17TH FREE ZONE FILM FESTIVAL
FILMS
INTERNATIONAL SELECTION
ALEPH
Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a journey to find that place of connection, of clarity, understanding across language, geography, and experience.
BALLAD OF A WHITE COW
Mina’s life is turned upside down when she learns that her husband was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, so she starts a silent battle against a cynical system for her own and her daughter’s sake.
COURAGE
An inspiring and encouraging documentary about the peaceful uprising of a nation against injustice and the brutal oppression of their democracy movements.
MR BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS
A documentary about lessons of the genius professor Bachmann, who brings his students in Stadtallendorf, a German city with a complex history of immigrants and emigrants, a feeling of being at home.
SOCIAL HYGIENE
Hedonistic philosopher-cum-delinquent Antonin torn between five women.
SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
How did a man in charge of 12 million slaves become “the good Nazi”?
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD
Meet the most beautiful boy in the world. Meet Björn Andrésen, famed Tadzio from Visconti’s cult film Death in Venice.
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
It chronicles four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path.
REGIONAL SELECTION - BALKAN HORIZONS
BETWEEN TWO DAWNS
Kadir is forced into making a moral decision, which will have an impact on his dreams, his family, and the life of the injured worker’s wife.
WAIT FOR ME
Wait for Me is a story about the relationship between a mother and a daughter in their late years, permanently divided by the physical border created in the Yugoslav Wars, and about their feelings towards the inevitability of death.
FREESTYLE TO MONTENEGRO
In the summer of 1987, Tonin Gjini swam from Albania to Yugoslavia in search of freedom. Three decades later, he revisits the locations and recreates the events of that unforgettable experience.
HOLY EMY
When their mother returns to the Philippines, two young sisters, Emy and Teresa, are left alone in Athens where they begin to forge separate paths in search of their own identities.
WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE
Following an accidental meeting, two old acquaintances soon decide to spend a weekend together. Not revealing the real reasons that have led them to such a decision, they indulge in a game of seduction and outwitting.
MURINA
During a visit from an old family friend, sixteen-year-old Julia drags the family into a dangerous whirlpool of passion and violence.
EU ZONE OF CHANGE
FIRST 54 YEARS: AN ABBREVIATED MANUAL FOR MILITARY OCCUPATION
The new film by the great Israeli documentary filmmaker Avi Mograbi is a testimony of Israeli soldiers about the occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
OSTROV LOST ISLAND
On the island of Ostrov in the Caspian Sea the inhabitants, left alone by the Russian state, survive through poaching. Ivan goes out to sea risking his life and freedom. He believes that one day Putin will see their misery.
RETURNING TO REIMS
Based on a novel by Didier Eribon, the film tells an intimate and political story of the French working class from the early 1950s to the present day.
GREEN ZONE
JOZI GOLD
Grandmother and environmental activist Mariette Liefferink is up against the richest mining corporations in Africa.
THE STORKMAN
Retired widower Stjepan spends his days taking care of a wounded stork that he saved 28 years ago. Each spring, their routine is changed as they wait for her loyal partner to come.
VELVET QUEEN
Vincent Munier, one of the world’s most renowned wildlife photographers, takes the adventurer and novelist Sylvain Tesson (In the Forest of Siberia) with him on his latest mission. For several weeks, they’ll explore these valleys searching for unique animals and try to spot the snow leopard, one of the rarest and most difficult big cats to approach.
BORDER FREE ZONE
DO NOT HESITATE
Three young Dutch soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East aren’t expecting that an encounter with a boy whose goat they’ve accidentally killed, will change their lives forever.
FRINGE INFRINGE
Housewife Mica S. from the suburbs, while decorating the preserving jars with fringe, comes up with an invention that will change her life and the lives of many whom her doorknob-covers reach.
FLEE
Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym), a 36-year-old high-achieving academic, grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband.
FRIDA
An encounter between a young nurse and her patient Frida, who is the same age, takes place on the border of professional distance and the desire for closeness.
FUTURE
A movie in which Italian directors Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi and Alice Rorvacher bring up conversations with young people born after 2000 from all over Italy.
LUZZU
A story about tradition and transition. A fisherman from Malta and his dreams to financially support his family by fishing and the challenges that every new age brings.
THE SUMMER OF SOUL
The Summer of Soul is part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten – until now.
WOMEN LINE
OH, IT HERZ!
A female musician wants to reveal how sound affects us in ways unknown to most people. What she didn’t expect was that World War II Nazis might be implicated.
PETIT MAMAN
Céline Sciamma’s film in which the author looks back with poetic precision at an important moment in the transition from childhood to adulthood.
THE CASE YOU
After five young actresses experienced systematic abuse of sexual and violent nature, they are currently fighting a legal battle. Not much of it has yet reached the public. The Case You explores what occurred back then and what it means for their lives today.
SELECTION 14+
CUBAN DANCER
A passionate coming of age ballet tale, danced between Cuba and the U.S.A. in a time of change.
I NEVER CRY
Ola, a seventeen-year-old from a small city, sets off to Ireland on her own. It will turn out to be the trip of her lifetime, a trip into the unknown, on which she will try to reconnect with her estranged father.
STOP ZEMLIA
The introverted high-school girl Masha sees herself as an outsider unless she hangs around with Yana and Senia who share her non-conformist status.
SELECTION 8+
ANY DAY NOW
A story of a thirteen-year-old Iranian Ramin Mehdipour and his family who is waiting for the decision on whether they will be granted asylum in Finland.
I AM GRETA
She knows more about climate change than 97% of world politicians. Her name is Greta. This is a film about the currently most famous environmental activist.
MY DAD IS A SAUSAGE
A comedy that tells the story about the courage needed to make dreams come true. The father tries to become an actor and his only support on the path he has taken is his youngest daughter.
FREE ZONE JUNIOR: OUR DIFFERENCES ARE OUR STRENGTH / FUTURE IS HERE
AN EPITAPH FOR THE FORGOTTEN
The Jewish cemetery in Novi Pazar, neglected and forgotten for almost eight decades, has been reconstructed for the first time.
THE PEAR, NEVER FALLS FAR FROM THE TREE
From snow-covered and bare trees in winter, to beautiful and ripe pears in summer, this story follows an orchard on the slopes of Fruška gora, and a father who will push through the hard agricultural season alone for the first time.
FACE TO FACE
Shocked by the fact that 24 years ago, a thirteen-year-old boy was killed by two minor skinheads in the street where she passes every day, the author decides to make a film about that event.
SPARKLE IN A DEAD END
A story about turning weaknesses from your childhood into strength in adolescence, about joy, realizing that there are a lot of possibilities.
IN OUR WAY
Bilingual family, grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and small children… How to teach children the right values from an early age and preserve the language, culture and tradition?
STILLNESS
This story follows the lives and memories of the people who live in the forgotten Canal streets as well as their silent battle in facing the phenomenon of death, both of a community and a part of history.
OCTOBER
Through conversations with Ilija, the bartender of the social senter October in Belgrade, as well as through personal confessions of the author, we get to discover the significance of this center for its visitors, as well as what they deal with.
WASH BEFORE USE
Vintage and second hand clothes-environmentally sustainable, as well as affordable fashion is becoming a symbol of a generation that strives for the freedom of expression and refuses to live by the rules.
THE NORTH CITY
Together with her colleagues, acting students from Kosovska Mitrovica, Teodora improvised the living conditions every day, due to the frequent loss of electricity and water. Was their love for acting strong enough to withstand the burden of living conditions of Kosovska Mitrovica?
WHO IS WHOSE?
The film follows two young people and their relatives in resolving dilemmas regarding the multi-confessional marriage they are about to enter into.
WOMEN'S TALE
The three most important women in my life, at different ages, meet and talk about marriage, love, feminism, about the past and the future.
THE CASES
In Zrenjanin, at the end of 80s, the director of SIZ was arrested during a political clean out, and afterwards was left alone when his friends turned their back on him and the media chase began. Years later everything was forgotten, but similar cases continued to happen.
BUSHI
A daughter left fatherless, a film that addresses the cases of the missing people in Kosovo*. A story about trauma and the kidnapping of an innocent man by Serbian military forces that left him presumed missing until this day.
LOKJA
An experimental, yet touching documentary that presents the story of the director’s grandma and her amazing struggle with the first stage of Alzheimer’s disease.
NIGHT OUT
After the quarantine, a group of youngsters rejoins in a pub.
RRUGËS SË BABAIT
Faton and Fatlind are just some of the many children of those who sacrificed themselves for freedom in our country. Coming from a family that has given Kosovo * soldiers for four generations in a row, Fatlind continues the tradition by joining the Kosovo * army, not ceasing to admire his father, one of the victims of the war.
SHPRESA
Her name is Shpresa, which means Hope in the Albanian language. Shpresa, tells a story of hope during war time, as she saves both of her brothers from captivity in enemy camps.
TIME
Saving people from drowning, life, and the true perception of the time flow the same as the Drini river does, reflected by a 96-year-old man.
SPECIAL screening
THE AGE OF UNTRUTH
The question that already marks the media today, and will become crucial in the future, is how to distinguish a forgery from the original, how to distinguish a lie from the truth, how to create a credible picture of reality. The documentary series Collages of Lies confronts us precisely with that question.
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA IN VUKOVAR
The documentary KPJ and Vukovar – from its origin to its disappearance shows the formation of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Vukovar in 1920 and follows the relationship between KPJ and Vukovar for 70 years until the disappearance of KPJ in 1990.
IN FOCUS: LUCY WALKER
BRING YOUR OWN BRIGADE
Filmmaker Lucy Walker looks to answer a question humanity can no longer afford to ignore: why are catastrophic wildfires increasing in number and severity around the world, and can anything be done to lessen the staggering death and destruction it causes?
WASTE LAND
Filmed over nearly three years, the Academy Award-nominated Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
THE CRASH REEL
The dramatic story of one unforgettable athlete, Kevin Pearce; one eye-popping sport, snowboarding; and one explosive issue, Traumatic Brain Injury. A comeback story with a difference.
LUCHINO VISCONTI TRIBUTE
THE LEOPARD
Describing this film, Martin Scorsese said: “Visconti’s Il Gattopardo is one of the most beautiful visual experiences in the history of film.”
ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS
Rocco and His Brothers is an Italian social drama which, through the story of five brothers, shows their immigration from the poor south of Italy to the industrially developed north in search of work and a better life.
SENSO
A beautiful Italian countess married to an elderly uptight aristocrat, puts her marriage and political principles at stake by entering into an affair with a young Austrian lieutenant.
DEATH IN VENICE
The obsession with beauty and all the tragic consequences that resulted from it, are revealed in this brilliant work of Visconti.
THE STRANGER
Visconti’s screen adaptation of Camus’s classic was noted as one of the best adaptations of a literary work into a film.
THE DAMNED
Greed and the desire for a good life drive the von Eschenbeck family among the Nazis, into a world of corruption, betrayal, and murder.
KINOKAUCH PRESENTS
LIBERATION DAY
Rock’n’roll that has fought heavy censorship – Laibach in North Korea.
A GOOD AMERICAN
The Good American reveals an alarming story about corruption, lies and selfish ambitions of individuals, as a result of which a multiple useful and cheap monitoring system was rejected just three weeks before 9/11.
THE NOTHING FACTORY
One night a group of employees realizes that the administration is stealing materials and machines from their own factory. By organizing themselves to quickly protect the equipment and put an end to selling it off, they become forced to go on a strike, while discussions about an end of a general protest are still going.
WOMAN AT WAR
Halle is in an eco-war against the energy companies that have conquered Iceland. In that struggle, she received the news that she was finally allowed to adopt the orphan she had been waiting for for years.
HOME CARE
When Vlasta, a home caregiver, is diagnosed with cancer, suddenly she becomes the one who needs the help of others.
THE REALM
Manuel Lopez-Vidal is a favourite politician in his region. And he has it all. But, as it often happens, reaching a peak means at the same time slowly starting to fall.