SELECTION COMMITTEE EXPLANATION / COMPETITION PROGRAM – NATIONAL SELECTION

The impressive number of entries for the Martovski Festival is yet another confirmation of the vitality of Serbian cinematography.

A large number of short films showed a variety of themes, as well as a new tendency: the introduction of escapist, sophistically designed films, often musicals, reflecting the current interest of domestic auteurs.

The selected animated films showcase the high-profile production in Serbia. Besides the refined poetic works and the increasingly sophisticated use of digital animation, the content with the elaborate dramaturgy characteristic of genre pieces is also impressive.

In experimental film and video art, the assembly of recorded or found material as an abstract audio-visual form is present in several works. Sometimes, the experiment is used for social commentary, too.

The documentaries chosen for the selection vary from the proper to the inventive television form with modern content based on original themes, and, on the other hand, poetically and ethically deeply thought-out auteur works, in the true sense of the word. We point up several biographical portraits of artists or other impressive personalities, people with unusual and difficult fates, as well as several films dealing intriguingly with the recent past in this area, fallen into oblivion.

As the longest-running film event in Serbia, the Martovski Festival offers the audience a confrontation with complex social issues, as well as the innovative zeal of new generations of auteurs.

SELECTION COMMITTEE EXPLANATION / COMPETITION PROGRAM – INERNATIONAL SELECTION

The Martovski Festival international selection confronts us with a picture of a world more than ever in motion, making the colorful panopticon that represents contemporary documentary and short film even richer. From Chile to Chukotka, auteurs of various nationalities send us messages, often not from their native countries, or about people from somewhere else. Migrants are no longer only the subject of films, they are auteurs trying to use film language to explain their experiences and the phenomenon of borders - real or invisible ones that persist despite everything.

The Iranian story about a woman's tattoo came to us from France, the postcards from the South American wilderness are written by Polish authors. Ukrainian child refugees are now growing up in former German barracks, and a Russian teacher is seeking her fortune in the center of the "adult film industry" - Prague. The Turks tell the story of the first Syrian cosmonaut...

Nevertheless, some things still remind us of the importance and power of tradition: the Polish school of film and the school of animation are still unparalleled, the Croatian school of cartooning in today's age of computer animation still retains its distinctive artistic mark, experimental film still has its home in France. Also, Austrian film is constantly on the rise.

Finally, it should be said that the Festival also bares the flavor of the region, i.e., with the works of Croatian and Montenegrin filmmakers, and the stories about invisible borders and fitting into a new environment are enriched by fascinating Serbian female auteurs - from Finland and Austria.

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