Fine Line Film Fest Hands Out Awards Tonight
The fifth edition of the short film festival reaches its finale tonight: two juries pick the best of 23 films from Serbia, the region and the world, in a hall usually booked for concerts, not cinema.
Tonight the lights go down at mts Hall for the third evening running since the festival began. From Friday through today, every night at seven, the same hall has turned into a cinema for two hours, and after the last screening comes the reason the fifth edition of Fine Line Film Fest was built as a three day cycle rather than a single evening: conversations with the filmmakers, followed by the awards ceremony.
The short film festival runs in Belgrade from September 18 to 20, and this year’s program is split into two competition blocks. Beyond Borders brings eleven films from around the world, while Made in Balkan gathers twelve works from Serbia and the region. Twenty three titles in total, however easily that number rolls off the tongue, add up in practice to three evenings of nonstop viewing, since a short film leaves no room for the kind of pause a feature can build into its own dramatic structure.
Two juries decide which of those 23 deserve an award, each one assembled to mix professions rather than just names. Beyond Borders is judged by actor Ognjen Micovic, director Adem Tutic, cinematographer Nico Schrenk and director Jelica Jerinic. Made in Balkan is judged by cinematographer and director Aleksa Borkovic, actor Alessandro Egger, actress Laura Anic Kaliger and director Petar Lakic. In both cases at least one jury member comes from the same generation as the filmmakers being judged, an unusual choice for a festival of this kind, since short films here are more often judged from a distance than by people who share the same working experience as those who made them.
Made in Balkan, this year’s regional selection, sticks to themes that hardly sell as a pleasant night at the movies. Uros Lakic’s “Cathedral” follows a married couple whose view of the world shifts when the wife’s blind friend comes to stay. Stefan Ivancic’s “Upon Sunrise”, about a single mother who turns to small time scams to feed her son after losing her job, has already collected awards, the CH Cinema Network Award in Fribourg and a prize for best Balkan short at the Tirana International Film Festival. Young director Milica Vujasin from Banja Luka arrives with “Kao da me nema”, winner of the audience award at the Brac Film Festival, alongside titles from Slovenia, Montenegro and Croatia, a sign that the regional selection recognizes neither the borders of the former shared state nor those of genre.
Beyond Borders heads in another direction, toward the festival circuit critics have followed for years. “Nobody Barks” by Julia Coldwell Serra already carries the Grand Prix from the Busan International Short Film Festival, Leo Cernic’s “Cosmonauts” the top prize from Regensburg, and “Primera Enseñanza” a directing award from Locarno. Andrej Haring’s “Dead Air” stands out as well, set in 1991, the moment war breaks out in neighboring Yugoslavia, following a radio host trying to get a news bulletin on air despite the army and censorship, a theme that carries a very different weight in this hall than in the country the film came from.
What makes the festival more interesting than a simple list of titles is the venue itself. mts Hall was built for concerts and sporting events, not for a film program, and choosing it for the fifth edition speaks to an ambition to move short film out of smaller cinemas and festival corners and into a space that usually belongs to far bigger crowds. It is still a gamble, since a short film does not sell the way a concert does, but it signals that the organizers do not see the festival as a closed loop for an audience already convinced, and are trying to widen its reach instead.
The fifth edition closes today with a conversation with the filmmakers and the awards ceremony, joined by guests who traveled to Belgrade for the festival. The program can be followed on the festival’s Instagram account, finelinefilmfest. What this year’s selection shows, both regional and international, is that the short form stopped being a warm up for features long ago. It is a genre of its own, with its own rules for the economy of storytelling, and the hall it has been given this year is, finally, taking that seriously.
