Croatian director Nebojša Slijepčević continues to win awards for his documentary Srbenka. Last spring, he made his mark at two prestigious festivals: the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the Doc Alliance Selection Award, and Visions du réel, winning the Buyens-Chagoll Award.
In August the Sarajevo Film Festival recognised the quality of his work, awarding him the Best Documentary Award and the Audience Award. Currently Srbenka is competing for the Best European Documentary at the 31st European Film Awards, to be held on December 15th in Seville.
In Srbenka, Nebojša Slijepčević tackles nationalism as a theme, focusing on the lives of Serb children born in Croatia after the war. The film follows the rehearsals of a play based on a real event: the murder of a teenage girl of Serbian origin in 1991. The play is directed by the artist Oliver Frljić.
Nebojša Slijepčević already has many documentaries to his credit. His first feature-length doc, Gangster of Love, took the viewer into the world of Nedjeljko Babic, a matchmaker living in the backwoods of Croatia and known as “Gangster”. It won the Audience Award at the 9th ZagrebDox International Film Festival.
Srbenka can be seen in November at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence (Italy) and in Spain at Zinebi, Bilbao’s International Festival of Documentary and Short Films.
Sources: Le courrier des Balkans, Cineuropa
