Dialogue on the recent past of the region

The Sarajevo Film Festival presents the online program "Facing the Past" to the audience in the entire region. As part of the program, nine feature-length films and one short film will be shown, and talks with the authors of the films and panel discussions have also been announced. The program is completely free, and takes place from April 24 to 30.

The "Facing the Past" program was launched in 2016 with the aim of starting an honest dialogue about the recent past of the region, which, the organizers explain, is a prerequisite for overcoming the problems from the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, which have irreversibly marked our societies.

The entire program will be available to the audience from Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia and Slovenia on the online platform ondemand.kinomeetingpoint.ba, and the audience in Sarajevo will have the opportunity to watch the films in the Meeting Point Cinema, with free admission to all projections.

The program consists of nine feature films and one short film. Among them is “Quo Vadis, Aida?” Jasmile Žbanić, candidate of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Oscar award, in the category of the best international feature film. The number of movie codes is limited.

Also on the program is "Dnevnik Dijana Budisavljević", a documentary-feature film by Dana Budisavljević about a woman who saved the lives of more than 10.000 children imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, then "Srbenka" by Nebojsa Slijepčević, winner of the Heart of Sarajevo for the best documentary film and Awards audience in 2018. In the winter of 1991, a girl of Serbian nationality, Aleksandra Zec, was killed in Zagreb, and 25 years later, director Oliver Frljić staged a play about that case in Rijeka. "Cargo" by Ognjen Glavonić will also be shown, which tells the story of a man from Pancevo who receives money to transport a truck with a mysterious cargo from Kosovo to Belgrade during the bombing of Serbia; and "Chris the Swiss" by Anja Kofmel, which leads viewers on a painful search for the truth, then the feature film "Men Don't Cry" by Alen Drljević, which follows 10 men gathered in a mountain hotel in Bosnia 15 years after the war - a coach and nine participants workshops - former soldiers of the opposing sides that should help them face the past. The program also includes "The Colored Bird" by the Czech director Vaclav Marhoul, "Son of Saul" by Laszlo Nemes, a film that, among other things, won the Oscar for the best foreign film for its original and incredibly powerful depiction of the horror of the Holocaust, and "Yugoslavia, how ideology moved our collective body" by Marta Popivoda from 2013, which deals with the performance of ideology in public space through mass performances. The only short film in the program is "Jama" by Alban Ukaj, which follows the filming of a short film about a war crime in Sarajevo.