21/11/2024 - In her personal new film, Lidija Zelović uses archive and family footage to make a political diagnosis

Lidija Zelović has been portraying her displaced family in the Netherlands since 1993, when they fled their war-torn hometown of Sarajevo, and her documentary feature Home Game [+see also:
interview: Lidija Zelovic
film profile] is now, for the first time, part of IDFA’s International Competition, in the city she’s been calling home ever since. Despite its cheeky title, Home Game is an assured, serious work where Zelović can dig deeper into the origins of everything that divides our fellow humans. The film uses an essayistic form to draw the viewer in as a playful voice-over (the director’s own) narrates in Serbo-Croatian: “Imagine a girl. Let’s call her Lidija,” she says as we see photos of the speaker as a toddler. Personal archives are used throughout the five chapters of Home Game, but always in an elegant, tongue-in-cheek kind of way, with humour found either in the narration or in the videos themselves. It’s the staple of Zelović, as a sensitive, politically acute filmmaker, to offer welcoming images that have the power to disrupt one’s solidified ideas of migrancy or family.

Using footage from her Yugoslavian youth, including recordings of her work as a TV presenter forced to announce the facts of war with a straight face, and a constant stream of reflections in the third person, the director interrogates the past in order to understand the present. The Zelović clan has been living in Amsterdam for decades now, but every member has their own unique relationship to “home”; that very constellation is what the director is keen to capture. Home is a contested notion for everyone who has had to flee or leave their origins, but Home Game wants to take it a step further by dwelling on the ambiguities of modern-day politics. Less prophetic than fearful, Zelović sees the danger in recent Dutch political developments and recognises the signs early on. Her anxiety is visible on screen, in her voice, and in the way her mother, father, brother and son relate to her.

The camera has been an integral part of Zelović’s life, and there are recordings of all of the flats she’s lived in, no matter for how long. In the film, we see her make a home out of numerous places in Amsterdam, but the sense of dislocation is equally present when the family goes on holiday to “the other home”, Bosnia. Alternating between languages, spaces and times, Home Game not only points out the paradox of our times – how are we so divided while together? – but also critically examines it through chronicles of societal unrest, discrimination and elections in the Netherlands. Although she is critical of the rise of the right from her position as someone whose country (and countrymen) fell victim to similar neglect, Zelović remains clear-minded and even hopeful that maybe, as one of the film’s chapters reads, everything will be fine.

Home Game was produced by Conijn Film (Netherlands), and Taskovski Films handles its world sales.