22/08/2013 10:40

Cinema City presents a retrospective of Želimir Žilnik's work

This year’s International Film Festival Cinema City will officially open on Monday, August 26, and will last until September 1. Over 130 films will be screened in eleven programme selections. This year’s selection Respect to… is dedicated to Želimir Žilnik, author of numerous feature films and documentaries and one of the founders of the docudrama genre, awarded at international and national film festivals. From the beginning of his professional film career, Žilnik focused on contemporary issues, including social, political and economic criticism of everyday life. His debut film “Early Works” (1969) won a Golden Bear at the Berlinale, and after having problems with censorship in Yugoslavia, he spent middle 1970s in Germany, working for the independent film production.


After returning to the country in the 80s he directs a series of well-prepared television docudramas that indicated the onset of nationalist tensions and dissolution of Yugoslavia. During the nineties, through independent film and media productions he realized a number of feature and documentary films that deal with the cataclysm in the Balkans.

The breakdown of the system of values in post-transition countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the problems of refugees and migrations under the new circumstances of “extended Europe” make the framework of his current cycle that started in 2000 with “Fortress Europe”. The latest film from this cycle is “Pirika on Film”, which premiered in April this year at the 60th Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, where Žilnik received the Life Achievement Award.

In addition to his work in film production, as of 1997 Žilnik has also been teaching – he is a mentor and executive producer of a number of international film workshops, and as of 2006 he has been engaged as a visiting lecturer at several international film schools. As part of this year’s academic programme of the Festival, Želimir Žilnik will hold a three-day workshop “Cinema Youth Plus” for young film authors, attendants of the CINEMA CITY Campus. The workshop will address the circumstances and decades of working on low-budget films.

Respect to… Želimir Žilnik will screen the total of 18 choice films, representing all of the above mentioned phases of his work:

"The Illness and Recovery of Buda Brakus", "Brooklyn - Gusinje", "Black Film", "Kenedi Goes Back Home", "Kenedi is Getting Married", "Wanderlust", "June Turmoil", "Marble Ass", "The Unemployed", "Little Pioneers", "Early Works", "Oldtimer", "The Old School of Capitalism", "Tito Among the Serbs for the Second Time", "Fortress Europe", "Uprising in Jazak", "Hot Paychecks", and "A Newsreel on Village Youth, in Winter".

The entire programme of the festival, including locations and screening schedule can be found at the following link.