Discoveries from Bosnia & Herzegovina World Cinema

Biography of famous football player Dragan Dzajic.

Snorty a rehabilitated outsider tries to find a place for himself in a society in transition. All his past sins will come to haunt him and show him that personal transformation is impossible.

This film deals with the atrocities of war as portrayed by a film student who spends some time working as a medic. One of the duties he performed was to carry amputated limbs to the cremation furnace. This is a film about the collective madness that engulfed Sarajevo. A one-armed boy is troubled because he can't make big, firm snowballs; a man who lost both legs demonstrates walking on his stumps... The film and the director's story help us understand the commotion and tumult that have occurred in the minds of Sarajevans.

Čedo, Neđi, Milka, Branka, Mrva, and Mile receive an offer for a well-paid job. At first, when they started working, it was not as they had imagined and expected: various problems arise, causing disagreements between the main characters.

After living in London for 10 years, Meri returns to Sarajevo to sell a house she inheritated. While in town, she meets and catches up with Asja, her ex girlfriend. The two women and their opposing lifestyle choices will soon come in conflict.

A documentary film featuring people who speak from their personal experience about optimism, motivation and plans for fulfilling their dreams, before and after surviving a grave illness.

Nestajanje is the story of an oneiric and surreal journey taken by a girl to look for her missing grandmother inside the nursing home.

This film follows father Ahmed and son Tarik Karaga during WWII and the Siege of Sarajevo.

A man trying to lift up a hammer.

Hamdija Šahinpašić (1914-2003) was one of those rare individuals able to memorize songs in their authentic traditional form. Šahinpašić belonged to a family known for its songs. In the early 1950's, Miodrag A. Vasiljević recorded Šahinpašić singing dozen of songs at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade. A 1967 publication finally included 300 of his songs, published bilingually in Bosnian and Russian. Šahinpašić himself become the focus of attention of numerous ethnomusicologists and folklorists and his repertoire was preserved on recording of good quality.

The ancient ritual of the Bosnian Dragon Summoning is threatened by various new beliefs throughout the ages.

Portraits of two sisters that meet after five years of not speaking due to a turbulent family situation

Movie about young boy, from country side, in big town.

The story of Džemal Džihanović, the producer of folk music.

At the 80th session of the International Olympic Committee in Athens, on 18 May 1978, Sarajevo was chosen to host the 1984 Olympic Games. The games were attended by 1,272 competitors from 49 countries in six sports. For the 14th Winter Olympic Games, a bobsleigh track was built on Trebević.

A portrait of the first year of peace in Bosnia. This is a human story played out before a background of a war which still makes itself felt, a story of a possible life together, which has on the other hand become impossible in many cases. Rajko, the Serbian mechanic and his family must leave their home for the second time. Nermin, the actor, lost both legs in the war and might have the chance to learn a new role. Halid, a shepherd from the Muslim-controlled region, risks his life to visit friends on the western (Croatian) side of Mostar.

Fudo is a drug addict who decides to quit heroin and reconcile with his mother after his best friend dies. However, people continue to perceive him as an addict and refuse to believe he has really changed. Estranged from the people around him and tortured by feelings of guilt over his best friend's death, Fudo is at risk of returning to his old life.

In her autobiographical documentary, the young director uses cartoon impressions, photographic memories, and the various stages of baking a cake to draw the viewer into her own stream of consciousness, and using images full of kindness, tenderness, and playfulness, she deals with the sadness that began during a children's birthday party many years ago.

It’s about a girl named Ema and her snail.

It's cold up on Mount Manjaca. "In the winter it snows, there's nowhere to go," says the central figure in Celebration. "We have to wait until someone comes to clear the road. Sometimes they come, and sometimes they don't." He diligently ploughs the knee-high snowdrifts as the wind howls at his ears.

Friendship and love at a time of life when impulses and changes are irresistible.

Mirela, a Bosnian woman living in Rimini (Italy), returns to Sarajevo and the orphanage where she grew up, searching for her mother and herself amid memories of war and rediscovered identity.

"Looking for Horses" is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother-tongue due to a heavy stutter. Despite their speech and hearing limitations, a bond develops between the young man and the veteran, as he shares his world of the lake: full of large catfish, wild horses, wide silences, and dangerous thunderstorms. Where for the fisherman the lake stands for a withdrawal from a fractured country, a land of war; for the filmmaker it precisely means the return to that broken place, the land of his parents. They look for ways to communicate, while the camera mediates their growing bond. Taking the shape of a gentle western, "Looking for Horses" is a poetic documentary on trauma, survival, and connection.

Follows two friends and their adventures in Sarajevo during the 1980s.

The year is 1983. Found archival material depicts people in the small Bosnian town of Tešanj. Suddenly a well-known figure appears, the filmmaker’s grandfather who died in the Bosnian war. Repressed and hurtful feelings, but also a chance to remember, in a film that calls for reflection.

Alena is preparing for an important journey. Her family and co-workers do not want her to leave.

Tomo, a radio host, records and archives the ganga songs because he is aware that it is going extinct so he wants the ganga to be placed on the list of UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage.

A cellar-dwelling woman talks about her life to a camera during the devastating war in Bosnia.

After begging her to come back, Azra gets her daughter Lejla back at the airport. In the car, she tells her a surprising news and takes her to an unknown place where mother and daughter will revisit their roles.

Documentary film "Dino Merlin: We- Behind the Scenes" shows the background of Dino Merlin's recent concerts in Zagreb and Belgrade, including exclusive footage from the regional tour.

A child in Dobrinja neighborhood of Sarajevo under siege, has a hobby of collecting bomb shells.

The little mannequin, once content to be sketched, now longs to escape the confines of the canvas.

After Sead suddenly experiences severe stomach pain, he is taken to the hospital, where the doctor tells him he needs emergency surgery.

'J' tells the story of a man who lives an isolated life before encountering a woman that will open up, for a while, his controlled world. In 'J', time is at first an internal condition and, as the story unfolds, the effect of a mysterious mirror, where solitude is a condition of space itself and nearness and love are but a position of an impossible witness. Can space hold all the memories of a life without witnesses?

Nine characters gathered around their own bog, live their virtual lives, fostering the illusion that they are somebody else.

A documentary on the history of traditional tattoo techniques present primarily amongst ethnic Croats and Bosnians in Bosnia and Herzegovina and how they evolved and adapted into the tattooing techniques of today.

Follows the story of several characters whose life constantly interact and in their very own way mutually influence each other.

Short parody indie film based on the TV show "Storage Wars". The plot is located in a small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Doboj.

Made by the Sarajevo Group of Authors (SAGA), a collective created during the siege of Sarajevo, this documentary captures stories of war that occurred during the conflict.

Mirza, a young Sarajevo orphan, earns easy money by assisting a local drug dealer. Dispatched on a job one day, a chance encounter makes him painfully aware of his despicable role - but equally of the possibility of changing things for the better.

What does absence mean to you? From this question, Emina Suljovic, a Bosnian hematologist, shares the first thought that comes to her mind to create a mental map that reveals both herself and the relationship she has with Sarajevo, her native city. In short, Rerun is an internal dialogue carried out through the memories and reflections of Emina, who works with terminal patients, who grew up in the midst of the Sarajevo war between 1992-1995 and who devoutly practices the Muslim religion in a contemporary world. All this in the same way that we repeat a past event in our minds.

A seemingly naive turn of events leads to a disastrous one. Flight of wings leading all the way to WW1.

A Bosnian immigrant who fled to Toronto after the civil war returns to his homeland in search of a missing friend who has been implicated in war crimes, in this quietly chilling and finely surreal meditation on confronting traumas of the past. (TIFF)

Documentary about the sevdah band named "Zukva".

Partly paralysed by polio, Vlado is stuck in his flat and unable to take care of himself. His younger wife, Alma, helps Vlado with love and tenderness in all his daily life activities, never giving up hope that he will get better. But Vlado feels weak and humiliated, losing the motivation to exercise or take medicine. In spite of the love and intimacy between the couple, Vlado’s self-loathing causes him to reject Alma. Haunted by visions of a half-man/half-horse, Alma considers alternative ways to solve their situation. The Centaur appears in a dream and gets closer and closer to their reality, pushing events towards an extreme conclusion. Vlado decides to end his misery, to bury the dead part of his body and wait for a miracle. Alma’s love is challenged but she executes the simple ceremony with dedication. By dawn, the magic happens.

Sara, a twenty something girl, has one more day to say goodbye to everything that matters to her in her hometown, Sarajevo.

Ivan is a young painter employed by a well-known city company. Aware the embezzlement that his boss commits through his paintings, Ivan decides to take him with the old man to the city inspector to whom this last case is revealed. At the celebration of the company that was declared the company of the year, Jadranko Granula, Ivan's boss decides to promote Ivana to the ranks of his close associates. However, the process of initiation catches Ivan unprepared, when he realizes that he killed the inspector with by which he prepared a conspiracy.

Trapeze artist Mathilda wears the pants in her circus act. Figuratively.

A tale about water fireflies, colorful cows, small wooden houses, wondrous river and some moody folk not aware of all these things.

The violent clash encounter between a ticket collector and a drunk without a ticket, in the tram, turns into an unexpected possible friendship.

A documentary detailing the lives of the children seen in Nenad Dizdarevic's "An Awkward Age" as well as the conditions within former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Two men - one in the West, one in the East, brothers. In both places, life is muted, solitary, nondescript. Here, windows are painted, switches rewired and cigarettes smoked; there, lengths swum, boxing matches prepared for, transactions made. What is it that links these things? Winter swimming pools, the sound of a bell, a bullet passing through bone?

The theater troupe is preparing the premiere of the play "The Death of Danton". While they are putting on a play, someone wants to demolish their theater.

While Marija is set with her boyfriend, her roommate Nikolina is still a virgin. But, after realizing that the social practices have changed, she has to follow her duties and restructure her beliefs.

The life of the former boxing champion, Marijan Beneš, is interesting from the very beginning, more precisely from his first fights in the Boxing Club "Slavija" from Banja Luka, through the amateur title of European champion in 1979, and further, through several championship belt defenses, to the fight for the title of world champion. The story of the boxing legend of the town on the Vrbas is permeated through this documentary. This achievement was awarded the prestigious "Silver Pine" award in 2004.

Documentary about Dubioza Kolektiv.