. DOGTOOTH by Yorgos Lanthimos creates a horror fairytale atmosphere in another story about family issues and growing up under the constant watch of one’s parents. TRANSMISSION, Roland Vranik’s second feature is a tragicomic, absurdist film set in a world where all telecommunicating has inexplicably stopped working and the characters, accustomed to spending hours in front of their screens, suffer withdrawal symptoms.

The only veteran filmmaker in the programme this year is Damjan Kozole with his film SLOVENIAN GIRL, in which he tackles hidden problems of Slovenian society from the point of view of a student.

This all sums up to two world, four international and four regional premieres, creating a tight programme - the most spectacular so far. All films are visually compelling, authentic and original in their views of the world. I am sure that the filmmakers in this programme will continue to influence and create European cinema and that their time is yet to come.

Regional cinema is not just a myth. It is a cinema to look out for.  It is a cinema which is definitively changing the perspective and aesthetics of European film. This selection is just the beginning of this process.

Elma Tataragić, programmer

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