15th Sarajevo Film Festival this year celebrates a small jubilee. So among many celebrates this year the festival will record visits of an important guests such as Mickey Rourke, Gillian Anderson, James Nesbitt, Kerry Fox, Tamar Novas etc...This aspiring regional festival once again creates regional place to celebrate and promote film, regional cinematography, in order to affirm young and new film expression and to establish a professional platform for the experience exchange and valid film resources.  And as it goes under Sarajevo film sky, the official opening ceremony held Croatian actress Zana Marjanović. The very first screening of the festival opened with "The Tales From The Golden Age" directed by Cristian Mungiu at the National Theatre, while the national Competition Program opened Croatian film directed by Antonio Nuić "Donkey", film awarded with 3 Golden Arenas on Pula Film Festival. The competition program, which is rather good, presents a  number of world, international and regional premiers. While Panorama Selector Howard Feinstein,opened Pannorama Programme with „The Fly“, a film by Russian director Vladimir Kot. “Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.” THE FLY is a bold reworking of Soviet popular melodrama that shifts effortlessly between tragedy and comedy. Kott is a master of poetic realism, of choreographed violence, of the tangential vignette," Feinstein writes.  One of the first guests of the festival by now, were, no doubt Lluis Homar and Tamar Novas, from Pedro Aldomovar’s "Broken Embraces", film that was premiered on Cannes Film Festival. But I shall write more about it tomorrow.       Stories of People Who Lived for Freedom 

The first Coffee With... Program on Sarajevo Film Festival www.sff.ba

started with Christian Mungui, Ioana Uricaru and Hano Hoefer from the Romanian film „The Tales From The Golden Age”. The communist regime in Romania is a frequent topic of the recent Balkan cinematography, Romanian especially.

„Its a great challenge to make such a great film.“ Said Mungui. „I believe that my colloquies and I would be able to retell the myths from the 80s, the period which the regime referred to as the golden age, in spite of the fact, that when you listen to the stories of the people who lived during that time, the age was everything but golden.„ 

 „I made a movies with colloquies from my generation. Those are the people that lived in that period. Just like me. And who had their experience and view of it. This is why, it is exactly they are the one who are  able to tell those tales. This is not an omnibus but rather collection of legends which merge into one. All those legends actually tell us the same thing.This is why they are the tales of the era, of a regime in which several generations of Romanians live. „So the conversation and exchange of experience with people resulted in stories like this one in „The Tales From The Golden Age”.. „We wanted to tell the story which has a humorous side but the essence of these legends is a story of one regime, and of the people  who faced it on a daily basis. Some of the tales might appear funny but this is primarily a story of the people who lived each day for the freedom.“ Mungui concluded.  The audience in Sarajevo showed a lots of interest for this film, because this Romanian film brought the Romanian cinematography on the international level. Was that all about the awards or just a general shared feeling of bringing up the subject that way?

„Those awards are only the encouragement but they might also be a burden. All of a sudden you come to situation in which everybody wants you. Its up to you to decide what to do next. I decided to stay in Romania. I did not choose to leave to America, I was not sure, if I as an author would be given the freedom I have in my country. And at the same time you have to keep in mind if  you want to make a film activities a business of art, as these are some of the possibility that open up. It is a matter of decision. It is like when the whole world talked about success of Romania in gymnastics after Nadia Comaneci won the Olympic golden medal. Film industry works the same way. And now we have  generations of movie makers, one of which has already lived the festival success. However, it did not come out of the blue.“