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New European Documentaries and Eco Dox programs at the 30th Palić European Film Festival

27.06.2023.

As part of the 30th Palić European Film Festival, held from July 15 to 21, 2023 in Palić and Subotica, the programs New European Documentaries, which brings the best documentaries from the European continent, as well as Eco Dox, a program based on European documentary productions dedicated to the challenges of environmental protection, will be presented. The programmer of both sections is Igor Toholj.

In the New European Documentaries section, the films In Ukraine directed by Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski in a Polish-German co-production, Vintersaga by Carl Olsson (Sweden, Denmark), The Last Seagull by Tonislav Hristov (Bulgaria, Finland), Mavena by Andrija Lekić (Serbia, Montenegro), After Work by Erik Gandini (Sweden, Italy, Norway) and After the Bridge directed by Davide Rizzo and Marzia Toscano from Italy, will be screened.

As a special screening in this selection, the film Invoked by Luka Papić and Srđe Vuča will be shown.

" In accordance with the spirit of the times, this program is dominated by war, labor exploitative, post-capitalist, post-transition themes, related to the consequences of terrorism, as a gloomy inspiration for directors. Various stylistic and visual approaches are also represented in this year's selection. From observational documentaries (In Ukraine, Wintersaga) with fixed camera position presenting two diametrically distant halves of European everyday life - wartime and peacetime, essays on the paradox of the contemporary division of labor and introspective, tragic experience of the world (After Work and Mavena), to existentialist portraits with different omens (After The Bridge, The Last Seagull). Each of the mentioned films, in my humble opinion, represents a small initial capsule for deeper reflection, self-knowledge and an attempt to understand and interpret the various aspects and layers of the drama of our time." said the selector of this program, Igor Toholj.

The Eco Dox section will present the works Visitors by Veronika Lišková (Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia), Sunday, Sunday by Laura García Andreu (Spain, Lithuania), Planet B by Pieter Van Eecke, Southwind by Maksime Berthou and Marko Požlep (Slovenia , France), The Ways of the Heroes by Ana Konstantinović (Serbia), Small and Big by Želimir Guardiola (Serbia) and The Mighty Afrin: In the Time of Floods by Angelos Rallis (Greece, France, Germany).

Igor Toholj explained the selection of the films for the Eco Dox program with the words: "Radical youth environmental activism in one of the most developed capitalist societies is given a tailwind by the engaged Planeet B. The program also includes two films with a very current river theme: Southwind is an essay, a road movie about the research feat of modern Argonauts in discovering the ecological and anthropological aspects of the gigantic river course Mississippi, while The Mighty Afrin: In the Time of Floods is an apocalyptic picture of the wild Brahmaputra river, which by floods of apocalyptic proportions irreversibly changes both the environment and the life of the population in its basin. Domingo Domingo is an honest and witty portrait of an individual orange grower from Spain, caught in the jaws of EU bureaucratic nomenclature, and The Visitors is a visually refined dedication to a socio-anthropological experiment in which the isolated inhabitants of the northernmost island archipelago in Europe witness the melting of the permafrost".

Toholj especially highlighted the domestic films in this selection: "This year, the selection includes two domestic documentaries with different perspectives - The Ways of the Heroes and Small and Big. The first, the debut, was carried away by the new activist optimism of local communities’ heroes of the of several countries, and the second, the work of the author of anthology films of Serbian documentaries, gives a dramatic, cautionary and pessimistic view of the still present NATO bombing ecological consequences in Serbia."

The jubilee 30th edition of the Palić European Film Festival, organized by the Open University of Subotica, will be held from July 15 to 21, 2023, in Palić and Subotica, while the rich pre-festival program begins on the first day of July. This year's Festival edition expects over 150 film professionals from Serbia and abroad, and in addition to the rich film program, the audience will be able to enjoy numerous dynamic accompanying contents - concerts, exhibitions, book promotions, workshops and master classes.

The Palić European Film Festival was 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 partners.

Gorky List has been a sponsor and friend of the Palić European Film Festival for more than 20 years, as an indispensable part of our artistic scenography, but also a partner that encourages the engagement of the audiences which explore the experiences of the presented film productions through the Gorky List Audience Award. This year, the traditional cooperation will once again be extended to the musical part of the Festival program.