Sarajevo 23

Directed by Nenad Čičin-Šain and written by Čičin-Šain and Bill Carter, the film showcases the struggle of the citizens of Sarajevo during the city’s siege during the Bosnian War and the post-war concert performed by U2 “to help shine a light when the world wasn't paying attention.” The film is produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for Pearl Street Films and Sarah Anthony for Good Wolves Productions.

When, 12 years ago, Goran Dević turned up at a railway station in the Balkans to start filming a bitter strike, he thought he was simply doing research for a fiction script. Little did he know it would turn into a feature doc selected for Sarajevo Doc Competition. “They opened themselves to me from the first moment they saw me,” Dević remembers of the union leaders he got to know. “After that, I stayed with them.”

The London-based sales agent has announced its acquisition for international sales of Nemanja Vojinović’s ‘western’ documentary Bottlemen. The Serbian-Slovenian film will world premiere at the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival in Documentary competition, where it will compete for the Heart of Sarajevo award.

In their debut feature doc My Muslim Husband the filmmakers, a married couple, turn their camera on themselves. “In the beginning, I thought it was going to be easy. We would film something and then we would have a movie. That was not the case. It was much more complicated,” Lizeta observes to BDE of what turned out to be a deeply personal and complex affair.

The themed programme will present authors who became famous with films about real events, as well as new authors who question the position of individuals whose lives have been marked by trauma from the recent past. “The aim of the program is to initiate dialogue in the countries formed from the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and to deal with problems arising as a result of the wars in the region,” write organisers.

Berlin-based producer Loránd Balázs Imre and Hungarian director András Földes (also a conflict zone reporter whose work has garnered him a Pulitzer Memorial Prize) pitched their new doc, which addresses the dire threat to press freedom in contemporary Hungary. “I aim to create a powerful and emotionally resonant film about the struggle between autocratic forces and human groups committed to freedom,” Földes explains.

The full title of Sovran Nrecaj’s short doc in Sarajevo Competition is Fran and Verka: Or A Usual Day In An Abandoned Village, in which Sovran Nrecaj follows the last two folk left in a tiny parish following the 1999 war in Kosovo. The film is the first of a series of micro-histories from the region that the director wants to tell, “to bring these stories back from under the radar and diversify the already existing narratives,” Nrecaj tells BDE.

Winner of the DAFilms.com Distribution Award following its Docu Talents from the East pitch this week, Romanian Tudor Platon’s highly personal new doc will explore “the different shapes that love can take between parents and children, and children who become parents themselves.” Producer Carla Fotea (who is also a crucial onscreen presence in the film) pitched the project in Sarajevo.

20 films feature in the festival’s designated Doc Competition, while non-fiction is also prominent within the Dealing With The Past and Kinoscope programmes. The 29th edition opens August 11 with Nenad Čičin-Šain’s U2 doc Kiss The Future. Additionally, the festival’s professional arm Cinelink Industry Days presents a slew of dynamic new doc projects from the region, plus talks and debates.

The ancient archaeological site of Vinča on the outskirts of Serbia’s capital Belgrade may well be hailed in history books as the cradle of European neolithic culture, but in recent years it has become better known as one of the largest landfill sites in Europe. Nemanja Vojinović’s absorbing and visceral film follows the site’s oddball community of plastic bottle collectors, aka the Bottlemen.