14/09/2022 - Other titles that won awards at the Bosnian documentary gathering include All That Remains to Be Seen, A Parked Life and This Stolen Country of Mine

The fifth edition of the AJB DOC Film Festival has wrapped with an awards ceremony, followed by a screening of Celebrity Untold: Miroslav Ćiro Blažević by Croatian filmmaker Irena Škorić, both taking place in the Bosnian Cultural Centre (a change to the originally scheduled open-air location of the Kovači Multimedia Centre, owing to bad weather). This year’s edition of the festival took place physically in Sarajevo from 9-13 September, and it showcased 24 documentary films across five categories, 12 of them in competition.

The jury, consisting of filmmaker Aida Begić, filmmaker and producer Dana Budisavljević, documentarian and producer Fatima Riahi, filmmaker Phil Grabsky and documentarian Ensar Altay, declared Gorki Glasser-Müller’s Children of the Enemy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] to be the best documentary in the competition. The film follows Swedish musician Patricio Galvez on his seemingly impossible mission to save his seven grandchildren from the infamous Al-Hol prison camp in northern Syria. “This is a film that, through its dramaturgy, directorial skill and dedication, showed a clear intention to encourage people to think. The director brings to the screen a topic that the media, and we as well, often neglect, and he does so in a way that, from the first minute to the last, engages the viewers with human drama, raising clear, but in no way rebarbative or polemic, questions,” the jury said in justification of their decision.

A Special Mention was awarded to All That Remains to Be Seen by Julie Bezerra Madsen, which, according to the jury members, particularly stood out thanks to its being extremely well crafted. “Despite the difficult subject she deals with, the author has made a moving, poetic and inspiring film, remaining true to the message of the movie, which was told in a careful and powerful way,” said the members of the jury.

The Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury Award, which was decided on by the festival’s programme selectors, Lejla Dedić, Sead Kreševljaković and Đani Hasečić, went to Peter Triest for the movie A Parked Life. “In an extremely visually appealing and observational way, this film presents the strong and emotional story of Bulgarian truck driver Petar Doychev, who represents the thousands of equally unfortunate fates of people from Eastern Europe who live in the shadow of consumerism,” explained the Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury.

Said jury awarded a Special Mention to Marc Wiese for This Stolen Country of Mine. “The jury of the Al Jazeera Balkans Program Department awards this Special Mention for the author’s perseverance in the effort to show the struggle of anonymous heroes against the system of powerful, corrupt and greedy companies that, in the modern world, take up the position of former overthrown colonial powers, with deep respect for the director’s determination and courage to persist in illuminating the dark sides of the life that surrounds us,” the jury stated.

The winner of the Audience Award will be announced in a few days’ time, after the votes for all of the films screened at this year’s AJB DOC have been counted.

The fifth edition of the festival unspooled amidst high expectations for the very first industry event at the gathering (see the news), while it also kept its side programmes that it had introduced at previous iterations. Training sessions in mobile-phone documentary production were held by cinematographer and video journalist Faris Bajrić, while journalist and creator of the popular Agelast podcast Galeb Nikačević gave a master class titled “Importance of Storytelling”. With the often sold-out screenings and the successful introduction of the rich industry programme, it is safe to say that AJB DOC is constantly positioning itself more and more strongly on the documentary film-festival circuit.

Here is the full list of award winners:

Main Award
Children of the Enemy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] – Gorki Glasser-Müller (Sweden/Denmark/Qatar)
Special Mention
All That Remains to Be Seen – Julie Bezzera Madsen (Denmark)

Programme Department Award
A Parked Life – Peter Triest (Belgium/Netherlands)
Special Mention
This Stolen Country of Mine – Marc Wiese (Germany)

Audience Award
TBA