'Krecari,' Tara Lime Kiln Film, Vies for MIOB In Shorts

Stone stacked in a circle, a fire lit that then burns for days, smoke pushing through cracks in the kiln, and a smell that, according to those who have caught it once, clings to clothes and does not let go easily. That is the work the short documentary “Krecari” follows: lime burning on Mount Tara, a craft the film shows is already fading. Now that footage has found a European audience too. The film has entered the running for the MIOB In Shorts Award, where the winner is not chosen by a jury but entirely by the public, through voting.

The documentary stays with the preparation and firing of the lime kilns, the craft process itself rather than the story wrapped around it, and that is what sets it apart from a typical ethnographic report. “Krecari” does not explain the trade from a distance, it stays beside it while it happens, while the stone is stacked, the fire fed and the kiln left to do its work. The subject is a tradition being pushed out by industrialization, and the film never states that decline in a line of narration. It lets the image of a job fewer and fewer people are left to carry on speak for itself.

The film is credited to three young filmmakers from Serbia: Nevena Micic, Katarina Micic and Filip Marojevic. After several seasons of festival appearances by Serbia’s younger generation of documentary makers, it was only a matter of time before a domestic short film reached a European competition of this kind, one where the audience does not just watch but decides. “Krecari” made the most of that moment.

The MIOB In Shorts Award is part of the MIOB network, short for Moving Images, Open Borders, which brings together six European festivals: Crossing Europe Filmfestival Linz, the Palic European Film Festival, Les Arcs European Film Festival, Scanorama European Film Forum, Trieste Film Festival and Filmfestival Cottbus. Each member festival nominates two European short films, and this year’s selection reached twelve titles across fiction, documentary and experimental work. As with most such networks, the point is less to rank a best and a runner-up than to offer a snapshot of what is currently happening in European short film.

The format is what sets this award apart from most festival competitions. Rather than a jury deciding behind closed doors, all twelve films are available to watch, with English subtitles, on the This Is Short platform from September 1 through October 15, 2026, and viewers simply vote for their favorite. Unlike a premiere screened once for one festival crowd, the fate of “Krecari” is now being decided across a far wider and more scattered field, where every viewer who opens the link carries a vote equal to anyone else’s.

The MIOB network does not usually let the films in its selection travel alone. Member festivals place them in a broader, often historical, frame, set up conversations with film critics and give the filmmakers themselves room to explain where the story came from. For a subject like the disappearance of the lime-burning trade, which without that context can easily read as just a picture of an old kiln on an unfamiliar mountain, that framing is the difference between a passing shot and a film people remember. The viewer gets not only the image but the reason it was filmed while it was still possible to film it at all.

The winner will be announced in November 2026, at the closing of Filmfestival Cottbus in Germany, where all twelve titles, “Krecari” included, will screen for a live audience. Until then, the verdict on whether a story about the end of an old trade on Tara can hold the attention of a viewer who may never have heard of the mountain stays open, and stays in the hands of that same audience.