bb review: Balkan film industry showing promise

Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigeria’s Nollywood; France’s arthouse cinema scene, British romcoms, Italian and Russian film from the likes of Fellini and Tarkovsky; the Korean Wave. The cinema culture of south eastern Europe may be rather less celebrated outside the region than those of its more famous peers, but there is growing recognition both of a resurgent home-grown movie scene and the competitive advantages of SEE as a location for shoots.

John Cooper, director of the Sundance Film Festival, singled out Sarajevo as a particularly promising centre for filmmaking in a visit to the Bosnian capital last month.

“Sarajevo is doing very well on the world stage right now,” he told Reuters, saying the city was “fascinating because of its already rich film history and the new film history that is starting here.”

Cooper also praised the Film Factory cinematic school set up in the city by Hungarian director Bela Tarr.

Sarajevo has become a centre of film culture in SEE, thanks partly to the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), the largest in the region. The annual event was launched in 1995 towards the end of the 11,825-day siege of the city during Bosnia’s bloody inter-ethnic war. The festival now attracts filmmakers from across the Balkans and beyond.

The SFF has played a role in reviving regional cinema, which had faded as communism fell and cultural budgets were cut.

“The last five or six years have been very exciting for film in SEE and I think we can only expect more of the same – provided the good films keep getting funded,” says Lily Lynch, editor-in-chief of Balkanist Magazine, a website dedicated to improving coverage of the region.

Lynch says the so-called Romanian New Wave helped lead the way, starting with the international interest generated by Cristi Puiu’s black comedy The Death of Mr Lazarescu in 2005 (a “blacker-than-black, deader-than-deadpan comedy” – The Guardian / “It may be the best film about hospitals ever made” – FT).

This was followed by director Cristian Mungiu’s winning the 2007 Palme d’Or at Cannes for his drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, which portrayed two friends’ attempts to organise an illegal abortion in Ceausescu’s Romania; and by Calin Peter Netzer’s collecting the Golden Bear in Berlin earlier this year for Child’s Pose.

The renaissance of film in a region scarred by years of oppression, conflict and economic stagnation has led to a new willingness to confront demons.

“Serbian films have gotten a lot of attention recently as well, partly for their controversial content,” says Lynch, citing the example of young director Maja Milos’s Clip, a no-holds barred depiction of teenage sexuality and substance abuse in suburban Belgrade. The film was banned in Russia, despite winning a Tiger Award for Best Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

“You have really controversial films – probably some of the most controversial films in the world, actually – being made in Serbia,” says Lynch. “A Serbian Film [a horror movie by Srdjan Spasojevic] is the most notorious example, being one of the most cut films in the last 20 years. The Life and Death of a Porno Gang [another horror film, by Mladen Djordjevic] is another excellent, if lesser known film, that almost didn’t get released due to some of its content.”

While the local film industry resurrects, parts of the region have been attracting foreign filmmakers, including top Hollywood names, for some years. Ang Lee’s 2005 Brokeback Mountain was partly shot in Romania’s spectacular Carpathian Mountains, and Sofia has appeared in movies as Moscow or generic eastern-Bloc cities, capitalising not only on its Orthodox churches and ranks of Communist-era tenements, but government incentives and low costs.

Sofia-based Nu Boyana Film Studios, drawing on 50 years of experience, has been particularly successful, with credits including Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables series, Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill (with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino) and Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant.

Do Combe, head of production at Nu Boyana, tells beyondbrics that south eastern Europe offers “international standards of working practices for the most economic cost.”

Nu Boyana has prospered partly due to its extensive outdoor sets, including the biggest Roman set in Europe and a New York street set.

It is not (yet) a global name in film. But with a new crop of talented directors and actors, beautiful scenery, low costs and compelling stories to tell, south eastern Europe’s cinema industry is getting back on the radar.

Related reading:
Ship of Theseus, breathing life into Indian art cinema, bb review
Kim Ki-duk, South Korea’s triumphant filmmaker, bb review
Juan of the Dead, bb review
Xingu, bb review