Young Critics Network
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Film reviews
Tamara Liješević
Pelican is the 2022 debut film by director Filip Heraković. The main role is played by Edi Ćelić and the film premiered at the Black Nights Festival in Tallinn where it won a special jury award for best director. A professional athlete's inability to look at life from a different angle after an injury that could end his career is one of the old staple stories in cinema. Films about the depression main characters go through when placed in isolated spaces in rehab is an old narrative, from the Hollywood greats to smaller European films. But what makes this film unique?
Iva Vukotić
The Hidden Life of Trees is a 2020 documentary film. Directors are Jerg Adolf and Jan Haft. It is based on Peter Wohlleben's 2015 book bestseller of the same title. This forester wrote very lively and interesting texts about ecology and forest protection, but he also discovered that trees communicate with each other and that they actually have feelings similar to human. His theses and ideas drew large audiences that gathered to hear his lectures and take walks with him in the woodlands to see for themselves what Peter was talking about.
Bojana Šolaja
Have You Seen This Woman? is a film that will make you question what you saw, not just whether and which woman you saw. This debut by Dušan Zorić and Matija Gluščević has garnered global interest. Editor Olga Košarić won the Authors under 40 Award at the 79th Venice Film Festival, where the film had its premiere. This was followed by the Critics Award at the 24th Black Movie International Independent Film Festival in Geneva and the Best Director Award at the 15th International Film Festival in Bangkok. Excellent reception by local audiences is evidenced by the Grand Prix Award "Aleksandar Saša Petrović" at the 28th Auteur Film Festival in Belgrade. Although it resists genre moulding, this feature film could be called an experimental existential drama about the search for identity – both female and film identity.
Nikola Jović
After a series of films set in the heart of alienating existence in Bucharest under transition, Radu Muntean and several of his frequent contributors swich the brutalist concrete for the cold landscapes of Transylvania in his latest film Intregalde (2021), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and which could be seen by the regional audiences at the last year's editions of Zagreb Film Festival and the Auteur Film Festival.
Isidora Mitri
American poet Walt Whitman wrote in his poem Song of Myself: “I contradict myself; I am large…I contain multitudes”. In a similar tone, Fernando Pessoa responds to Descartes' “Cogito, ergo sum” by writing “Be what I am? But I think of being so many things". The heroine of Matija Gluščević and Dušan Zorić's debut film faces similar existential doubts. Have You Seen This Woman? goes a step further and wonders what happens when this multitude of identities is left unrealised and, as such, remains trapped in the armour of imposed social roles of a woman.
Ismira Mašić
Director Foor van der Meulen opens the film with the theme of euthanasia, and the question of acceptance or rejection is subtly elaborated throughout the film. We meet the characters at a family dinner where Jan (Johan Leysen) informs his children Iris (Julia Akkermans) and Ivan (Eelco Smits) of his decision to end his life. The response from Iris and Ivan is initially similar, but their views quickly start to diverge. While Ivan accepts his father's decision and helps him to prepare for the final act, Iris resolutely, emotionally and sometimes childishly tries to change the decision she can neither accept nor understand. One of the strongest dramaturgical procedures in the film is the switching of the characters' perspectives. Ivan, who was firm and rational while his sister was ready to kidnap their father to talk him out of his idea, eventually breaks down. Thanks to her experiences, mostly unsuccessful, Iris is the one who manages to accept her father's decision. At the very moment of his death, she is the one who is there with Jan.
Pavla Banjac
Portuguese film Alma Viva, winner of the Audience Award at the Network of Festivals in the Adriatic Region (awarded on the 28th Auteur Film Festival in Belgrade), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Critic's Week, is a debut feature film directed by Kristela Alveš Meire.