Nis Film Encounters Returns After a Year of Silence

Last summer the stone of the Nis Fortress went without projector light, and that absence spoke more clearly than many opening ceremonies. A festival that has spent decades measuring acting rather than film alone simply did not take place, and the sentence announcing it was worded to the edge of code: circumstances and the social climate had not offered conditions worthy of the tradition. When an institution reaches for the word “climate” instead of a concrete reason, it usually knows exactly why.

Now, though, the festival wheels are turning again. The Nis Film Encounters run from August 29 to September 3, after a year-long pause, and this time the Association of Film Actors of Serbia has taken organization into its own hands. The edition’s motto, More Than Play, is at once a programmatic statement and a quiet reminder that acting rarely amounts to what a single frame can hold.

Why was one pause more than a technical absence?

The canceled anniversary was not merely a gap in the calendar. For a festival that ranks among Serbia’s oldest film gatherings, a skipped year always risks breaking a continuity built over decades, and continuity is the only real currency a festival has. Audiences settle into a rhythm, cities build identity around a date, and actors gain a place where their craft is judged apart from direction and screenplay, which on the domestic festival map is no small thing.

That is what makes the decision to let the actors’ guild run the event itself so telling. This is no mere administrative reshuffle, but a shift of the festival closer to the very people whose work defines it. When a professional association stands behind a manifestation, the message is that acting will stay at the center, rather than the side attractions that so easily slip control and turn a festival into a fairground.

What the six days of program actually offer

The lineup, judging by the announcement, is broader than competition alone. The field features the most significant domestic films of the past two years, alongside world and domestic premieres, positioning the festival as a place of first screenings and not only retrospectives. Panels, exhibitions and masterclasses round it out, a format that turns the event from a string of screenings into a workshop, a space where acting is discussed aloud rather than merely applauded.

The high point remains the Pavle Vujisic lifetime achievement award, a name that sets its own standard. Vujisic was acting stripped of ornament, a face that could carry a whole film even when it said little, and an award invoking him obliges the festival to keep its attention on the craft rather than the red carpet. Seen this way, More Than Play sounds less like a marketing line and more like a condition of survival.

One question no program can settle in advance still hangs over it: will a single edition run by the actors themselves be enough to restore the trust broken by last year’s silence, or will that take more than six days beneath the Nis Fortress? What would you most want to see when the projector light comes back on over Nis?