prijava
SARAJEVO, August 13 (FENA) - Competition Program - Documentary Film of the 27th Sarajevo Film Festival, chosen by programmer Rada Šešic, will present 16 films this year, eight of which will have global, one European, six regional and one Bosnian premiere. They open a number of current topics and research point to the problems of today's man.
In an interview with FENA about the difficulties she encountered as a programmer because the selection of films was made during the pandemic and lockdown, Šešić says that the authors encountered a lot of problems during the coronavirus crisis.
"They could not go to filming, they were like all of us in isolation, also many fell into a severe financial crisis, there were no funds for production and the authors simply could not achieve what they were preparing in the time before the pandemic. But, on the other hand, that time of isolation and waiting gave the opportunity to those who recorded the material before the pandemic to think about it, that the editing process can take much longer, to create sound design, to think about the festival strategy. In short - to be more prepared when the film comes out and have a premiere. So we got great, thoughtful and complex films,” she thinks.
Commenting on the development of documentary film, she believes that this is the time of its heyday and that all kinds of documentary forms are being made - documentary, hybrid form, documentary animation, documentary poetic essay, intimate reflections of various authorial researches.
For the position of the documentary film and the need for its greater presence, the programmer of the SFF Documentary Program believes that the documentary scene needs more screenings of documentaries in the region.
“It has existed in the world for a long time. In the Netherlands, where I have lived since 1993, there has been a large IDFA documentary film festival in Amsterdam for more than 30 years. I have been a part of the selection committee of the competition part of the festival for more than ten years, and about 4,000 films from all over the world come to the selection. It can be seen that documentary creation is both challenging and practiced and very passionate on all continents. But only in some countries of the world documentaries are shown in cinemas on a regular repertoire. In the Netherlands, it was this IDFA festival that popularized documentary film as a creative form of expression. The festival emphasized the author's documentary and made a distinction between TV coverage, TV programs and documentary author's, art form,” she underlined.
Šešić points out that the mentioned films come to cinemas and that the ticket costs the same as for a feature film, and that the viewers are simply interested in what kind of films win at the IDFA or Sundance festival.
She is of the opinion that this year offers several films that should be widely screened in the region, with design and relevant debates.
As an example, she cites the film from Serbia, "Recipe for Hate", which talks about violence around us, on the street, in pubs, everywhere. About bullies, hooligans who, out of pure madness and malice, attack someone, beat him, mistreat him and often such outbursts end tragically. The film was motivated by death after the author's brother was attacked in a tavern in Belgrade.
She points out that she has great respect for every author from our region. She also states that there are no funds for documentaries and that the authors work because of their personal passion and the need to express themselves and not to earn and practice only their film profession.
Films from Documentary Program will be screened at the newly opened Cineplexx cinema.
(FENA) A. B.
