Legacy

On 25th December 2011 the Georgian Patriarch Ilia II described his 34 year-long leadership as head of the Georgian Orthodox Church as a ‘sunny night’. Beginning in 1989, and going up to the present, the film essay Sunny Night tells of political and social events since Georgian Independence. A variety of formats and sources, disparate images and voices report on protests, recommencements, uproars and wars, and religious identity that centres around the dominant religion of the nation. In the midst of the ongoing shifts and the various state of affairs, the patriarch stands out as the only constant figure. Meanwhile the sermonised religion begins to take on radical forms, going as far as priests forming front row human-chains, leading protests of several thousand orthodox believers chasing a handful of LGBT activist throughout the streets of Tbilisi in May 2013.

The Unidentified is a feature-length documentary which reveals who were the commanders responsible for some of the most brutal attacks of the Kosovo war. The result of a two-year-long investigation, the documentary names the officers who ordered attacks on villages in the area around the town of Pec during the 1999 war and those who were involved in the removal of victims’ bodies to mass graves at the Batajnica police centre near Belgrade in Serbia. Sixteen years after they committed the crimes, they live peacefully in the Serbian capital, and despite the evidence that exists, they have not been prosecuted.

The film 3211 is a true story about Stefan Đurić, a successful musician who one day loses everything and goes to prison, where only his songs remain from his former life.

The plot of the film unfolds in the ancient monastery of Dokhiar on the west coast of Mount Athos, on the Aegean peninsula. This peninsula is given to the exclusive use of the monks of Eastern Christianity. Images of nature are woven into a virtually uninterrupted series of work and prayer, lining up in the rhythmic interrelation of man and nature. The central figure of the film was the monastery’s elder, Hegumen Gregory, whose long-term experience of spiritual nourishment rewarded him with a deep understanding of the human soul and her desire to return to the state characteristic of Adam’s human nature before the fall.

A documentary re-enactment of the last few hundred years in Serbian history.

The last true rebellion is death to the world. To be crucified to the world and the world to us.

At the beginning of Sumadijska street in the vicinity of Slavija Square on the 11th August 1913, the Serbian victorious army from the Second Balkan War led by the Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic was given a huge welcome by the highest military and political authorities of Serbia and Belgrade, representatives of civil organizations and national institutions, as well as several tens of thousands of people from Belgrade, Serbia and Vojvodina.

The "Good News" is a film dedicated to one of the main holidays of Orthodox Christians: the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos. The main idea of this holiday is the beginning of the liberation of the human race from sins and eternal death, the joyful news about the upcoming birth of Jesus Christ. The film shows how people living in the remote Russian village are preparing for the Annunciation, marking the turning point of winter and the beginning of field work. Everyday details of the parish community life help to feel Russian Orthodox customs that have been formed for centuries.

This documentary was inspired by the artistic life of Serbian actress Sonja Savić. Being a wonder child, a star of Yugoslavian cinematography, a sex symbol, and urban legend of the eighties generation, a fighter against establishment, Sonja Savić had always attracted attention. Simply put, she always looked, spoke and thought differently from others, she was entirely autonomous, an authentic phenomenon of Serbian culture. In the documentary SONJA, friends and colleagues of Sonja Savić testify on many aspects of her life and work, and a special emphasis is put on Sonja’s libertarian, rebellious, Don Quixote type of nature.

In a remote mountainous village elderly people no longer deemed productive are stoned to death.

Emir Kusturica views himself as a rock musician and believes that he became a world-famous filmmaker by pure chance, as he shoots his movies only in between concert tours with the “No Smoking Orchestra” band. At these little pinpoints of time he gets “Palms d’Or” at Cannes, “Golden Lions” in Venice, builds his own villages, a power plant and a piste and regrets not becoming a professional football player. Kusturica’s own living is very much similar to his movies, where shoes are polished with cats, death is treated like a story from tabloid press, and life is a miracle...

Montenegro is the newest European country with a proud history, one that is being falsified for current political purposes, thus creating an alternative identity. In a nation where it possible for two brothers to claim different ethnic backgrounds despite having the same parents, everything is on the table: language, church, democracy. Can the truth set Montenegro free?

The film features intertwined scenes of young dance troupes' performances and scenes where famous Serbian actors, artists and athletes speak out to young people, in order to inspire them to by their own example to chase after and fulfill their lives' dreams. The 34 minute long film is fast paced and shows different types of dances at several key locations in Belgrade, Serbia. The performances are cut by the interviews with the artists and athletes, addressing the viewer, who talk about their beginnings and the road to success. The third segment of the film are young people, transitioning into adulthood, who talk about what their own dreams are. The idea that the film "Fulfill your dream!" carries is to show young people, through the movie itself, through the testimonies of successful artists and athletes, and finally through the example of the author, that it is possible to start an independent career, thanks to their creativity, ambition and perseverance.

A journey into the wedding night, where an ultra-Orthodox Jewish couple gets to know each other for the first time.

By the end of 1915, during the second half of World War I, which had started by the Austro-Hungarian Empire's attack on a small Kingdom of Serbia, Serbian people, its army, and the state found themselves in the greatest tribulation in its long history. Serbia is attacked by the combined militaries of Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and Bulgaria. Defending every road, every hill, every creek, during the time when every village, every plato, every crossing was becoming a historical landmark, Serbia, relying on the Allies, moved its people, its government, and its remaining troops to Kosovo--the only unoccupied part of the Serbian territory, but soon had to cross Albania in the hopes of reaching the Allies' ships in the Mediteranian.

The war crimes trial of Ratko Mladic, accused of masterminding the murder of over 7000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in the 90s Bosnian war, the worst crime in Europe since WW2.

Documentary road movie ‘Tarot Serbia’ is following Milan Radonjić, the star of ‘Commercial Tarot’ on his odyssey through rural, provincial parts of Serbia, where he’s invited to be the guest of honor at local TV stations. On his journey Milan will explore and reveal the characters of people living at the very edge of society, the ones who lost their jobs during transition, refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo, war veterans, invalids, sick people, betrayed lovers, girls possessed by demons, lonely pensioners, exorcists and all other people asking him for help and solution to all their problems.

A poetic and metaphysical view on a daily life routine in a distant nursing home, on a top of the mountain in Uzice, Serbia – the closest place to heaven. This is the last station on earth for old people that called “clients”. While they’re waiting for the end of their lives, prisoned in a desolate nursing home and their old-dying body, they are fighting for the freedom of their soul, the only place they can feel young and alive. A fight between light and darkness, suffering and acceptance, life and death.

In the Kosovo War, human dignity was shattered by the terrors of the Serbian government and the Albanian liberation army. Truths about the victims’ fates faded away, which is why a Finnish forensic research group led by Helena Ranta got a mission to act as an unbiased agent and investigate the real course of events.

Present day: a small village somewhere in rural Serbia. Reports on the upcoming parliamentary elections drone from the radio while a local traffic policeman tries to teach his old grandmother how to use a mobile phone. Glimpses of this old lady, who lives a lonely life on a remote farm, become the red thread running through the film with its snapshot-like portraits of everyday life in the tiny community. There’s the grocer’s shop the men visit to talk about money and politics. Or the postman who delivers on his moped the ballot papers for the forthcoming elections. The policeman who stops cars as he fancies. The school with a handful of children in the overlarge classroom. The pub in which something approaching merriment occasionally arises. And the recurrent visits to the old peasant woman: Her matter-of-fact inventory of aches and pains delivered to the local doctor, her worries about increasing thievery confided in the village priest.