FOCUS:

All the stops were pulled out by Mirsad Purivatra for the 10th anniversary of the Sarajevo Film Festival (20-28 August 2004). Some 600 guests were invited. Over 200 films were programmed in a dozen sections: Regional Competition (recognized by FIAPF), Regional Documentaries, New Currents, New Currents Shorts, Panorama, Panorama Documentaries, Tributes to Dusan Makavejev and Gaspar Noé, Open Air Galas (double-pack), Children’s Program, TeenArena (Youth Audience), Special Programs, and CineLink to promote projects by regional filmmakers to find coproduction partners. Audience attendance soared to well over 100,000 enthusiastic moviegoers. The International Jury for the Regional Program numbered Mike Leigh (UK director, jury president), Larry Kardish (MoMA film programmer), Peter Scarlet (Tribeca Film Festival director), Diana Dumbrava (Romanian actress), and Pjer Zalica (Bosnia-Hercegovina director), whose Fuse had been awarded Best Regional Film in 2003,

The festival opened with Pjer Zalica’s out-of-competition Days and Hours (aka At Uncle Idriza’s Place), fresh from the Kodak lab in Budapest. This quiet, unassuming tale of a nephew visiting his aged aunt and uncle, who had lost their son in the war and are pained by the decision of the daughter-in-law to start life anew with someone else, takes the pulse of a scarred country still trying to come to grips with the past. For the home audience in particular it offered some finely sketched, tender, warming, diverting moments to place everything in proper focus. Pjer Zalica ­ together with Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land), Ahmed Imanovic (10 Minutes), Srdjan Vuletic (Summer in the Golden Valley), and Ademir Kenovic (The Perfect Circle), who produced Days and Hours ­ are the hopes of BH cinema. (See KINO 81 with special section on Bosnia-Hercegovina cinema.)

The Regional Program ­ nine films from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, and Slovenia selected by Elma Tataragic ­ was impressive indeed. Among the best was Gjergj Xhuvani’s Dear Enemy (Albania/France/Germany), a stunning antiwar parable set in September 1943, when the Italian army was on the run from Albania, the Germans arriving from Greece, and the Partisans about to take over the town of Elbasan in Central Albania from the Royal Guard. Based on real events experienced by Xhuvani’s own family, Dear Enemy chronicles the efforts of a good-hearted grocer to hide in his house a partisan nephew, an injured Italian soldier, a Jewish clock-repairman, and finally even a Royal Guard sympathizer. Gjergj Xhuvani, whose Slogans (2001) was a critical hit in the Directors Fortnight section at Cannes, is a talented filmmaker to watch.

Zornitsa Sophia’s Mila from Mars (Bulgaria) was awarded Best Regional Film. The compassionate story of a mixed-up teenager who runs away from a drug dealer to hide among oldtimers in an isolated village on the border, the jury also decided to grant a Special Award to the group of actors playing the elderly villagers in the film. The Special Jury Prize went to Arsen Anton Ostojic’s A Wonderful Night in Split (Croatia), an interlocking black-and-white tale of three fatal stories that take place on a New Year’s Eve between 10 pm and midnight.

Ron Holloway