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Georgi Djulgerov’s Leidi Zi (Lady Zee) (Bulgaria) (2005) — Best Regional Feature Film

One of the distinguished veterans of Bulgarian cinema, Georgi Djulgerov had to fight with bureaucrats to get his major feature films released during the arduous years of socialist cinema. The international breakthrough came when the 35-year-old director, who had graduated from the Moscow Film School (VGIK), presented his Advantage (1977) at the 1978 Berlinale — and was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Direction. The story of a former jailbird who has to lean upon his exceptional charismatic qualities to make headway in socialist society, while at the same time fighting the demons within himself that put him in prison in the first place, Advantage then toured the international festivals and was awarded the Grand Prix at the Avelino Festival of Neorealist Films in Italy. When one considers that neorealism was anathema to the principles of socialist realism, the impact Advantage made at home and abroad was indeed considerable.

Four years later, Georgi Djulgerov directed Measure for Measure (1981), an exceptional Bulgarian epic in three parts that was released on the occasion of the 1300th anniversary of the Bulgarian state. Once again, he had to contend with the displeasure of bureaucrats in the cultural ministry, for Measure for Measure offered its public an honest historical interpretation of the revolt against Turkish rule at the end of the 19th century. »What interests me most of all is the testimony of the human spirit in different ages,« said Georgi Djulgerov in an interview. »I consider the issue of man and history to be the most important element in my work. Not history as a string of mundane events, but rather as the spirit of the times. In this sense the present could also be history.« Years later, Advantage and Measure for Measure were rated among the 10 best Bulgarian films of all times.

As a member of the European Film Academy, and from his position as teacher and mentor at the Sofia Film & Theatre Academy, Georgi Djulgerov has directed some award-winning documentaries as well. Among these are Of Neshka Robeva and Her Girls (1985), a personal study of the Bulgarian School of Rhythmic Gymnastics, considered in many cultural and athletic circles as a phenomenon. The film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Palermo Film Festival. Recently, he fashioned a case study of prostitution in You’re So Pretty, My Dear (2004), a documentary about four jailed prostitutes. Blending fiction with reality, he lets professional actresses tell the stories of the respective women in a poetic context of make-believe.

Now comes Lady Zee, a docu-drama about orphanages that was four years in the making. As it usual with Georgi Djulgerov, he first researched the background to provide him with a concept for a film featuring primarily nonprofessionals in roles akin to reality. »Most of the protagonists in the story have come out of institutions for children and have been abandoned by their parents« — said Djulgerov in a director’s statement. »Approximately 35,000 children are brought up in 300 such institutions.« The source for most of the narrative line in Lady Zee was supplied by a woman now in her twenties. Her role, in turn, is interpreted by 16-year-old Anelia Garbova — the »Lady Zee« (for Zlatina) in the film title — who herself had spent nearly all of her young life in a state orphanage. As depicted in the film, her exodus from the orphanage is abetted by her skill as a markswoman in gun-shooting contests. This leads her to odd jobs in a shooting gallery, thanks to another contest marksman (Ivan Barnev, the only professional actor in the film), followed by forced prostitution — until, helped by a faithful friend from the orphanage (Pavel Paskalev), whom she eventually marries, she is rescued from the brothel and can finally make her way into the world. As the resolute Lady Zee, Anelia Garbova gives a convincing performance — indeed, one quite remarkable for a nonprofessional.

Isa Qosja’s Kukumi (Kukum) (Kosovo) (2005) — Special Jury Prize

Its pictorial beauty and poetic elegance make Isa Qosja’s Kukum a strong contender for honors at the Sarajevo Film Festival. A Beckettian tale set in a rural district in Kosovo immediately after the Serb conflict ended in 1999, when NATO tanks suddenly appeared upon the scene, Kukum begins and ends in a mental asylum. Hearing the news on the radio that the war has ended, the guards and personnel in the asylum hitail it out of the place as soon as they can. Bewildered, the inmates reluctantly venture outside the premises to experience a flush of freedom for the first time. We follow three of them — Kukum (Luan Jaha), Mara (Anisa Ismaili), Hasan (Donat Qosja) — along their painful journey to nowhere that ends with a senseless killing.

Dig below the surface of this absurdist tale (to call it a »tragicomedy« would be a bit too much), and you find a metaphor on the very meaning of freedom. Indeed, in the veteran director’s statement, Isa Qosja appears to even question the value of freedom as a social concept and political reality. »When NATO intervened in Kosovo after the war was over, Kosovo became free. Everyone was thinking that freedom makes it possible for us to do everything we want, to go to any place that comes to mind — in other words, being free. I thought people who had suffered violence and abuse by the machinery of a notorious regime would have more understanding for every human being, for every situation. What really happened? Instead, they became cruel, losing their sympathy, dehumanizing themselves, and manifesting freedom by denying it to others — a strange kind of freedom!«

This said, it is rather easy to follow Isa Qosja’s zigzag narrative line that is rooted more in space and landscape than in the spoken narrative. Kukum, the persona in the title, is a haggard outsider who plays the flute and recites off-camera some lines about his life and vision. »When I was born, my mother said that I cried without stopping for three days and kept the village awake. An enchantress came to pronounce a spell on me. I have never cried again.« Those words explain, more or less, why Kukum, otherwise a sensitive man and a gifted flute-player, had been committed to the asylum in the first place. The villagers are simply afraid of him — and all the other »nuts« in the place. When the trio leave the asylum, to confront a parade of villagers shouting »Kosovo is free,« they are immediately stoned out of this august company.

The same thing happens to Hasan, a carefree lamebrain type, when he returns to his family abode to discover that both his mother and father were killed in the war. His brother’s wife, with three youngsters on her neck, don’t want him in the house at all. »What will the neighbors say,« she says. Later, when the brother shows his true colors by taking a fancy to the mute Mara, he is beaten to a pulp by Kukum’s flute. As for Hasan, a born mechanic, he is ridiculed and tormented by village youths, who wilfully demolish his makeshift bicycle transport. The final twist in the story comes when the peacekeepers in a NATO tank open fire on Kukum just as he is reaching for his cloak to play the flute for them. So much for peace in Kosovo.

Isa Qosja, born in Vuthaj, Montenegro, studied cinema at Pristina in Kosovo, worked for Belgrade television, and is best known for his shorts and documentaries: Status Quo (1980), Stafeta (1980), TV Interview (1983), Proka (1985), among others. Kukum, his first feature, is sure to make the rounds of international festivals as a milestone in Kosovo cinema. It credits alone — striking widescreen camerawork (Menduh Nushi), haunting moody musical score (Naim Krasniqi), poetic scenario that leans on image rather than word (Mehmet Kraja), tight editing to maintain a smooth-flowing rhythm (Agron Vula) — assure that Pristina in the future can be equated with quality Balkan film production.

Hrvoje Hribar’s Sto je muskarac bez brkova? (What Is a Man Without a Moustache?) (Croatia) (2005) — Best Actress: Zrinka Cvitesic

The title itself is a giveaway. Hrvoje Hribar’s Sto je muskarac bez brkova? (What Is a Man Without a Moustache?) is light comedy fare produced by Hribar’s own FIZ company in coproduction with Croatian Television (HTV). As television fare, it makes for easy viewing consumption. As a festival film, it could have a run at select showcases in view of its theme and content. For this is another one of those cassock-chasing romances between a young widow and a reluctant priest haunted by an alcoholic past and his concupiscence. As for what the title refers to, that’s any one’s guess — save that the macho in the film is a general with a moustache, who also happens to be the priest’s brother. His unquenchable yen for the fair sex leads him to the open arms of the widow as well. That intertwined episode is just one of the tales in this comedy on sex and mores in provincial Croatia.

The story opens with a worker’s accident on a construction site that leaves behind a young widow aching for a solution. Since she now has money from her husband’s accident insurance to spend, she considers rebuilding the tower of the impoverished parish church. Why? Because once she has set eyes on the handsome virile priest, she falls head over heels in love and sets about finding ways to seduce him — first of all, via the confessional, of course. Meanwhile, in a parallel tale a widower returns back to Croatia from Germany together with his teenaged daughter. Since he has just sold his carwash business, he too has an eye on the young widow. As for his teenaged daughter, she wants to head back to Germany at the first opportunity — that is, until she meets a muscular nature-lover into rose-gardens. Throw in a visiting bishop and an army corps on maneuvers, and you have the curves in the plot to add a bit more color.

»I focused on a group of recognizable characters whom everybody knows,« said Hrvoje Hribar in an interview. »I portrayed the life in that small community as a universal Mediterranean community, rather than a specific one.« The fun part is when the priest tries vainly to fight off the attentions of the widow. With a brand new red car at her disposal, she is ready and willing to whisk him out to some paradise of her own. Nothing doing, says the bishop. He immediately reassigns the priest to Africa! As for the film’s acting ensemble, Hribar has cast them with an eye for »character and presence.« Zrinka Cvitesic as the aching, determined widow is a standout in this romantic comedy, a wildcat who won’t take no for an answer until she gets the baby she wants.

Born 1962 in Zagreb, Hrvoje Hribar studied film direction at the Zagreb Academy of Film and Drama. He authored a radio-drama and the television serial Novo Doba (2002). Among his shorts and documentaries are the following: Prestanite jesti (Stop Eating) (1988), Hrvatske katedrale (Croatian Cathedrals) (1992), Svijet je velik (Big World) (1999), and Bil jedon (One Man) (2001). His first feature film was Puska za uspavljivanje (Tranquilizing Gun) (1997). His second feature, What Is a Man Without a Moustache?, confirms him as a craftsman of the rambling, over-the-top comedy genre — ripe entertainment fare for the average audience.

Damjan Kozole’s Delo Osvobaja (Labour Equals Freedom) (Slovenia) (2005) — Best Actor: Peter Musevski

»The film tells us about the fears that are inside of us,« says Damjan Kozole about his tragicomedy Delo Osvobaja (Labour Equals Freedom). »The fear of losing financial security, the fear of losing our loved ones.« Peter (Peter Musevski), in his early forties, has just lost his job as a machine operator in a factory. Slovenia’s entrance into the European Union has made his job redundant — which, by the way, explains why in the last national election, there has been a swing to the right. Unable to adjust to the situation, and ashamed to apply for retraining as a cook or waiter, »Pero« sits at home all day or in a bar smoking and drinking. In the meanwhile, his wife Vera (Natasa Barbara Gracner), a civil servant employee, has had just about enough, wants a divorce, and admits to an affair and pregnancy with a colleague. The only unresolved issues are the young daughter and who will get the apartment. Peter loses on the first, but wins on the second.

Although the film’s title could be misunderstood as the equivalent of »Arbeit macht frei« in German, this just seems to be a coincidence or maybe a bit of irony thrown in to point the direction of the story. Along the way, there are also a couple inside jokes aimed at the Slovenian audience. One is Peter’s adept imitation of Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija. Another is the inept double-take given at the local job agency where Peter stops by to ask if there might be an opening. »Fifty more machinists were just laid off,« says the lady over her sandwich, then breaks down in tears because her husband has just left her for another woman.

Damjan Kozole, born 1964 in Brezice, Slovenia, is one of several talented young Slovenian directors who have scored critical hits at international film festivals. His The Fatal Telephone (1987), made at 22, was one of the first independent films made in ex-Yugoslavia. His Porno Film (2000), a comedy, depicted the fumbling efforts of two greenhorn filmmakers to cash in on the lucrative porn-video market, only to crack heads with the local mafia. The breakthrough came with Spare Parts (2003), invited to compete at the Berlinale and awarded a Special Jury Prize at Sarajevo. In Spare Parts the same Peter Musevski of Labour Equals Freedom plays a hardened type who transports illegal asylum-seekers over the border from Slovenia to Italy, cost what it may in the name of humanity. Recently, Damjan Kozole collaborated with 24 European filmmakers on the Visions of Europe (2004) compilation film.

Over the past few years, young Slovenian filmmakers has played an important role in sparking a national film revival, supported by Jelka Stergel at the Ljubljana International Film Festival and Vladimir »Vlado« Skafar at the Slovenian Film Archive. Indeed, directors like Jan Cvitkovic (Bread and Milk), Hana A.W. Slak (Blind Spot), Maya Weiss (Guardian of the Frontier), Janez Burger (Idle Running), Damjan Kozole (Spare Parts), Igor Sterk (Express, Express), Andrej Kosak (The Outsider), Saso Podgorsek (Sweet Dreams), Metod Pevec (Carmen), Janez Lapajne (Rustling Landscapes), Vojko Anzeljc (The Last Supper), Martin Srebotnjak (Ode to the Poet), and Vinko Möderndorfer (Suburbs) have been the talk of several European film festivals.

Benjamin Filipovic’s Dobro ustimani mrtvaci (Well Tempered Corpses) (Bosnia & Hercegovina/Slovenia/France/Italy) (2005)

Born 1962 in Sarajevo, Benjamin Filipovic graduated in Direction at the Prague Film School (FAMU). His graduation film Plus, Minus — One (1985) won the Belgrade Golden Medal for Best Short Feature and the Special Jury Prize at the Students’ Film Festival in München. It was followed by the short Mirna, Longing for Buenos Aires (1991), a perceptive commentary on the mores of the times. His debut feature film, Holiday in Sarajevo (1991), released on the eve of the wars in former Yugoslavia, was a box-office success across the country. At the same time, at TV Sarajevo, Filipovic directed the famous Top lista nadrealista, a popular TV series. During the war he made Mizaldo-Kraj Teatra (1993/94). His short A Good Idea (1997) was awarded the Grand Prix Europa in at the Barcelona festival. A filmmaker who wears many hats, Benjamin Filipovic is President of the Association of BH Filmmakers, a member of the European Film Academy (EFA), and lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo.

Three years in the making, Benjamin Filipovic’s Dobro ustimani mrtvaci (Well Tempered Corpses) (Bosnia & Hercegovina) was honored with a world premiere screening on the opening night of the Sarajevo Film Festival. A black comedy about life and death, as viewed through the eyes of a pair of oddball employees at the city morgue, it opens and closes with a rerun of the same scene — a friendly bet as to how many corpses will arrive that day before the 1 o’clock pm deadline. As it happens, four »well tempered corpses« do arrive, each with a wacky tale of his and her own destiny that dovetails with one another as the narrative unfolds. To add more spice to the tales, some of the principals talk directly into the camera to explain why death is not such a bad solution to the fatal foibles of life after all. For social and political conditions in the BH capital are anything but normal in the first place.

The setting is Sarajevo today, ten years after the Dayton Peace Accord has ended the war. In the first episode, a doctor wants to kill his wife, a government finance minister who brings her bossy ways into the household to torment husband and daughter. In the second, a would-be entrepreneur petitions the same woman minister of the first tale to privatize a section of railroad running into the city, so that he can transport villagers on a makeshift locomotive train captained by his daughter. In the third, the gay lover of the male secretary to that woman minister has had enough of the city and day-to-day bashing in a computer company, so he decides to jump off a rooftop. In the fourth, a crazy inventor dreams of constructing a diesel-powered flying-machine that will eventually bring him across the Atlantic on a flight to see his daughter, who had left Sarajevo ten years ago. On this very day, the nutty pilot takes off on his maiden flight - only to crash headlong onto a busy street. Thus, in one fell swoop, there are three of the four well tempered corpses.

As for the one corpse that refuses to go under, this belongs to the intrepid Ruzdija Kucuk (Lazar Ristovski), who every day gets hit with a blackout heart attack, due mostly to losing his temper, then recovers after a while to continue his screwball ways. On this particular occasion, he’s one of the four corpses brought to the city morgue. Perhaps Benjamin Filipovic should have scratched the other three stories altogether. For Lazar Ristovski, a Peter-Sellars-like comic talent, is in top form.

Kornel Mundruczo’s Johanna (Hungary) (2005)

Kornel Mundruczo’s Johanna (Hungary/France/Germany) picks up where the Hungarian cult director’s previous short film, Joan of Arc on the Night Bus (2003), left off. In that episode of an omnibus film titled A Bus Came... Mundruczo fashioned a rescue drill for a bloody traffic accident into an oratorio in which Joan (Orsi Toth), together with victims and rescue crew, break into operatic arias. In Johanna the arias (scored by Zsofia Taller) continue with same Joan of Arc/Orsi Toth arriving at the hospital in a coma and a pool of blood. The emergency ward is lensed in funeral greens, the surgical operations are smeared in scarlet red colors, and the atmosphere is as cold as death. Given that the film’s producer is Bela Tarr, a director with a flair for the depressing, dark side of life (Satan’s Tango), one should expect anything much in the way of visual relief.

As the arias continued, we discover that Johanna is a drug addict. Upon rising from her coma, she proclaims to the astonished doctors that she has been miraculously cured. Deciding on the spot to dedicate her life as a nurse, she then discovers she can dispense her miraculous powers to terminally ill patients by lying down next to them in bed. All goes well for a while, until a doctor with an ache to share her bed too is rebuffed by the beautiful Johanna. She is medically disposed of, her body stuffed into a bag, and the corpse is thrown upon a garbage dump to be incinerated. Of course, the arias in Johanna recall to some degree Honneger’s Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake), which alone assures a sophisticated audience for Mundruczo’s experimental film-opera. One should add, however, that the text for Honneger’s mystical oratorio was penned by the poet Paul Claudel, while the libretto for Johanna by Janos Terey and Balint Harcos pales by comparison.

Born 1975 in Budapest, Kornel Mundruczo graduated from the Budapest Film and Drama Academy in 1998. After a handful of shorts and documentaries, he directed This I Wish and Nothing More (2000), a short feature in an experimental vein, followed by the equally impressive Afta (Day by Day) (2001), a short film that caught the drudging atmosphere of small-town life in its depiction of a boy’s exploits on a blazing hot day. The breakthrough on the international scene came when his debut feature, Szep Napok (Pleasant Days). Shot on a shoestring budget, it was awarded the Special Jury Prize and Gene Moskowitz Prize at the Budapest Week of Hungarian Films, followed by Best Debut Award at the Locarno festival. In Pleasant Days Mundruczo takes a grim look at small town mores in this exacting tale about a 17-year-old girl bearing a child in a laundromat and then selling it to a barren mother in a prearranged deal. The film impresses with its frank realism, upfront sexuality, and black humor.

Hungarian cinema, after a period of stagnation due to the policies of a conservative government, is now back on course again — following the election of a progressive government and the passing of a new film law. For the most part, young filmmakers are leading the way. After the international success in 2002 of György Palfi’s Hukkle (Hiccups), a riotous whodunnit about the mysterious deaths of the male population in a isolated village, and Kornel Mundruczo’s Pleasant Days, another talented young filmmaker, Benedek Fliegauf, appeared on the scene at the 2003 Hungarian Film Week. Fliegauf’s Rengeteg (Forest) (2003), a composite of seven different stories, depicted the rather dark mores embraced by young people living in Budapest today. The coda to that film is his Dealer, in which Fliegauf’s camera follows a Budapest drug-dealer around Budapest as he makes his rounds in the course of a day.

Milos Radivojevic’s Budjenje iz mrtvih (Awakening from the Dead) (Serbia & Montenegro) (2004)

Sometimes a single scene can turn a good film into an outstanding one. It happens in Milos »Misa« Radivojevic’s Budjenje iz mrtvih (Awakening from the Dead), the entry from Serbia & Montenegro in the Regional Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival, when a son confronts his father in a 27-minute head-on, no-holds-barred dialogue about what went wrong in the so-called »Third Balkan War« that tore Yugoslavia apart. As the story goes, Miki (Svetozar Cvitkovic), a rather typical Belgrade intellectual — writer, professor, columnist, pacifist, drug-addicted, bitterly disappointed liberal — receives a phone call from his aged father Otac (Ljuba Tadic), who lives somewhere deep in a backwoods Serbian town. Although it was the conservative, nationalist, tyrannical Otac who had driven Miki’s beloved mother to despair and an early death, still the old man is now on his deathbed. As a kind of last testament, he has summoned his son to the old mansion, where the writer had grown up and left as soon as he could enroll at the university. It leads to a predictable showdown and a final accounting of both their shattered lives.

Running at two-hours-plus, Awakening from the Dead appears at first glance to be constructed entirely around a nonstop dream sequence. In the opening shot of this epochal political statement, in which the mesh of color and black/white images (camera Radoslav Vladic) strike an eery tone, we see Miki rising from his grave shortly after the burial ceremony to review the events that brought him there. The period is late March in 1999, when the bombing of Belgrade started to put an end to the ethnic carnage that was destroying innocent lives and a vibrant multi-ethnic culture. Leaving his wife and young son at home, Miki drives off on a journey into the past. He meets childhood friends, one of whom is a secret service officer who knows everything about what he writes and does. He renews acquaintance with an old flame, who sets him straight on the egoistic reasons that has kept him from facing the truth in his own life. And he meets a young widow, a muslim, who is caring for his father and has lost husband, parents, and brother in the war. Poorly paid and barely able to make ends meet to feed her infant sons, the lonely young woman is easy prey for the philandering pseudo-intellectual.

How the story ends is well worth the wait. All the acting performances are top notch, but particularly the great Shakespearean actor Ljuba Tadic as the recalcitrant father. Ditto for Svetozar Cvitkovic as Miki — the stage-and-screen veteran, who manages the prestigious Atelier 212 in Belgrade, is also the film’s producer. As for Misa Radivojevic (born 1939 in Cacak), his partly autobiographical Awakening from the Dead heralds his comeback to the screen after an absence of ten years. Cineastes (myself included) who had the good fortune to sit in that massive 2nd-century Vespasian arena at Pula during the heyday of the Festival of Yugoslav Feature Films may well remember Radivojevic’s controversial features that stunned arena audiences back then — classics of experimental cinema like Bube u glavi (Bats in the Belfry) (1972), Bez (Without) (1972), Testament (1975), Kvar (Breakdown) (1978), Snovi, zivot, smrt Filipa Filipovica (Dreams, Life and Death of Filip Filipovic) (1980), Una (Una, My Love) (1984), and Cavka (Blackbird) (1988), among others. When the troubles began in Yugoslavia, there was not much room left for the Radivojevic brand of caustic cinema. Today, in the new Serbia & Montenegro, things are a bit different — and the time has arrived for Serb filmmakers in the so-called »Belgrade Resistance Circle« to break some long-standing taboos and take a head-knocking account of the recent past. Welcome back, Misa!

Ruxandra Zenide’s Ryna (Romania/Switzerland) (2005)

Judging from the critical reaction last May during the showcase of Romanian Films at the Transilvanian International Film Festival in Cluj (Romania), Ruxandra Zenide’s Ryna, a Romanian-Swiss coproduction, is sure to enjoy a wave of festival bookings and possibly an arthouse release or two in select filmlands. Set on the Danube Delta, this sociocritical gas-station tale about a 16-year-old girl exploited by a drunken father and raped by the town mayor features a finely sketched performance by Dorotheea Petre in a unisex role that demands a measure of thespian subtlety to be credible at all. Ryna has been brought up as a boy because this is what her despotic father wanted at birth, apparently on the assumption that another working hand in the family would ease the pain of being economically disadvantaged in this isolated community. The young actress was deservedly awarded »best debut in a Romanian film« at the festival.

The intriguing element in Ryna is the broad spectrum of do-nothings and no-gooders that populate the film. Of course, the Danube Delta, where unemployment is high, must be full of people who just hang-around. And an abusive father who drowns himself in alcohol, instead of feeding his family, is common enough in post socialist cinema. But Ruxandra Zenide has also thrown in a pair of French pseudo-scientists, who are supposed to be researching the origins of the French nation in Romania (!), whereas they are more interested in girls and dance-halls than their work. Throw in a kniving, ogling mayor who can barely control his libido each time he sees Ryna in her overalls, and you have the reason why the mother just up and left the household one night without saying a word — leaving a note, however, that her daughter should join her as soon as he finds a job in Bucharest. Not even the dimwitted, love-smitten mailboy and the kindly, absent-minded grandfather can save the girl from a bargain struck by Ryna’s drunken father with the mayor to exchange his daughter’s virginity for a permit to get an extra pump at the gas station. In the end, at a police inquest, Ryna refuses to identify her assailant and simply packs her bag for a quick exit.

Ruxandra Zenide, born in 1975 in Bucharest, studied film direction at New York University, followed by courses at the HEI (Hautes Études Internationales) in Geneva, Switzerland (graduating in 1998). After assisting on various film productions, she enrolled in the one year program at the Prague Film School (FAMU). With Switzerland and Romania as her production base, she made a string of critically well received short films: Shoot Me (1999), The Hole (1999), The Waiting Room (2001), Dust (2002), and Green Oaks (2003).

Green Oaks, a 34-minute short fiction film, was invited to several international festivals. In this poignant sibling story set in an orphanage somewhere off the beaten path in Romania, George looks after his little sister Gabi. For all intents and purposes, the pair are alone in the world. Until a French couple comes along with the best of intentions: they want to adopt the boy but not with his sister thrown in as part of the deal. Without taking sides, Ruxandra Zenide deftly weighs adoption practices against social deprivation. To some extent, these same issues of poverty and hardship are explored with insight and firmness in Ryna. Despite its rather lopsided, black-and-white view of life and times in a backwater town on the delta, this is a remarkable feature film debut.

Ognjen Svilicic’s Oprosti za Kung Fu (Sorry for Kung Fu) (Croatia) (2004)

If the audience reaction to Ognjen Svilicic’s Oprosti za Kung Fu (Sorry for Kung Fu), the Croatian entry in the Regional Program at Sarajevo, is any index of public favor, then this comedy on social mores can be viewed as a front-runner for award consideration. For that matter, Sorry for Kung Fu is the latest in a string of award-winning satirical comedies — some absurd, others on the black side — that have heralded the revival of New Croatian Cinema. The breakthrough on the international scene began a decade ago, when Vinko Bresan’s black comedy How the War Started on My Island (1996) was awarded the Grand Prize at the 1997 Cottbus Festival of New Eastern European Cinema. A satirical statement on obstinate military views in an secluded Yugoslav army barracks on an isolated island in newly declared Croatian territory, How the War Started on My Island tweaked not only the nose of the Serb commander on the island, but it also spoofed the feeble attempts of Croatian authorities to resolve an escalating war game.

Vinko Bresan followed that Croatian box-office hit with Marsal (Marshal Tito's Spirit) (1999), awarded the prestigious Wolfgang Staudte Prize in the International Forum of New Cinema at the 2000 Berlinale. Conceived along the same lines as How the War Started on My Island, Marshal explores the possibility of the return of Tito, or Tito’s ghost, to a small island community in the Adriatic Sea, where »Veterans of the WW2 Liberation Army« are still keeping watch as guardians of partisan honor. The ghost turns out to be a senile escapee from an insane asylum, someone who has put on a uniform and proclaimed he’s Tito — but no matter: that’s enough to rouse the vigilante veterans to take over the island and install a military court to punish the greedy capitalists of the new order. As funny as this parody is, the fantasy of such an oddball uprising is not that far from reality, considering low pensions for old veterans and the demise of a once-proud Yugoslavia under a legendary partisan hero.

Now comes Ognjen Svilicic’s Sorry for Kung Fu. The war is over, and we are deep in provincial territory where Croatian mores and traditions mean just about everything. In a director’s statement Svilicic said bluntly: »Sorry for Kung Fu is a comedy about a rural and xenophobic Croatian family that encounters its worst nightmare.« The tables of convention are upset when Mirjana (Daria Lorenci) returns home pregnant from Germany after her refugee stay has ended. It’s bad enough that she has disgraced the family name in a country that still treats this kind of misdemeanor with a severe hand — even to the point of expulsion from family and community. But what she can’t bring herself to tell her parents is that the baby will have Asian features! This is when the comedy shifts into full gear. The frantic parents — Filip Rados and Vera Zima in offhanded deadpan performances — are aided in their scheme to find a fitting husband for Mirjana (now pegged as a fictitious widow) by their lamebrain cousin (Ivica Basic), who stops by every now and then with one idiot candidate after another. The best of the weird lot is a friendly hunk, whose job is to clear landmines laid by Serbs during the war. But even in her vale of tears Mirjana cannot be persuaded to bow to the will of her befuddled father.

Born 1971 in Split, Ognjen Svilicic first drew critical attention with his short film Full House (1997). Working principally in television, he went on to make two feature films: Wish I Were a Shark (2000) and Sorry for Kung Fu (2004), both comedies and both box-office hits in Croatia. Following in the footsteps of Vinko Bresan, his Sorry for Kung Fu was invited to the International Forum of Young Cinema at this year’s Berlinale. The resounding success in Berlin, and now with the Sarajevo audience, makes Ognjen Svilicic a name to watch on the Croatian film scene.

Milutin Petrovic’s Jug Jugoistok (South by Southeast) (Serbia & Montenegro) (2005)

Run Milutin Petrovic’s Jug Jugoistok (South By Southeast) backwards, and you get the point of this absurdist polit-thriller right away. We find ourselves at the end of the film in an insane asylum where most of the protagonists are talking about finding grants for new film projects. Even the title of the film, South by Southeast is a giveaway — the reference is, of course, to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. With that in mind, you await a rehash of the sequence with the airplane in the cornfield sequence — and sure enough, a prop-propeller flies over the roof where the heroine, Sonja Savic (the famous Serb actress in a namesake role), is hiding from her pursuers. But it’s not only Hitchcock on the burner. Petrovic tips his hat along the way to Vertov, Carné, Tarkovsky, Dorothy Lamour movies, a grabbag of his favorite films.

In a director’s statement Milutin Petrovic said: »The public of the sixties was exclusively introduced to the world of secret societies and conspiracies by authors like Hitchcock and Preminger. In the last half of the century we have become mutants of paranoia and suspicion.« And in regard to the theme of South by Southeast, he says that one of the so-called terms for this region is ’Southeast Europe.‘ But since I am a film buff, whenever I hear the word ’Southeast,‘ I think of Hitchcock and his ’Northwest‘ and even now I feel like Cary Grant in that cornfield.« As for the make-believe thriller’s reference to the present, he comments on the recent assassination of the Serb Prime Minister by a sniper on a rooftop. Sonja Savic, arriving in Belgrade from an exile in Slovenia, is fleeing from a sniper, claiming as well that her four-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Head of the Secret Service are introduced to complicate the case even more, as well as a long-lost brother who turns out to be the kidnapper, then things get so muddled that only the cineastic references are fun to follow.

This is the second »street film« in Milutin Petrovic’s filmmaking portfolio. Previously, his Land of Truth, Love and Freedom (2000) was shot on the streets of Belgrade right under the noses of Slobodan Milosovic’s secret police just a few weeks before the general election threw out the dictator. When that film premiered at the Mannheim-Heidelberg film festival, it was greeted with warm applause, critical praise, and a festival award. With good reason — for this no-budget debut feature film was made on a shoestring by an independent filmmaker (producer, director, editor, composer) and featured many of the production crew subbing as actors before the camera.

As for the title, it came from an early sound film shot in postwar Yugoslavia that’s a kind of Prince Valiant tale set in the Middle Ages. The original film starred a rising young actor by the name of Rade Markovic, who later became a matinee idol in Yugoslav cinema and is the father of director Goran Markovic, a key figure in the rise of New Yugoslav Cinema. Also, since Land of Truth, Love and Freedom was set during the NATO bombing of Belgrade, a host of odd characters — killers, whores, doctors, police, lunatics — pass in and out of this improvised story about daily life as it was lived on the streets of Belgrade. And because most of the film was shot in broad daylight, one cannot underestimate the risks involved in the making of this quite extraordinary black comedy. South by Southeast is black comedy as well, spiced with Hitchcock and Preminger.

Robert Adrian Pejo’s Dallas pashamende (Dallas Among Us) (Hungary/Germany/Austria) (2005)

In Robert Adrian Pejo’s Dallas pashamende (Dallas Among Us) a teacher (Zslot Bogdan), returns to the garbage-dump camp of his youth after 15 years to attend the funeral of his father. He has left his fiancee behind in Bucharest, perhaps out of family embarrassment. In the camp he meets an old flame (Dorka Grylius), who has just thrown her no-good husband out of the shack. Both she and Petru, her five-year-old son, has suffered enough under his abuse. The twist comes when the greenhorn teacher tries to leave the camp. His car has been tampered with, the police on the roads prefer to keep the gypsies confined as much as possible, and the arrival of the bully »J.R.« prompts a showdown that will eventually end in a bloodbath. As for the title, it stems from videotapes of the soap opera Dallas, a popular diversion in the camp.

No gypsy camp that I ever visited looks like the one in Robert Adrian Pejo’s Dallas pashamende (Dallas Among Us), a Hungarian coproduction with Germany and Austria that was shot in the Transylvanian corner of Romania near the city of Cluj-Napoca (aka Kolozsvar in Austrian-Hungarian days and Klausenburg in the Siebenburgen era). By contrast, you can pass on the highways in northeastern Romania some splendidly constructed »gypsy castles« — eyecatching showcases built as symbols of tribal status. So what is the director trying to say? Since his film begs credulity from the first shot, there’s not much left over in the way of dialogue or imagery to hold the plot together as it unwinds.

Some answers are found in the director’s statement: »I come from Transylvania,«p; says Robert Adrian Pejo. »And I hope to finish the search for my own identity with this film. In a closed community people are struggling with the same problem. I teamed up with Geza Csemer, the Roma writer, to write the script. Of course, I was interested in the way these people live these days.« Moreover, according to Pejo, these are the major problems in the European community. »I know what it means to be the other — or at least I thought I do. When I first visited the huge garbage dump called Dallas, ten years ago, I personally experienced the fear of the other and the unknown. I was preoccupied with this experience for many years, creatively challenged to come to terms with this very human defense and response mechanism.«

Perhaps Pejo should have approached this personal theme in Dallas Among Us from a more contemporary angle. Today, gypsy camps and garbage dumps are two different things altogether. According to a news source, trucks of garbage had to be brought to the location site near Cluj to recreate a modern-day »Dallas« along the lines of the director’s past experience. He apparently wasn’t able to find his garbage dump of yesteryear. Seen from this angle, Dallas Among Us is, at best, a film metaphor about »the other«of our times.

Born 1964 in Arad, Romania, Robert Adrian Pejo emigrated with his family to Austria in 1972. After studying engineering in Bregenz, he shifted to drama and film in Vienna, graduating in 1991. Since 1996, he has been living in New York. Citing filmmaking as his avocation since the age of 13, Robert Adrian Pejo has made a number of amateur productions, receiving a festival award for Crescendo (1988). Other films include Lipstick (1993) and the documentaries Der Weg nach Eden (The Way to Eden) (1995) and RIP — Rest in Pieces (1997). »In all these films,« he said, »I was interested in the issue of identity.«

Ron Holloway