Created in 1995, the Sarajevo Film Festival aims to promote films from south-eastern Europe. It is now considered the region’s major festival. Its 28thedition ended on August 19thwith the jury announcing the winners.
Among their many selections, the jury of the drama film competition, chaired by director Sebastien Meise, gave the Best Feature Film Award to Juraj Lerotić’s Safe Place. This Croatian film is about a family broken by the attempted suicide of one of its members. Based on his own life, the director decided to cast himself in the principal role, explaining in an interview with Cineuropa: “I couldn’t accept someone else playing this character. Probably because he was too close to me.” By giving this film the festival’s highest distinction, the jurors expressed their enthusiasm both for the story and the way it was filmed: “With stylistic precision and impeccable direction, this film shows a society insensitive to the pain of others.” They also gave the director the Best Actor award for his performance. The film will represent Croatia in the Oscar nominations.
In the documentary competition, the Serbian film, Museum of the Revolution, directed by Srđan Kečaj won the Grand Prix. Co-produced by Serbia, Croatia and the Czech Republic, the film takes place in a communist-era museum in Belgrade, where only the basement has been built. Intended to “safeguard the truth” about the Yugoslav people, the project was never completed. Today this damp, abandoned basement is home to squatters – those excluded from Serbia’s new capitalist society. The director focuses on three women living there: a young girl, her mother and an older woman. “This museum is an unfinished dream,” says the director. “For me, it represents the unrealised projects and dreams specific to the Yugoslav space, but it also reflects the precarious life of the film’s protagonists.”
All the winners can be found on the festival web-site.
Sources : Cineuropa,, Sarajevo Film Festival, HAVC
