Miloš Đukelić, a member of the FEST Board, announced the beginning of this year's Fest Pro, which lasts from 28 February to 2 March 2024.
This programme is intended and directed towards, above all, film professionals, and aims to create a platform for the film industry that will enable networking, learning and exploring new opportunities.
According to Miloš Đukelić, ‘More than a Festival’ is a programme that should create something new, show that the festival is not just about watching films, but that it is much more than that.
The aim of the programme is for people to talk more about films, understand what they watch, and above all get informed and learn.
‘We hope that the Fest Pro project, as it exists in many other world festivals, will be a place where people of similar professions will exchange their experiences and improve the film industry,’ he said.
The goal of this year's Fest Pro is to gather a wider audience, and not strictly only people from the industry, i.e. professionals. The wish is for young people to become interested in dramatic arts and to learn something new through various workshops and panels.
One of the first workshops will be a ‘Casting Workshop for Actors in Front of the Camera’, which aims to attract young and potential future artists, as well as accomplished actors. Đukelić pointed out that casting was a recent phenomenon in Serbia. Previously, actors got roles through acquaintances or by a director's recommendation, and today roles are mostly obtained through casting. And that is why it is very important for actors and all those who want to act to master the art of going to a casting.
A master class at this year's Fest Pro will also be held by the well-known director, Lordan Zafranović. He will talk about how the construction of the film is made and how the characters are built in it.
This year, special emphasis will be placed on film criticism, which has been neglected here in recent years. Critics from Russia, France, Mongolia, and Serbia will talk about the importance of proper film criticism.
Đukelić emphasized that there was an idea to hold a film criticism workshop starting next year and to establish an award for the best film criticism.
In addition, the panels that will be organized will deal with film financing and how music videos are made, in order to draw attention to film aesthetics.
Participation in workshops and panels is free, with mandatory registration through the website fest.rs , section FEST Pro . Events organized by FEST Pro will not be attended by anyone who does not have accreditation or adequate registration.
In addition to Lordan Zafranović, among the attractive names is Lukas Loughran - an award- winning Swedish-Australian actor. He acted in the TV series ‘Krypton’, the zombie apocalypse ‘Zoo’, ‘The Postcard Killings’ directed by Oscar winner Danis Tanović, among others. He won the Best Actor Award at the 2010 LA Movie Awards, the 2017 European Cinema Award for Best Actor and was nominated for Best Actor at the Madrid International Film Festival 2015. He is the main villain in the award-winning Netflix miniseries ‘The Billion Dollar Code’ and stars in the Sky's series ‘The Lazarus Project’. He appears in the film ‘Hilma’, the latest feature film by Lasse Hallström. Lukas Loughran will be on the panel ‘Profession of Casting Manager’ on 1 March at 10.15 a.m.
Another interesting guest is Zoran Bihać - a German director of music and advertising videos of Serbian descent, known to the public for his long-term collaboration with the rock group Rammstein and its singer Till Lindemann, as well as with other musicians such as The Fantastic Four, Emigrate, Tokio Hotel and others. He made numerous commercials for the world's most famous companies, but also for the mega-popular video game ‘World of Tanks’. Bihać will be on the panel ‘Art of Music Video’ on 1 March at 4.30 p.m.
