Balkan Fiction
Two naïve idealists are desperately trying to regain faith and hope in normal life in the Balkans. One of them is the author of the film, Dženo Medanović, the other is his friend Dejan Kožul, journalist. Dejan comes from Belgrade while Dženo is from Sarajevo. Both of them are now parents themselves and only when their children were born did they start seeing the world around them through a different point of view. They stopped thinking about their own future and have now focused on the future of their progeny. Should they continue living in Sarajevo and Belgrade or just get as far away as possible?
They chose a peculiar way of checking whether there is light at the end of the 25 year tunnel of Balkans. They decided to find the people who are claimed to have started the war in Yugoslavia. The people in question are football fans that got into a brawl on May 13th '90 on the Maksimir stadium, Zagreb, thereby preventing the football game between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade. This game was never played, and the conflict between fans of these 2 football clubs is considered to be the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the war. At least that’s what CNN said when they included the event among 5 football games that changed the course of history. The doomed football game in Zagreb took a third place on the list.
Dženo and Dejan wish to find ten football fans that took part in the 1990 Zagreb brawl. Five from Zagreb and five from Belgrade. They want to find these people and see if anything changed in their stances after 25 years. They want to see if these people really went to the Maksimir stadium on May 13th '90 with the intention of starting a war. But what they want to know the most is: “Would you play the game that has not been played 25 years ago?” Their answers will determine the end of the film, as well as the beginning of a new life for the film’s author. He’s looking for people who started the war, to see if they can start peace as well.
They chose a peculiar way of checking whether there is light at the end of the 25 year tunnel of Balkans. They decided to find the people who are claimed to have started the war in Yugoslavia. The people in question are football fans that got into a brawl on May 13th '90 on the Maksimir stadium, Zagreb, thereby preventing the football game between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade. This game was never played, and the conflict between fans of these 2 football clubs is considered to be the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the war. At least that’s what CNN said when they included the event among 5 football games that changed the course of history. The doomed football game in Zagreb took a third place on the list.
Dženo and Dejan wish to find ten football fans that took part in the 1990 Zagreb brawl. Five from Zagreb and five from Belgrade. They want to find these people and see if anything changed in their stances after 25 years. They want to see if these people really went to the Maksimir stadium on May 13th '90 with the intention of starting a war. But what they want to know the most is: “Would you play the game that has not been played 25 years ago?” Their answers will determine the end of the film, as well as the beginning of a new life for the film’s author. He’s looking for people who started the war, to see if they can start peace as well.
Phantom Limb
In October 2013, the Yugoslav monument Woman Fighter in Sarajevo was forced to the ground and her right arm sawn off. The few who heard about it shook their heads and shrugged - just another case of vandals picking apart forgotten places for the fast cash of scrap metal. But then, three years later, the missing arm unexpectedly shows up on the steps of the Historic Museum. This documentary film brings viewers along for one woman’s personal search to discover what about that arm is worth more than its weight in bronze. Entering Sarajevo from Vraca Memorial Park, viewers will walk hand-in-hand through history along with the thousands of souls who entered, and departed, the city through that ‘little door’ on the hill. As they learn why the statue was built there, how it was vandalized, and how the limb reappeared years later, they’ll gain a unique perspective on over a hundred years of regional history and be forced to assess the value of that symbol in modern times. By following the director herself on a search for meaning, they will uncover that the truth has often become the most elusive of the narratives preserved as the statue became a visible victim of each era’s changing ideologies. Through performative reenactment on a theater stage, the woman fighter will come out of her frozen silence to embody each diverse interpretation of her symbolism and allow viewers to analyze the arm amputation anew. As the pieces come together in this feature length film, viewers will find themselves falling together with the director down a rabbit hole of uncanny coincidence, absurd-but-true connections, and strangely confluent moments from the past and present. Touching on women’s roles, symbolism in art, and the modern merit of the anti-fascist values the statue was forged to represent, viewers could experience the pain in that phantom limb first hand, discovering that our own mirrored reflection in that gaping hole may serve as the therapy that a whole nation needs.