This year's Fest brings certain conceptual novelties, embodied in two programme sections, Fest Focus and Dreamlike Film, which each contain eight films.
’We can say that this year Fest Focus includes films similar when it comes to theme or content, and the Dreamlike Film selection includes works that are similar in form,’ said the artistic director of Fest, Jugoslav Pantelić, explaining the criteria for the new programme sections.
This year's Fest Focus brings together films dealing with the theme of children or teenagers facing a certain type of violence. Pantelić emphasizes that the idea for the programme somewhat imposed itself, by observing, on the one hand, the world we live in, and on the other, the films themselves.
‘Last year, a lot of good films dealing with this topic were shot worldwide, which coincided with the need for us as a society to pay more attention to the most sensitive among us, namely children and young people. I hope that the films will to some extent help us to better recognize the problems that children deal with, which they are often not able to tell us,’ he said.
Pantelić points out that these films, although thematically similar, are diverse when it comes to approach and genre and that they treat violence in its various forms. As he stated, within this selection there are also films by established filmmakers, such as 'Monster' (Kaibutsu), the director of which, Hirokazu Kore-eda, won the Palme d'Or, as well as some titles that may be less catchy, but none the less quality, such as the film 'My Little Nighttime Secret' (Odin malenkiy nochnoy sekret), which deals with a very difficult topic in a tense and exciting way.
The Dreamlike Film programme section is completely new at Fest, and it draws its inspiration from the book of the same name by the famous editor, director, film theorist and professor, Marko Babac, who in it dealt with the connection between film and dreams. ‘A dreamlike film can be widely understood, and a dreamlike state can be achieved through a number of
filmic means. This selection comprises films that come from different parts of the world, deal with different topics, and sometimes follow the logic of the dream in the way of narration, and sometimes with their own style create a meditative or unusual atmosphere such as the one we experience in our dreams,’
Pantelić said. He added that for some time he had had the idea of a selection made up of films ‘with a more or less unconventional expression and which represent a special adventure for the viewer, from whom they demand surrendering in a way.’
The Dreamlike Film selection includes works such as ‘Samsara’, by the Spanish director Lois Patiño, which ranked high on last year's lists of relevant critics, as well as the film ‘Sidonie in Japan’ (Sidonie au Japon), with Isabelle Huppert in the lead role.
