Award-winning filmmaker James Lees guest-blogs from the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Attending Sarajevo Film Festival was a bit of a last minute decision for me. I have always thought it would be a great festival to check out but there are so many out there. As it was, a filmmaker I know, Chris Bates was already over there filming some footage for a documentary he was working on. Chris and I had actually discussed his documentary on numerous occasions since he had come to speak to me after a Screen WM film event I was talking at. He had some great ideas for films set in Bosnia but needed some help pinning down the best story to tell and finding funding. Chris asked me to come out and help him shoot some footage and meet his contacts at the film festival - how could I say no?
My own film The Apology Line was actually being screened at the festival as part of the European Film Academy Prix UIP Award Winners Programme and the EFA asked me if I would give a Q&A after the screening. I have been working with the EFA since the film won the Prix UIP Best European Short at Cork International Film Festival (a great festival to attend by the way and coming up again October 12 to 19th) which meant it was also nominated in the Short Film Category of the European Film Awards, this year being held in Copenhagen.
I landed in Sarajevo and Chris picked me up and drove me to his family’s place in town. I was immediately struck with the contrast between the shiny, glossy modern architectural experiments in office design and the bullet and grenade-pocked walls of concrete communist block apartment blocks. Here was a city clearly in transition, but a long way from shaking off its dark and violent history.
After a quick tour I got straight to the festival and settled myself down in front of a few films. First up was My Winnipeg, and the second was Divorce Albanian Style, a film about three Albanian couples pulled apart by the strict regime of Enver Hoxha, two films that couldn’t be more different in tone. My Winnipeg was truly original and charming which can rarely be said but it did feel like Guy Maddin could have taken the ideas and approach further. Divorce Albanian Style was very formulaic and straight in its approach but with such a devastating human story to tell this was perhaps unavoidable.
Next up: the post-screening Q&A - the director’s perspective.
