Beldocs has unveiled its program for 2021, opening September 9 in the amphitheater of Belgrade’s Museum of Yugoslavia with Faith and Branko by Catherine Harte, an intimate documentary that follows the love and relationship of two musicians from two disparate world, a British accordionist Faith Eliot and Roma violinist Branko Rosić.
The festival will once again screen selected films at several open-air locations, as well as returning to indoor screening venies. The majority of films will also be available online through the beldocs.rs website.
The International Competition will feature 11 films from all over the world, notes the festival. From the far north of Russia comes Nikolai N. Viktorov’s Beaumonde Scrapping, about “the boiling-point milieu of the struggle for secondary raw materials.” The Portuguese film Our Land, Our Altar by Andrea Guiomar “presents an image of the decline of a community.” The Argentinian film Ski by Mancque La Banca, “depicts all the complexity of colonialism intersecting with folk horror in South America.” Other films in the International Competition program include the IDFA First Appearance Competition winner This Rain Will Never Stop and the Visions du Réel Burning Lights Competition winner Looking for Horses.
This year’s Serbian Competition gathers seven recent Serbian documentaries or those made as co-productions, including two that had world premieres at leading international film festivals, Beldocs underlines. From the IFFR competition program comes Landscapes of Resistance by Marta Popivoda, which records a journey through the memories of anti-fascist fighter Sonja (97), one of the first partisans in Yugoslavia, who was among the leaders of the resistance movement in Auschwitz. From the competitive “East of the West” section of Karlovy Vary comes Roots, a concept documentary by Tea Lukač. Other films in this program include Dida, which also had its world premiere in Burning Lights Competition and The Bird (or – Marty, the Clown) by the 19-year-old Oliver Ćirić.
The focus on new and bold cinematic voices continues within program sections such as “Fireworks”, which will this year boast new works by Khalik Allah, the Ross brothers and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
A special event will be organized with two “esteemed” guests of the festival – Russian director and Artdocfest founder Vitaly Mansky and Serbian director and Golden Bear winner Želimir Žilnik, entitled “A conversation between Vitaly Mansky and Želimir Žilnik: Documentary Cinema – A Mirror or A Magnifying Glass?” The two auteurs will look at reality and fact in documentary cinema – what is the difference and what do they have in common? How does reality impact freedom of expression in cinema and does it actually exist in the audiovisual realm?
The festival will also feature a Pedro Costa retrospective.
Beldocs, as well as the Beldocs Industry program, which includes Beldocs VR/AR Academy, Beldocs in Progress, Serbian Docs in Progress, Documentaries for Kids & Youth and Beldocs Market, is developed with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA sub-program of the European Union.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
This Rain Will Never Stop, Alina Gorlova
Ski, Manque La Banca
Jungle, Louise Mootz
Things We Dare Not Do, Bruno Santamaría Razo
Beaumonde Scrapping, Nikolay N. Viktorov
The Day Today, Maxence Stamatiadis
Middle Earth, Juliette Guignard
Holgut, Liesbeth De Ceulaer
Zaho Zay, Georg Tiller, Maéva Ranaïvojaona
Our Land, Our Altar, André Guiomar
Looking for Horses, Stefan Pavlović
SERBIAN COMPETITION
Telenovela Greyscale in Color, Filip Martinović
Saint Clair Cemin, Psyche, Svetlana Cemin
The Bird (or – Marty, the Clown), Oliver Ćirić
The Land, Marko Šipka
Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda
Dida, Nikola Ilić, Corina Schwingruber Ilić
Roots, Tea Lukač
Click here for full Beldocs program
