At this year’s 28th Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), more than 200 films will be shown, among them works dealing with war themes, dealing with the past, testimonies of survivors, trauma victims of crimes and sexual violence from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, countries from the former Yugoslavia and others.
The leading film festival in the region is showing the film “What’s This Country Called Now?” directed by Joseph Pierson as part of the “Dealing with the Past” program. The film is based on the experience of Aida Cerkez, a Bosnian woman who worked as a journalist during the siege of Sarajevo and in 1994 came up with the idea of trying to find one of the witnesses to the Sarajevo assassination on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of that event.
”She found Ismet, who is 90 years old and was ten years old at the time of the assassination. Ismet was a witness to the shooting that was the reason for the start of the First World War and continued to live in Sarajevo during the tumultuous years that followed. Aida interviews Ismet and shares with him her own view of life in war,” it is stated in the contents of the film.
Croatian director Vedrana Pribacic’s film “Bigger Than Trauma” will have its European premiere at this year’s SFF. This 90-minute documentary tells the story of women who survived torture, rape, and the murder of their loved ones, and who are still traumatized 25 years after the war in Croatia.
The focus was also on the Ukrainian film “Butterfly Vision”, which talks about the trauma of war. Director Maksym Nakonechnyi presents a film about a prisoner in Donbas who, after returning home, continues to be tormented by the traumatic experience of captivity.
The Dutch film “In Flow of Words” follows the story of three translators of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), who translate the shocking testimonies of eyewitnesses, victims, and perpetrators of crimes, never allowing their own emotions, feelings and life experiences to influence them. The film was shot in 2021 and directed by Eliane Esther Bots.
The documentary film “Retreat” talks about the traumatic memories of war and distant conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
”Over the past twenty years, thousands of young Macedonian men and women have been recruited to work in kitchens and laundries in American military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. After American troops withdrew from those countries last summer, they returned to their homeland, brought with them the quickly earned money, and soon invested it in real estate. But they also brought traumatic memories that marked them permanently,” it says in the description of the film directed by Anabela Angelovska, Detektor writes.
E.Dz.
