News

Press Report / Day 3

19.07.2022.

On the third day of the European Film Festival Palić, on Monday, July 18, at the press conference at Great Terrace guests were Dietrich Brüggemann, director of the film "No", director Tomasz Wasilewski and editor Beata Walentowska ("Fools"), Maksym Nakonechnyi, director of the film "Butterfly Vision", Miroslav Mogorović - producer of the film "As Far as I Can Walk"; Vera Vodal, producer of the film "Things Worth Weeping For"; representative of the AFIFS Award jury, journalist Tatjana Nježić; and winners of the AFIFS Award, directors Zrinko Ogresta and Stefan Arsenijević.

Dietrich Brüggemann, the director of the film "No", screened the previous evening in the Festival’s Official Selection, talked about his work on this production: "A film is always the joint work of several people and is not like writing a novel. It also represents a process during which you always talk to yourself, to the person who wrote the earlier version of that same text. Hollywood teaches you that movies are about one hero moving forward, becoming a better person, or finding himself. I don't think that's the completely true. Cinema is more like a theater performance, and it is about human interaction".

Tomasz Wasilewski, the director of the production "Fools", tonight on the programme at 9 pm at Abazija Cinema, reflected on the sensibility of the Festival: "Palić is a great place to meet filmmakers. It is a place where both as an author and as a viewer you can experience film because it is relaxed and unpretentious". About the title of the film and his heroes, Wasilewski added: "The main characters are not stupid, but they turned out to be fools and maybe naive, because they believed that love will conquer everything. But, in the end, they realize that it is impossible".

The film's editor, Beata Walentowska, also spoke about the film "Fools" and the collaboration with Tomasz Wasilewski: This is our second film together, and we already knew what we wanted to achieve with this film. Yet, when I read the script, I was quite shocked, not so much because of the relationship between these two people, but because of the feeling evoked by the plot".

Maksym Nakonechnyi, the director of the film "Butterfly Vision" shown in the "Parallels and Encounters" programme, spoke about the initial idea for this production. "I come from the world of documentary film and I think that one can feel the influence. As for this particular story, I had previously edited a documentary about women warriors and veterans, and I was impressed by their stories. One of the protagonists said that for her captivity was the most terrible thing, and that she agreed with her comrades to kill her if possible, before she get captured. I thought about what is more terrible than death for women warriors in captivity. That's how the initial idea was born".

Vera Vodal, producer of the film "Things worth Weeping For" from the "New Hungarian Film" section, spoke about the challenges the film faced during the previous three years: "It was not easy. This film is somewhere in between, it is neither genre nor aims for a wide audience, and it is not completely artistic either. It was shot in 2019 and was supposed to hit theaters in 2020, but that wasn't possible due to Covid. There were many difficulties. But now we are invited to the Sarajevo Film Festival, and here we had our first international screening".

Zrinko Ogresta, director of the film "A Blue Flower" and laureate of this year's AFIFS award for the best Serbian minority co-production, arrived in Palić only six days after he suffered a heart attack. "I received two other invitations to come to film festivals, but I decided to come to Palić. That's my emotional choice. Despite the constant attempts to create a negative atmosphere between our two peoples, with this act I wanted to show that there is something much more that unites us. The bonds between our two peoples are far deeper than things that can possibly divide us - if there are any at all".

Stefan Arsenijević, the director of the film "As Far as I Can Walk", screened in the Official Selection out of competition, is also the laureate of the AFIFS Award for the best Serbian film last year. About the production "As Far as I Can Walk" and the connection with the epic folk song about this hero, he said: "I always found that song very interesting and exciting. When I read it in the school, I always imagined a movie. I thought about what would happen if that poem were transposed into a modern context. There are numerous adaptations of Shakespeare that have been modernized and given some new interesting meaning. I think our epic poem is in the level of some Shakespeare's plays". About the experience of coming to the Palić festival, Arsenijević added: "Palić is a great place to see exceptional European films and also to meet some great colleagues. Here I also met some legends of European cinema, like Ken Loach and Ken Russell. From them I absorbed some small pieces of wisdom related to the film".

On the fourth day, on Tuesday, July 19, at the Summer Stage in Palić, in the Official Selection at 9 p.m., Festival presents the film "The Beautiful Years" by Lorenzo d'Amico de Carvalho (out of competition), and from 11 p.m. the film "Sick of Myself ” by Kristoffer Borgli.

In the section "Parallels and Encounters", at the Abazija Cinema in Palić, the repertoire includes the films "Erasing Frank" by Gábor Fabricius (5 p.m.) and "Lucia" by Ivica Vidanović (7 p.m., out of competition).