Each year, the Sarajevo Film Festival showcases numerous films that, in various ways, explore issues of human rights. For our Human Rights Day programme, however, we select one particularly impactful film that inspires thinking and dialogue and is discussed after the screening by the filmmakers, protagonists, and experts.
This year’s selection is All We Have Is Us, co-directed by Alina Juárez and Juan Francisco Donoso. This documentary binds together people in two distant territories – the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Jadar Valley in Serbia – through their shared struggle for the right to decide the future of the place they call home.
Over five years, Juárez and Donoso followed people at the heart of this struggle: Chilean journalist and activist Leyla Noriega; Ramón Balcázar, a photographer and socio-environmental researcher documenting the economic impact of lithium mining in the Atacama; Serbian actor Bojana Novaković; and Vladan Jakovljević, a beekeeper from the Jadar Valley. Their personal stories intertwine to present the picture of a global process in which energy transition, economic development, and environmental protection directly impact the rights of local communities. The people in this film are not passive victims; rather, they are active participants who resist through civil initiatives, local media discourse, international solidarity, and art.
As well as being a film about resistance, All We Have Is Us is a reminder that filmmaking itself can be an act of resistance. Juárez and Donoso create space for voices that are not often heard in global debates about progress and green transition. Through the intimate stories of its protagonists, the film asks a universal question: Who has the right to decide about the future of the places we call home?
Because of its powerful execution and a tactical pairing of environmental and civil resistance perspectives, we believe that All We Have Is Us will be among the documentary films that distinguish the festival edition ahead of us.
