Celebrating its 20th consecutive year, the Balkan Survey section of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF), programmed by Dimitri Kerkinos, will pay tribute to key films presented during these two decades. A special bilingual edition will be published to accompany the tribute, with original essays and film reviews. The Balkan Survey core program, showcasing a selection of the most important Balkan films of the year, aims to create a communication platform between films and filmmakers of the area and international audiences. This year’s Balkan Survey main program consists of 15 films, both shorts and features. Directors in attendance include Reha Erdem (Turkey), Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania) and Vinko Brešan (Croatia) -whose new films will be screened in addition to their films included in the anniversary tribute-, as well as Romanian Cristi Puiu and Bulgarian Liudmil Todorov. The Priest΄s Children
BALKAN SURVEY PROGRAM
The Balkan Survey main program presents the latest and most notable works by renowned filmmakers of the region as well as promising newcomers. Some of the films that will be screened this year are:
Corneliu Porumboiu’s new film, When Evening Falls In Bucharest or Metabolism, filmed in 35mm and made up of only 17 shots, is the story of a film director who fakes an illness to make his lead actress fall in love with him. Porumboiu, fascinated by the mechanics and syntax of cinema and the mise-en-scène, turns a deceptively simple premise on its head, creating a wholly modern work of cinema. Also from Romania, Radu Jude’s short Shadow of A Cloud follows a priest praying on the side of a dying woman, while The Japanese Dog by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu indicates a major new talent in the country’s roster, with the delicate story of a lonely old man reuniting with his son after two decades.
In Jin by Reha Erdem a young Kurdish girl abandons a team of guerilla fighters and seeks solace in the woods, surrounded by an almost magic landscape and wild animals. Actress Deniz Hasgüler’s superb performance is the powerful center of a film that works both as a hymn to nature and an indictment of violence and war. Also from Turkey, the charming, black-and-white Thou Gild’st the Even by Onur Ünlü transports the viewer to an Anatolian village inhabited by fantastical creatures, while Nobody’s Home, the feature debut of Deniz Akcay Katiksiz, is an insightful family drama exploring gender roles and changing balances in a family left headless after the father’s death.
In Serbian Milos Pusić’s Withering, a typical generational clash between a mother and a son masterfully reveals the dying of an old, rural world trying to survive in the face of the harsh realities of the modern world; and in first-time Modavian director Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu’s Panihida (which means “wake”), the infinite cycle of life and death is presented in all its beauty and sadness through the funeral of an old woman.  Jin
FEATURE FILMS:
Panihida, Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu, Germany/Moldova, 2012, 61min
SHORT FILMS:
Ica Riding Hood, Eva Pervolovici, Romania, 2013, 15min Kolak Mirković, Nikola Ivanda, Croatia, 2013, 23min Rabbitland, Ana Nedeljkovic & Nikola Majdak, Serbia, 2012, 7min Shadow of A Cloud (O umbra de nor), Radu Jude, Romania, 2013, 30min The Blue Identity (Nasnameyek heşin), Mumin Baris, Germany/Turkey, 2012, 20min The Lament (Ağit), Aydin Ketenag, Turkey, 2012, 30min
BALKAN SURVEY, 1994 - 2013
The Balkan Survey section of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival commemorates its 20th anniversary with a tribute showcasing 17 films and directors that illustrate its journey throughout the years. These films, with which almost all countries of the Balkan region are represented (with the exception of Montenegro and UNMI Kosovo), construct a complex social, political and cultural portrait of the region; they both deal with the past and are concerned with the contemporary realities of their countries. They also illustrate a rich and varied cinematic production that, for the past two decades, has garnered accolades and become more and more visible in the international film map. Separately, each of these films constitutes a significant milestone in the recent history and development in the collective production of the region.  The Death of Mr. LazarescuOn the question of a unified Balkan cinema, Nuri Bilğe Ceylan has said: “I think there is a Balkan sensibility. I feel it. Maybe I cannot express it well, but when you say Balkan, I visualize something, a kind of personality, a kind of soul, a spirit…Instead of geographic togetherness or commonness, there is spiritual kinship”.
THE FILMS:
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