Sarajevo Film Festival Growing from Transition to Future

However, the Festival organisers say that, out of the films from the region that will be screened at the twentieth SFF this year, the fewest cover the war themes or transitional period.
 
This year’s SFF will be held from August 15 to 23. As many as 247 films coming from 60 different countries from the world will be screened. This is the largest number of films screened at this Festival so far.
 
Elma Tataragic, Selector of Films for the Competition Programme of the Sarajevo Film Festival, points out that the Festival has never had a specific theme, but themes related to the war or post-war period emerged spontaneously among movie directors from the region in the past.

She says that this is the first time that only one movie, covering the war and post-war period in the region, will be screened during the competition programme.  

“As a rule, we had a number of films covering those topics in the past. That is not strange. This region passed through several difficult wars. I think that the authors themselves had the need to express their creative opinion about the mentioned period,” Tataragic explains.

During her interview with BIRN-Justice Report Tataragic pointed out that themes related to the rights of LGBT population were noticeable among the movies that would be screened this year, adding that those themes were slowly replacing the war and transition themes.  

On the other hand, Zoka Catic, whose short film “Fasunga” (“Shunt”), will be screened at this year’s SFF, thinks that the Festival features films that focus on our everyday lives and the biggest problems facing the region.  

“By chance, all of us are still going through the war and post-war period, so it is not unusual for us to continue making films focusing on those themes. In 50 years from now some other directors will maybe make movies about cultivation of organic food or herbs, but we are talking about the problems that weigh upon us the most. That is our post-war everyday life. ‘Fasunga’ is a typical story, ‘our story’, about the transition and our ability to cope with it,” Catic said.  

In 1995, towards the end of the four-year siege of Sarajevo, Obala Art Center initiated the Sarajevo Film Festival, wishing to help revive civil society. The Festival has been the leading film festival in the region over the course of the past 20 years.

“This Festival has emerged from our need to live civilized lives, despite everything. We wanted to enable all people, who had not been treated like humans for years, to live a film story. I think that we are still living that story. I think that we are still conveying the same message we conveyed 20 years ago – that Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region have the future after all,” Tataragic said.