Focus

Focus

Around the Balkans

»The war goes to other places, to other people. With it travel the cameras, the journalists, the photo reporters, and they make their news and their images. We stay here with ours.«
Jasmila Žbanić

The last two decades have meant a period of transition during which many countries in South East Europe have faced hard times. Following the formation of new political systems and new countries across the Balkans, film-making has become more than a matter of culture. It is now seen as a profound way of expressing national identity and of giving it a recognisable voice that resonates abroad. Also, films act as a forum for reflection on political events as well as providing a basis for reconciliation and consolidation. At the same time, the rest of Europe is changing and the EU family is growing. Most of the films here thus respond to relevant changes in European societies full of commotion,
with both fiction films and documentaries having important things to say.
Although the films from different countries within the Balkans cannot be said to have an aesthetically common thread, a specific quality can be distinguished: a humour full of selfirony and a dark, pitiless regard for the misfortune of local heroes. A certain melancholia, a lyricism of sadness emanating from the darkness of certain subjects and a sophisticated mix of documentary and fiction elements is now the expression of the new Balkan film. A new generation of young directors is successfully embracing the authors’ cinema approach, trying to create a personal filmic language – but without abandoning accessible narrative structures. Among such directors are many young, self-confident, talented women whose works receive recognition at major film festivals such as Cannes (Snow), Rotterdam (Does It Hurt? The First Balkan Dogma) and Berlin (Grbavica, Na Putu) as well as Amsterdam (Whose Is This Song? The Bridge and The Grandmothers of the Revolution). The new generation has also brought local audiences back to local films and brought home major film awards from the world of Academy Awards, Palms D’Or, Golden Bears, Tigers, Leopards and Lions. They have also sparked off international film festivals in almost every country of South East Europe – from Bosnia (Sarajevo) to Romania and from Bulgaria
(Sofia) to Croatia (Motovun and Zagreb). All highly encouraging for film production in countries struggling with economic deficits and producing an average of five feature films a year.
In the SEE countries, more documentaries are produced than fiction. One reason is that, apart from the lack of money for feature fiction production, documentaries are often seen as an expression of a society’s heartbeat. Local audiences view documentaries as their own voice – often provocative and critical towards the hardships of the postwar and post-socialist era. The best films are not only observational and descriptive: they also interpret reality in a personal, poetic and philosophical way.

_Rada Šešić