Al Jazeera Documentary organised a brand new worldwide venture – Al Jazeera Documentary Business Days – in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The area’s first-of-its-kind occasion marked its conclusion at a decadent theatre within the coronary heart of the Bosnian capital.
AJD Business Days was an integral a part of the Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Movie Pageant, appearing as a launchpad to match filmmakers in several phases of manufacturing with key worldwide gamers, together with producers, commissioning editors and distributors.
Merely screening movies just isn’t sufficient to actually develop the documentary business within the area, in keeping with Adel Ksiksi, the founding father of AJD Business Days. Filmmakers want to have the ability to sit face-to-face with main professionals to allow them to safe partnerships and monetary help for his or her movies, he stated.
The occasion was additionally a possibility to provoke dialogue and acquire perception into the present documentary business.
“To convey tales from elements of the world which are typically underreported: Caucasus, Southeastern Europe and MENA areas just isn’t solely a dream of mine however a accountability,” Ksiksi stated whereas addressing a room filled with filmmakers and dozens of worldwide decision-makers and broadcasters. “That is your alternative. It’s a bridge to your desires,” Ksiksi stated.
The occasion noticed a big array of latest initiatives being pitched, and 30 movies out of 175 submissions from 54 international locations made the ultimate reduce.
The initiatives from throughout the Balkans and the Center East and North Africa area had been introduced in three completely different pitching classes with filmmakers vying for co-production awards of as much as $25,000.
The movies explored a variety of subjects, together with sovereignty, honour killings, local weather change and fractured historic landscapes.
AJD Business’s key occasion, The Foremost Pitch, was geared in direction of filmmakers and manufacturing firms within the early phases of growth. The highlights of this class had been The Final Nomads, by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazic, which follows a shepherdess and her daughter within the highlands of Montenegro when their land is occupied by a world army base.
The second class, Work In Progress, screened movies in post-production, together with an Iraqi movie which follows the director’s journey searching for her childhood good friend and unfolds a secret world of abuse in opposition to girls in Iraq.
The third class, Balkans Stars, was aimed toward boosting the native documentary business by creating alternatives for collaboration between filmmakers and native in addition to worldwide broadcasters. One such venture was Hvar League, a movie a few soccer league on a small Croatian island. The movie received the Radiotelevision of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BHRT) Award of 5,000 euros ($5,000).
Throughout the three-day occasion, filmmakers had the chance to pitch their initiatives and talk about them intimately with business leaders at workshops, panels and round-table discussions.
“To face in entrance of key worldwide gamers and defend your venture forces you to take into accounts how the world views your characters and your footage. The occasion sparked a fireplace in me. I need to struggle for this movie in order that the world can get a glimpse of what my nation is going through,” stated Elene Mikaberidze, whose movie Blueberry Goals portrays two younger Georgian youngsters, Giorgi and Lazare, who stay in western Georgia amid tensions with Russian separatists all through their lives. The movie follows the youngsters’s journey as they pin their desires for a greater future on the cultivation of blueberries.
Awards ceremony
The brand new occasion culminated in an awards ceremony on Monday afternoon. The Foremost Pitch Award of $25,000 was received by director Sedan Sarec’s Sarajevo Beneath Siege which follows the artists who staged the primary ever Sarajevo Movie Pageant, happening in the course of the devastating siege of town in 1993. Different winners included Iranian director Atieh Zare, who was awarded $15,000 for her movie Friday at The Window, an intimate journey of a younger Iranian lady who considers initiating a custody case in opposition to her mother and father after they put their relationship forward of her wellbeing.
The Balkans Star Award of $10,000 was given to Slovenian movie Girl of God – by Maja Prettner, Iza Strehar and Bostjan Virc – which touches upon the problem an evangelical Protestant pastor faces as she makes an attempt to step away from the church.
The opposite winners included Final Letters From my Grandma by Olga Lucovnicova; Abastumani by Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt; Do You Love me? by Lana Daher; Hvar League by Emina Kujundzic; Land of Sars by Petra Seliskar.
“We now have a accountability to open a window for these initiatives. I need all these tales to fly, fly to the world,” stated Ksiksi, capturing the spirit of the occasion.