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Grand Golden Arena winner Bruno Anković: the film "Celebration" is about upbringing and manipulation

24.07.2024.

A press conference was held on the fifth day of the 31st European Film Festival Palić at the Grand Terrace, on Wednesday, July 24. Speakers included director Bruno Anković, DoP Aleksandar Pavlović, directors Álvaro Gago, Carla Andrade and Oskar Alegria, director and book author Slobodan Šijan, and the host of the panel “Climate change – changing environmental awareness of the public”, Snježana Mitrović.

Bruno Anković, the director of the film "Celebration", which won four Golden Arenas at the recently held Pula Film Festival (for best film, screenplay, actor and cinematography), commented on this great success: "Honestly, we did not expect this because there was strong competition from wonderful directors. We are very happy. Pula is a historically important festival, and this win is a significant confirmation that we did a good job." Anković's film is based on the novel of the same name by Damir Karakaš, which the director read four years ago: "I liked the novel because it dissects this region of ours, and through that family and one character, it shows how we make wrong decisions, and how with the greatest idea and belief that we are heading toward a better future, we are actually heading toward the worst. It is a film about upbringing, of course also about manipulation, but all of it together".

Álvaro Gago, the director of the film "Matria" screened as part of the Galicia in Focus program, spoke about the position of his main heroine: "There is a very strict patriarchal framework to which the heroine of the film must conform. She has to live by it. When you are born in an environment where such a framework is all you know your whole life, then the horizon of possibilities is also conditioned by it. In the end, she is simply trying to survive. If you have to live in such circumstances, you harden and strengthen your character to protect yourself”.

Carla Andrade, lecturer at the "Celluloid Art" workshop and director of the film "No river protects me from myself", which will be screened on July 24 as part of the Galicia in Focus program, described her film as an attempt to reconsider how to approach reality: "That's actually what I asked myself as an artist and filmmaker who, as a documentary filmmaker, works with what's around her. The film examines how to approach that otherness, different realities from, say, my position as a privileged white European woman who travels to remote areas to film something."

At the European Film Festival Palić, renowned director Slobodan Šijan promoted his book Writers in Cinema: Literary History of Our Film Experiences - an Anthology. "First of all, behind this book was a long-term process to create the first edition. Then, faced with the reactions of the readers and the fact that the book quickly sold out, the publisher FCS contacted us to make a second, supplemented and expanded edition," pointed out Šijan. "It has been supplemented with several outstanding texts, the most significant of which is Danilo Kiš masterpiece The Lute and the Scars".

On the sixth day of the festival, Thursday, July 25, at the Summer Stage in Palić, “78 Days” by Emilija Gašić will be screened in the Official Selection at 9 p.m., followed by “The Girl with the Needle” by Magnus von Horn at 11 p.m. In the Parallels and Encounters program at the Abazija Cinema in Palić, the schedule includes the films “Song of Goats” by Andrzej Jakimowski at 6 p.m., and “Panopticon” by George Sikharulidze at 8 p.m.

The European Film Festival Palić has been 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 friends and media partners.