Nis Gets Two Film Festivals, Four Days Apart
The Serbian Film Actors Association runs the Nis Film Festival from August 29, while the City of Nis opens its own program August 25. Film Encounters' two founders are working apart this year.
On the poster for the new Nis showcase, Pavle Vuisic flips the viewer an obscene gesture. The still is borrowed from the series “Vise od igre,” and this year’s slogan comes from the same scene. Around town these days, people read the gesture as a fair summary of the negotiations that preceded it. The Nis Film Festival, as the program organized independently by the Serbian Film Actors Association is called, has been announced for August 29 through September 3. Four days earlier, on August 25, a second film program starts in the same city, this one put together by the City of Nis.
Neither has published a venue yet. The actors’ side expects to announce a location and lineup in mid August, together with the name of this year’s winner of the “Pavle Vuisic” lifetime achievement award. The city’s event currently has no name, no announced venue and no published program.
What Fell Apart Between the Two Founders
The festival that until last year was called Film Encounters has two co-founders on equal footing, the Serbian Film Actors Association and the City of Nis. The Festival Council brought representatives of both sides together, but a joint organization was never agreed on.
“The Festival Council brought both founders together, they talked, but they didn’t reach an agreement. The actors invoked the UFGS Assembly’s decision to run the festival independently this year.”
That is how a source close to the negotiations, who asked not to be named, described the situation to Nova.rs. Festival Council chairman Dejan Dabic confirmed the same account under his own name, and in more detail:
“In the festival body I chair, the Film Encounters Council, the members are representatives of both festival founders and a representative of one of the organizers, the Nis Cultural Center institution. We held an informal joint meeting, but no agreement was reached on jointly organizing the festival, whose traditional slot is the last week of August. The Serbian Film Actors Association decided to organize some version of it in Nis without the organizational participation of the City of Nis and the Nis Cultural Center.”
An attempt to bring the showcase back to its earlier format at the Summer Stage in Nis Fortress collapsed along with that agreement. With only one of the two founders now standing behind the program, the name Film Encounters can no longer be used, so the new event was named after the city instead.
Who Is Running Each Program?
The actors’ festival is led by Petar Bencina, president of the Association. A video posted to the new event’s Instagram account shows actors, among them Marko Janketic, Milena Predic, Radovan Vujovic and Viktor Savic, inviting the public:
“Dear audience, we invite you to the Nis Film Festival, which will take place from August 29 to September 3 in Nis, organized by the Serbian Film Actors Association. This festival brings together everyone who loves film, actors and filmmakers alike. Screenings, meetings and conversations about cinema await you. Come celebrate film with us!”
On the city’s side, the name of the organizer has not yet been confirmed. Director and executive producer Marko Jovicic confirmed he had been contacted, but immediately narrowed the scope of his involvement.
“It’s true that I was called about the Nis festival, but only for branding work. I don’t know what the City of Nis plans to do beyond that. I’m fully committed to the festival in Vrnjacka Banja and can’t take on anything else right now,” Jovicic told Nova.rs.
Why This Is Bigger Than One Lost Season
The festival was founded in 1966 and is the only one in the country that rewards acting rather than directing. That distinction is its whole dramatic arc: while other festivals measure a director’s signature, Nis has spent six decades measuring what shows on an actor’s face. The lifetime achievement award carries Pavle Vuisic’s name, and the Grand Prix “Naisa,” along with the “Car Konstantin” and “Carica Teodora” trophies, have become part of the domestic film vocabulary.
Last year the 60th edition did not take place, the first time that had happened in the festival’s history. The Association boycotted the showcase, the City ran its own program in the same slot called “Susreti na Tvrdjavi,” and the audience answered with empty seats at the Summer Stage. This year is not a repeat of the boycott but a doubling: two events four days apart, in a city that already had a film program running this summer, since we reported earlier in the season on the City Fest in Niska Banja and its thirteen titles without any acting guests attached.
One award is also left hanging. The “Pavle Vuisic” prize went to Anica Dobri last summer, but because that edition was canceled, it was never handed to her. If this year’s programs go ahead as announced, two such awards would need to be presented on the same stage, one overdue and one new.
The institutional rift has become visible to the naked eye. Cultural policy here is not an abstraction from some strategy document, it is a question of who gets to say the festival’s name out loud and who pays for the electricity on stage. Nis audiences at the end of August will not be choosing between two films, but between two claimants to the same tradition, and that kind of choice usually costs both programs something.
