The documentary film festival “European Cooperation: Film Story” will be held from 25 to 27 September 2023, in the “Vlada Divljan” Cultural Centre and on 28 September 2023 in the “Abazija Cinema” in Palić, organised by the Ministry of European Integration.
We traditionally dedicate the festival “European Cooperation: Film Story” to marking and promoting Interreg Cooperation Day. By marking this day, Serbia joins the events organised on this occasion in more than 40 countries across Europe, during September and October.
The main goal of the festival “European Cooperation: Film Story” is to show the importance of territorial cooperation and connecting people in all segments of life, from economy to creativity, by screening three documentaries from different European countries.
////////////////
Repertoire (Belgrade):
/// 25 September, 7 p.m. – “OFLAG XIII-B”, (Serbia, 2023, 81’).
Directed by: Đorđe Milosavljević Gera
//// Storyline: In 1941, Corvette Lieutenant of the Royal Yugoslav Navy Gojko Kadijević was captured by the Nazis and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hammelburg – Oflag XIII-B. He told his family he would return. He never came back. His son, the future director Đorđe Kadijević, was a child. Seventy years later, he recalls escaping death several times, surviving two bombings, being on the run, trembling at the sight of local gangs, watching the liberation of Belgrade with his own eyes and experiencing discrimination by the authorities. After all that, Đorđe is still waiting for his father to return.
/// 26 September, 7 p.m. – “Tales from the Prison Cell”, (Hungary, Great Britain, Croatia, 2020, 83’).
Directed by: Ábel Visky
//// Storyline: A documentary that explores the relationship between fathers in prison and their children at home. Fathers serving their sentences write fairy tales, based on which fairy-tale films are made – in which they play themselves and their children. During the joint creative process framing the film, we see the parallel lives of the prisoners and their families, as well as the development of their difficult relationships. Owing to modern-day film technology, in the imagined fairy tales, father and child can meet in a magical, freely adaptable world, crossing the boundaries of tangible reality. The question, however, is whether the experience of meeting in fiction can truly affect these very strictly limited, complicated relationships. Can the closeness created in a fantasy world become real, or is it stuck at the level of some artificially created illusion?
/// 27 September, 7 p.m. – SPARKS IN TIME, (Slovenia, 2021, 84’).
Directed by: Jurij Gruden
//// Storyline: The film is about the dizzying rise and fall of Iskra, a Slovenian information technology giant that found itself behind the scenes of political intrigue and secret service battles at the height of the Cold War.
