Rada Šešić: Radical Intimacy is a Characteristic of this Year's Selection

This year’s Competition Programme – Documentary Film comprising 12 feature-length and 8 short films, boldly traverses a range of genres, deftly blending elements of fiction and animation.

 

I think radical intimacy is a characteristic of this year's selection. The aesthetic and ethical value of the films lies in the incredible patience and courage of the authors. Some films were worked on for five or even ten years, and I am particularly impressed by the audacity of the authors in their positioning of themselves as storytellers. The camera (author) is not an observer from a distance. It is in the trenches with soldiers in Ukraine for over a thousand days, enters prison cells in Slovenia like a participant, listens to the intimate conversations of brave women on shooting ranges in a Turkish village, finds herself in the middle of a family dispute of a former Bosnian politician with unquestionable principles, like a faithful companion joins the political candidacy of a Moldovan woman who violates traditional family expectations. This shared quality of dedication to the film's story and unreserved intimacy creates an atmosphere of deep trust between the author, the subject, and, ultimately, the audience.

 

 

Yes, we have quite a few films where that line is erased. This year, there are quite a few productions in which the authors themselves are the protagonists. This is especially visible in the films of female directors in which the camera is used as a participatory, sympathetic partner. A quality has been achieved that allows the viewer to feel as if they are in a 4D movie, as if they have entered the picture and are watching a certain scene inside. In these films, the camera gets access to extremely sensitive, private moments.

 

 

The protagonists are never isolated from the environment, and in fact, through this intertwining we understand the society around them, as well as their views and principles of life. We realize that principles are presented as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are fuel for the resistance, and on the other, they become a personal prison. Let's take, for example, the story of a man who impresses with his views, former Bosnian representative Roko. His principle was clear and moral: stay with the people in besieged Mostar and vote against the unjust Dayton Agreement. But that same principle cost him his homeland, his city and, worst of all, the trust of his own children, who today see him as a selfish idealist.

 

Similarly, the author from Ukraine who personally goes to war or the protagonist in the film, the conceptual artist Arijana from Croatia, act from pure principles. Their beliefs are not abstract thoughts - they are decisions that require putting the body in danger, whether on the front lines or in the middle of an aggressive crowd in a town square. Through the microcosm of the heroine Gara, whose strength and wisdom are truly impressive, we understand not only the environment in her country, Montenegro, but also the hidden interests of international political powers.

 

 

With the freshness of their filmic expression, originality, and sometimes the courage to get to the heart of the narrative, peeling back layer by layer of camouflage around what they are talking about, sparing neither themselves nor their loved ones, as in the film We Shall Live Together or the films The Forbidden Aunt, Fragments of Belonging, The Balkan Cowboy or the Ukrainian Don't Ask Me If I Killed. It is similar to the great winner of the Sundance Film Festival, the impressive film To Hold a Mountain, with which we proudly open our Competition Programme Documentary Film. With meticulous filmmaking, magnificent photography, and enviable closeness to the protagonist, in cinema verite style, the truth about the behind-the-scenes actions of institutions of local and international proportions is revealed through the life of a brave and wise woman from the people.

 

Similarly brave is the eighty-year-old Maxy, who is living on the edge of life and dignity in a parking lot in Amsterdam, survuving by holding on to the only thing she has left - the teddy bear Natasha. I must point out the title of this film as an example of an excellently chosen, lucid and precise, extremely attractive one - Bear With Me.

 

When I mention the role of animals as mirrors of the human psyche, I will also highlight the short, moving documentary Asparagus Bear that underlines human gullibility and the spread of fake news via social media. Directness, the presence of the camera in the very plot of the film as the driver of the drama, is also well-positioned in the film Holy Defiance, which raises the alarm with the question of where modern society is heading.

 

 

The need for reflection and questioning the environment in which we live. Despite the difficulty of the political situation and the age of great tragedies, the authors find a way to bring the viewer closer to topics that we sometimes run away from, through a well-thought-out stylistic choice. The seductively minimalist film approach in the Macedonian film Good people brings the enormous tragedy of the fire in the disco club in Kočani; the film emanates both pain and dignity, warns and admonishes. A documentary film must not discourage the viewer from following and must not be a direct transmission of some horror and drama. It has to be a lot more than that. For example, in the story of xenophobes who can't stand foreign workers and mischief to them, through the refined directorial process in the movie Bro Ram and without words we understand everything and even experience it more strongly; through the story in 32 Meters about a Turkish village where women bravely conquer a traditionally male-dominated space, in addition to the extremely relevant topic of deprivation of freedom, we enjoy the humor of village women who carry joie de vivre. Their joy of life is just passing from the screen to us viewers. In the Austrian Of Light Ghosts, through a poetic approach without words, we follow how women conquer the places once forbidden to them in the traditional procession. Similarly, in Electing Ms Santa, we follow a very charismatic, charming woman who has the guts to stand up to the patriarchy in her Moldovan village. The Greek Bugboy enters with tenderness and empathy into the solitude of a boy who lives in his own personal world of insects.

 

Powerful short films also testify to how to speak thoughtfully about the horrors of war conflicts and not to reject but to win over viewers; the animated documentary Fahrudin from Bosnia and Herzegovina, about the almost unbelievable fate of a boy from Srebrenica, the animated-Akhiva-feature, Azerbaijani film The Captain and the Caspian Sea about the night in which the history of independence from the Soviet Union was shaped, and the Ukrainian short The Ferry Flows about a music teacher and conductor who lives with a full heart in the pauses of peace within the horrors of war.