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Sarajevo and kyiv, two cities united by war and cinema

2022-08-18T04:13:03.835Z


The festival in the Bosnian capital, created during the Balkan conflict, supports Ukrainian filmmakers and exemplifies how a cultural act can resurrect the soul of a city


Sarajevo was the last European capital to suffer a siege in the 20th century.

kyiv has been the first European capital to be attacked in a war in the 21st century.

"The first days of the Russian invasion, when they bombed kyiv, here many of us remember our experiences in the nineties, we cry thinking about a possible Sarajevo 2", says Edin Forto, the prime minister of the canton of Sarajevo, the most important of the 10 that make up the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Beside him, in a chat with EL PAÍS, the director of the Sarajevo festival, Jovan Marjanović, agrees: “This event was born in 1995, when the city was still under siege, and since the Russian offensive began, we understood that we had to help to its filmmakers, screening their works, creating a residency program for their creators... In short,

opening our sections to Ukraine.

We cannot live only on gestures, we must carry out actions”.

That emotional line that unites the two cities, which the Bosnians underline as soon as they are asked, runs through the programming of their film competition, which is celebrating its 28th edition these days, becoming the most important film event in South-East Europe, and whose organizers define as the "engine of the reconstruction of the soul" of this city, and "possible example" of future festivals in kyiv.

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What is a film festival for?

The Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Serguei Loznitsa, the most important filmmaker in his country, was referring to this painful connection when he received the honorary Heart at the opening gala last Friday, a tribute that was completed with a retrospective of his work: “Ukrainians feel your brothers, and more at this time.

Thank you for not forgetting us."

Two days later, in a morning master class, he pointed out: “I bet on using all possible tools to move the public.

I am not a purist documentary filmmaker, dramaturgy is essential for me in documentaries.

Cinema serves to influence people.

A couple of hours later, his film

From him Donbass was shown

(2018) at the Punto de Encuentro cinema, a modern 191-seat theater with two entrances, one direct through a gray side alley and the other through the bustling cafe on the main façade.

That Sunday there was half an entry, with spectators such as the married couple Tarik Gordić and Milica Džebo, both in their mid-fifties.

“We didn't know each other, but we both lived here during the almost four years of the siege.

As soon as I saw the Russian attack on television, I burst into tears,” says Džebo.

Three other university students, Matea Domuzin, Dragana Džombeta and Bojan Varda, were born after that war.

“We had already seen

Donbass.

However, it seemed important to us to come here to support an author like Loznitsa”, says Varda in crystal clear English.

If Marjanović (Sarajevo, 42 years old) -who is making his debut as director of the festival, although he has been part of the organizing team for 19 years- likes to underline something, it is that the festival, which has a budget of three million euros, is designed for the public, which goes beyond the residents of a city with 280,000 inhabitants, almost 400,000 if its urban area is added.

“We have a lot of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians, obviously, but also Romanians and Turks who come just to watch movies,” he says.

"This edition is the first at full capacity after the pandemic, and we hope to close with 100,000 people attending the screenings."

The contest has paid for the stay of EL PAÍS.

Sarajevo Film Festival director Jovan Marjanovic presents filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa (right) with one of the festival's honorary awards. Sarajevo Film Festival

And then there is the industry.

These days 1,200 accredited meet at CineLink, its industrial section.

“We are not only the most important cultural festival in Bosnia, but we have created the meeting point for the film industry in this part of Europe, and this year we have also attracted visitors from Western Europe,” Marjanović stresses.

Among the many round tables that were held the first weekend, there was one focused on armed conflicts:

Can cinema contribute to promoting peace?

Interestingly, CineLink holds its meetings at the Europe hotel, the most traditional and bombastic hotel in the city, two blocks from the most hackneyed corner of the 20th century, the one where, in front of the Latin bridge over the Miljacka river, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot dead in June 1914 by a Yugoslav independence fighter, starting the First World War and the earthquake that ended the monarchical superpowers that had dominated Europe for centuries.

In that accommodation he developed the film

Hotel Europa

(2016), which x-rayed the emotional situation of his country, the filmmaker Danis Tanović, the only Bosnian to win an Oscar thanks to

No Man's Land.

"I don't think that the current situation in kyiv and the siege we suffered in Sarajevo for 1,425 days are comparable," Tanović told EL PAÍS.

“Yes, it seems to me that both cities are capitals of countries that fight against invasions.

I do believe that a film festival like this serves to rebuild the soul of a city, to inspire the longing for better times and to calm a fundamental part, the cultural hunger, of the human being.

And I hope that next year Ukraine will have defeated Russia and I will be able to attend the film competition in Mariupol”.

Opening, last Friday, of the Sarajevo Film Festival. Sarajevo Film Festival

In that city that in summer bursts with life in the terraces and bars, in which the increase in tourism from the Persian Gulf (countries that have also invested in the reconstruction of Bosnia) is palpable and in which there are hardly any traces of holes of bullets on the facades of the buildings in the historic center —on the other hand, the road to the airport serves to confirm that there is still much to be restored, “especially in the suburbs”, as Prime Minister Forto confirms—, at sunset thousands of their neighbors go to some of the four open-air rooms that the festival sets up.

The largest, with capacity for 3,000 people, the one named Coca-Cola (one of the sponsors that invests the most in the event), is hidden near the National Theater, the main venue of the event.

In an immense block courtyard, where each side contrasts with the diversity of its architecture (a boring Soviet-style block, several nondescript apartment buildings and a crumbling building from the Austro-Hungarian era), two surprises are hidden.

The first is those 3,000 plastic chairs, half of which go up a step.

The second, that the screen is supported by two almost dilapidated houses whose owners maintain small gardens.

That type of real estate appears in every nook and cranny of Sarajevo.

"Their owners refuse to sell, probably because they are the houses in which they were born, and they are like islands between blocks of Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman architecture," they point out from the festival.

In that venue, an exultant Ruben Östlund presented the opening film on Friday,

The triangle of sadness,

the last Cannes Palme d'Or, and received another of the honorary Hearts.

A quarter of an hour later, he repeated the presentation in the Stari Grad room, also open to the sky but much smaller, on the other side of the river from one of the city's icons, the City Hall and National Library, which was razed to the ground in August of 1992, and that now shines again, imposing, with the luster of its Spanish Moorish style.

Mads Mikkelsen, on the red carpet of the National Theater, before receiving an honorary award at the Sarajevo film festival on Sunday 14. FEHIM DEMIR (EFE)

“It is important that you understand that if Sarajenses are passionate about something, it is cinema,” says the prime minister of the canton and leader of the social-liberal group Our Party.

During the war, Forto (Sarajevo, 50 years old) worked as a journalist, and he perfectly remembers the beginning of the festival in October 1995: “The cans of the 37 films came through the Tunnel of Hope [800 meters to five meters underground that connected the airport with the neighborhood of Dobrinja, and that served to introduce provisions into the city and evacuate wounded during the siege].

Tickets were paid for with money or cigarettes, and there were 15,000 spectators.

Wim Wenders sent

So Far, So Close!

But above all, I remember the queue of people waiting to see

Three Colors: blue,

by Krzysztof Kieslowski, which was shown in French without subtitles in a basement.

Before the projection a bombardment started, and nobody moved in the street.

No one.

There was a longing for culture, for normality.

And all for a movie that we were not going to understand!”

Daytime view of the large outdoor room in Sarajevo. DADO RUVIC (REUTERS)

Almost three decades later, the contest screens 51 films in its four competition sections, 20 of them world premieres.

In addition, there are other sections, such as the aforementioned tribute to Loznitsa or Kinoscope, a world panorama that includes three Spanish films:

Pacifiction,

by Albert Serra;

Unicorn Wars,

by Alberto Vázquez, and the brand new Golden Bear

Alcarràs,

by Carla Simón, which on Saturday at three in the afternoon almost filled the room of the Punto de Encuentro cinema ("And that at the same time a film was being shown Bosnia in the official section”, says Marjanović).

Renowned filmmakers like Loznitsa, the Americans Paul Schrader and Jesse Eisenberg —the actor is presenting his first film as a director—, the Swedish Östlund, the English Michael Winterbottom, the Israeli Ari Folman and the actor Danish Mads Mikkelsen, who now collects the 2020 Sarajevo Heart of Honor, an edition frustrated by covid.

And of course, another local figure, Jasmila Žbanić, who was nominated for an Oscar last year with

Quo Vadis, Aida?

Last Thursday, at a screening in the Coca-Cola room, as a prologue to the event, Žbanić presented a preview of his new film, a documentary about the industrialist, promoter of the Sarajevo Olympic Games and mayor of the city, Emerik Blum ( 1911-1984).

He did so to ask for the public's cooperation in his search for Blum's photographic material and anecdotes.

As a sign of the good knowledge of the passion of his neighbors, Žbanić told them: “You love cinema, help me”.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-08-18

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