Sarajevo 2022

Olha Tsybulska’s debut documentary couldn't be more poignant, comprising a collective portrait of Ukrainians at war. In the film, the director engages in conversation with friends and family, with each interviewee (and the director herself) seeking ways to navigate the new reality of life during wartime. On the eve of Sarajevo 2022 Tsybulska discussed the work with Business Doc Europe.

Slovak filmmaker Diana Fabiánová’s latest feature doc project ventures into the taboo area of infidelity within a marriage, albeit consensual and designed to shore up the union rather than dismantle it. The film is described as “an intimate probe into society, partnerships, their dark places, and our innermost selves.” The director explains to Business Doc Europe the background to the documentary.

Migrant workers from North Macedonia may have profited greatly from their recruitment by the US to work in military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades. But building vast palaces and driving high-end cars will never erase the trauma of war that they still suffer from. Director Anabela Angelovska, German by birth but the daughter of a North Macedonian father, explains her film, selected for Documentary Competition, to BDE.

The Italian-based but Sarajevo-born Srdan Perkic can’t hide his pride that, at this relatively advanced stage of his life, he has finally made a movie. In his 50s, Perkic has belatedly completed his debut feature film, the documentary Lights Of Sarajevo, which is a world premiere in the Sarajevo Festival Documentary Competition this week. The late debutant talks to Business Doc Europe.

Young Ukrainian filmmaker Marta Smerechynska, whose new feature doc is selected for Sarajevo Doc Competition, is the daughter of a priest and the sister of a nun. “From early childhood, I was observing nuns. This phenomenon was very interesting and strange for me. I question myself a lot why they were choosing this way [of life],” she tells Business Doc Europe. “As a child, I even had a fear that maybe it is my vocation too.”

A compassionate yet deeply harrowing delve into the important work done by the Croatian empowerment programme ‘I Am Much More Than My Trauma’ which helps women who were raped and traumatised during the Croatian War of Independence. Vedrana Pribacic’s film focusses on a handful of women taking part throughout the programme’s two-year duration.

In October 2013, Anikó and Laci, a poor, middle-aged Hungarian couple struck it rich on the lottery. Their story is told in Mátyás Kálmán’s new film, Paying A Visit To Fortuna (screening in Sarajevo’s Documentary Competition). As the director tells BDE, he was welcomed into their lives as, unlike almost everyone else they met, he didn’t want a hand-out and nor did he wish offer advice on how they should use their new-found wealth.

The fest presents 22 films in Doc Competition (eight world, three international premieres) and myriad doc projects across the professional CineLink programme. “Our program celebrates the richness of documentary forms: from the exciting cinéma-vérité styles where the camera is a ‘fly on the wall’ to the poetic, intimate diary documentaries and complex narratives that celebrate the creative use of archival footage,” says Sarajevo’s doc programmer Rada Šešić.

The annual presentation of docs-in-post from Central and Eastern Europe will take place August 15 during Sarajevo FF. This year nine docs covering a range of geographically diverse topics are up for grabs. “It is surprising that a region often associated primarily with rural films from poor regions can geographically encompass literally the entire world: from Tokyo and Iran to Europe, New York and Salvador,” says Ji.hlava director Marek Hovorka.

CineLink Talks, the conference arm of CineLink Industry Days (Sarajevo FF), offers a rich programme of masterclasses, debates and seminars, open for all festival and industry guests. Five panels organized in partnership with Documentary Campus will touch upon distribution challenges, new funding strategies for social impact films, middle players in film industry and the responsibility of documentary filmmakers in fake-news era. For all doc-related panels, read on.