The process of selecting and screening films for the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) is a deeply personal experience for programmer Rada Šešić.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Šešić admits. “After I’ve introduced the film and the maker, I stay in the cinema and listen to how the audience ‘breathes’, how they react. I shudder every time someone opens the door with a bang or leaves the cinema in the middle of the film. It hurts me to see a restless, fidgety audience.”
Šešić will always be eagerly awaiting the screenings of the 21 films (19 of which are in competition) in this year’s documentary section, selected from 275 submissions.
“At every screening I feel like a student taking an exam, and I too, not just the directors, feel that the screening in Sarajevo is a special, somewhat celebratory occasion,” she says. “We have many world or international premieres every year, and the moment when the film meets the audience is usually very emotional.”
Šešić rates this year’s selection as “very mature, appealing and captivating films”, which will be judged by a jury including Mandy Chang (founder and creative director of the documentary film label Undeniable), Marek Hovorka (founder and director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic) and the acclaimed Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle).
The competition will open with the world premiere of the latest film by Hungarian filmmaker Anna Rubi. Your life without mewhich follows a group of older mothers in their efforts to ensure that the support system they have built for their disabled adult children continues after the mothers’ deaths.
This year there will be a strong Ukrainian presence – Sarajevo made room for Ukrainian directors after Russia’s invasion in 2022 – with projects such as the world premiere of Daddy’s lullabythe feature film debut of acclaimed Ukrainian short filmmaker Lesia Diak, a look at the lives of traumatized soldiers returning home to their families. Diak is accompanied by Maria Stoianova, whose Ice fragments traces the director’s family history as a mirror of the history of her country; and Olga Chernykh’s A picture to remember, a portrait of three generations of Ukrainian women, from the time of the USSR to the present day.
“In addition to the cinematic qualities, our selection also shows very vividly the reality around us; the films are quite daring, direct and courageous,” says Šešić. “I was amazed by the intimacy achieved in the authors’ many personal stories.”
This year’s documentary film highlights include two Croatian productions. The BBC has already picked up Gora motto’ Pavilion 6a look at the topic of COVID vaccinations with a pinch of humor, while Silvestar Kolbas’ Our children also finds it funny that he looks back on his family’s 30-year history and questions “parenthood, marriage and harmony in life”.
Sesić points to Bosnian-born Maja Novakovic Who will knock on the door of the house? as “an ode to the human spirit that celebrates the almost sacred connection between man and nature.”
“Documentary films are of great importance in our region,” says Šešić. “They are a kind of barometer of a society that measures the political and social ‘temperature’; they show what is brewing beneath the surface. They often serve as instruments of social and political discussion and engage us in meaningful conversations.”
She adds: “Sometimes taboo subjects do not reach the general public for a long time. They are constantly overlooked, neglected and ‘swept under the carpet’, but they need to be seen and discussed. Gender issues, post-war trauma, domestic violence and the silence about them. Well-made documentaries have the power to initiate such debates.”
Documentaries are also part of the SFF’s DNA, she says. They began 20 years ago with a three-day screening program and have since expanded to include platforms such as the Dealing with the Past program, a True Stories Market and a Docu Rough Cut Boutique, which “plays a key role in supporting many regional documentary projects on their journey to an international audience.”
“These non-competitive but extremely important programs bring relevant stories to the forefront and discussion,” says Šešić. “I look forward to the screenings of the selected films every year, because the festival is about the encounter between films and audiences and about filmmakers discussing their work.”
And she concludes: “The Sarajevo Festival has a loyal, sophisticated audience that is interested in documentaries. This audience responds to the relevance and fascination of the story, but also knows how to respect the artistic expression of the author. The documentaries in our competition give the viewer food for thought that can bring about positive change in the long term.”
