Audience award
19.07.2026.
33rd European Film Festival Palić – Day 3
Screenings of "The Miserable Mother" by Susanne Heinrich and “Mo Papa” by Eeva Mägi on Day Three of the European Film Festival Palić
On the third day of the festival, Monday, July 20, the Summer Stage in Palić will feature films from the Official Selection program, starting at 9 p.m. with "The Miserable Mother" by Susanne Heinrich (Germany), followed by “Mo Papa” by Eeva Mägi (Estonia) at 11 p.m.
Before the screening of the films, German director Helena Wittmann will be presented with the Underground Spirit Award.
Stuck at home with her partner Peter Pan and their newborn child, the miserable mother finds motherhood to be a prison. With her life confined to the couch, the city park, and a mother- and-child café, the distinctions between inside and outside, society and the individual, and the body and communication have blurred.
In “Mo Papa”, Eugen (28) is released from prison after serving ten years for causing his younger brother’s accidental death, a tragic act driven by his own unresolved trauma from being abandoned by his parents. Now, left with only his estranged father and childhood friends from the orphanage, Stina and Riko, Eugen hopes for reconciliation. But the scars of abandonment pull him back into destructive patterns.
The Parallels and Encounters programme will present “Ulya” by Viesturs Kairišs at 6 p.m., followed by “Tell Me What You Feel” by Łukasz Ronduda at 8 p.m. at the Abazija Cinema in Palić.
“Ulya” takes place in the Soviet Union, Latvia, 1964. Ulya, an Old Believer teenage girl nearing two meters tall, grows up on a faraway country farm. Her unusual height troubles her family, who wonder if there's a place for her in the world. When her class photo reaches basketball coaches, Ulya is whisked to Riga to join a famous basketball team. Struggling with her height and identity, she trains hard, but realizes basketball can't fulfill her dream of a normal life.
In “Tell Me What You Feel” an aspiring Polish artist, Patryk, struggles to sell his paintings, but finds himself at Tear Dealer, a unique art project letting people in poverty trade their tears for złoty. Surrounded by sobs and mirrors, however, he is unable to shed a tear. It’s then that he meets Maria, the project’s conceiver and an art therapist from a well-off family. As their romance buds, they swap traumas and art, discovering they may share more than they thought. Loosely based on a real-life artist, the film is an intriguing take on modern love, vulnerable masculinity, and lives altered by a relationship and breakup.
“Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project” by Kornél Mundruczó will be screened at the Eurocinema at 3 p.m. as part of the Alexandar Lifka Award Laureate Homage programme. Rudi, a withdrawn and emotionally scarred teenage boy who has been abandoned by his mother is left to drift through a bleak, post-socialist landscape. He is eventually taken in by an older man who may be his biological father. Hopes of acceptance and connection surface, but the relationship remains fragile and emotionally distant. As Rudi's longing for love is repeatedly met with rejection, his internal pain gradually transforms into uncontrollable violence.
The homage programme will continue with the Underground Spirit Award Laureate Homage, featuring screenings of Helena Wittmann’s short films "21.3° C," "Ada Kaleh," "The Wild," "Later," "The Swell," and "A Thousand Waves Away," in a programme block starting at 7p.m. in the "Mira Banjac" Hall of the Abazija Cinema.
In the Germany in Focus section, "Women as Lovers" by Koxi will be screened at 4 p.m. at the Abazija Cinema in Palić. The film follows Brigitte, a middle-aged trade fair hostess struggling to stay afloat in a world obsessed with youth and self-optimization. Inspired by Elfriede Jelinek's novel “Die Liebhaberinnen” (Women as Lovers), Koxi's darkly comic drama explores the intersections of love, ambition, and self-exploitation in contemporary society. I
n the New Hungarian Film section, “Anhelation” by Zoltán Vámos will be screened at the Eurocinema in Subotica at 7 p.m. The work of intensive care physician Miklós Szebeni has serious stakes; not only in making life-or-death decisions, but also in promoting healing, alleviating suffering and, last but not least, preserving human dignity. This is already a serious challenge, but then COVID strikes. The deadly virus not only turns the world upside down, but also Szebeni’s life. Miklós’ fate will be his character and his chosen profession. In the
Eco Dox programme, “We Have to Survive” by Tomáš Krupa will be screened at 5 p.m. at the Lifka Art Cinema in Subotica. A cinematic odyssey across our one shared home – Earth – capturing the extraordinary ways people adapt, endure, and find hope as our planet transforms. Filmed across four countries and several continents, the film invites us into different “rooms” of our global home, through intimate, character-driven stories, reveals not only the challenges of a changing world but the unbreakable spirit of those who call it home. This is not a film about despair, but about courage and care – for one another, and for the only home we have.
In the New European Documentary Film programme, “How to Talk to Lydia?” by Georgian director Rusudan Gaprindashvili will be screened at 7 p.m. at the Lifka Art Cinema in Subotica. At 24, Damian leaves his small village in Moldova, a landscape shaped by community and nature, to seek work abroad. His destination: a vast German logistics warehouse, where his every step as a “goods picker” is directed by an invisible supervisor – an artificial voice named Lydia. Through Damian’s journey, the film contrasts the warmth and rootedness of rural life with the alienating precision of a postmodern workplace, asking how human stories survive in a world increasingly orchestrated by artificial intelligence.
As part of the guest festival section presented by the Skopje Film Festival, the documentary film "Concrete Time" by Igor Ivanov will be screened at the Eurocinema at 5 p.m.
As part of the EFA Shorts section, the programme block starting at 10 p.m. at the Abazija Cinema will include "The Spectacle" (Bálint Kenyeres, Hungary), "La Durmiente" (Maria Inês Gonçalves, Portugal), "April Tune" (André Silva Santos, Portugal), and "O" (Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland).
The Special Screenings programme will include “All About the King Named Petar” by Anita Panić, which will be screened at 5 p.m. in the "Mira Banjac" Hall of the Abazija Cinema.
The promotion of the monograph "It Was Worth It" by Jovanka Simić, dedicated to Gordana Đurđević Dimić, principal actress of the Drama Ensemble of the Serbian National Theater, will be held at the Grand Terrace in Palić.
Tickets for the Official Selection programme are priced at 400 dinars for a one-day pass covering two films, while tickets for the Parallels and Encounters programme cost 300 dinars. Tickets can be purchased starting half an hour before the screening starts.
Admission to all other festival screenings is free!
The European Film Festival Palić is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the City of Subotica, the European Union through the Creative Europe MEDIA program, as well as numerous partners and media sponsors.
For more than two decades, Gorki List has been a valued partner of the European Film Festival Palić, serving both as an integral part of its visual identity and as the sponsor of the Gorki List Audience Award, which encourages audiences to engage more deeply with the films presented at the festival.
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