Spirits high at Sarajevo film festival

By Nicholas Walton
Sarajevo correspondent, BBC News

Nick Nolte was joined by his son to promote the film Peaceful Warrior

The Sarajevo Film Festival in the Bosnian capital attracts big stars as well as aspiring art house film directors and has come a long way since its humble beginnings in a basement in a besieged city.

It must be the one such event where the location and its history are more important than the films themselves.

It began as a gesture of defiance and a symbol of the city's will to keep hold of some of the little luxuries in life like going to the cinema, even under the gaze of Bosnian Serb snipers and artillery gunners.

Now, more than a decade after the Bosnian war ended, the film festival has entered its 12th year and grown up.

The rock star Bono is among the stars who have turned up at this year's festival, commanding the front pages of newspapers normally reserved for politicians squabbling about ethnicity.

US actor Nick Nolte's press conference anecdotes about acting with Marlon Brando have held journalists' attention, not the elections due in October.

The festival now operates as a fully professional event

The films are of course important too. The organisers say about 100,000 people attend screenings during festival week.

The festival bills itself as a centre for regional cinema, able to show offbeat works from aspiring South Eastern European directors alongside those from more established names.

Flowers and popcorn

Among the offerings in the feature film competition programme are Melon Route, a movie about people trafficking in the Balkans.

Das Fraulein looks at refugees from the fighting in the former Yugoslavia who end up in Switzerland, and Kythera is a film about how love fades away for one couple who spend their time watching television.

Some of the venues are impressive. One open-air arena, hidden behind apartment blocks just next to the Milijacka River, holds more than 2,500 film-goers.

Women in the crowd are given flowers as they enter and the sweet smell of fresh popcorn hangs in the warm August air.

Bono came to show his support for the festival and its organisers

Some of the films are unlikely to make it to the mainstream. One film is about a Slovenian man who gives speeches at funerals.

Another from Hungary, is about Nazi Germany trying to build a time machine. For film-goers used to a diet of Hollywood blockbusters at the city's cinemas it is a taste of something very different.

There are some in Sarajevo who say the festival is an annoyance and a chance for a small group of elitist organisers to be self important, wandering around town with their official accreditation ostentatiously dangling around their necks. "It's the Festival of Very Important People", one cynic says.

But despite the stars and the plush, heavily sponsored venues, others say the festival is just as important to Sarajevo as it was back in the days of the siege.

"Our city has always been a cultural centre," an enthusiastic film-goer called Tamara says.

She says the festival is a way of showing that despite the war and the divisions that still afflict Bosnia, Sarajevo can still punch above its weight when it comes to culture.