“Geographies of Survival”: Kumjana Novakova Discusses Her Sarajevo Film Festival Human Rights Award-Winning Silence of Reason

Described as “performative research into the court archive of the Kunarac et al. case known as the ‘Foca Rape Camp Trial’” before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Kumjana Novakova’s Silence of Reason took this critic’s prize for the most powerful nonfiction film at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival (August 11–18). Silence of Reason, which runs a swift 63 minutes, follows Novakova’s prior feature, the Oscar-shortlisted Disturbed Earth (2021), co-directed with Guillermo Carreras-Candi. Along with eerie images of rural stillness and an ambient sound design, in which nature is heard loud and clear, the breathtakingly cinematic, archive-based essay pairs a poetic voiceover with the scrolling testimonies of anonymized women, whose voices are necessarily distorted. These are the survivors of rape and sexual enslavement during the war that shattered the Balkans — and birthed the Sarajevo Film Festival — and for whom these pastoral locations can only evoke memories of unbearable unseen pain. Just prior to the closing night ceremony, where Silence of Reason walked away with the Human Rights Award, Documentary reached out to the Macedonia-born Novakova, a busy multihyphenate who is also an international teacher and curator, and even a co-founder of her own Sarajevo-based fest. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Is There an Orchestra Playing in the Depths of the Glacier?”: Margreth Olin on Her TIFF-Debuting Documentary, Songs of Earth

My DOX:AWARD top pick for the Ekko jury grid I participated in at this year’s CPH:DOX, Margreth Olin’s Songs of Earth, was also number one in my critic’s notebook for the doc most needing to be experienced on the big screen. In this palpably loving portrait of the veteran filmmaker’s elderly parents and the country that shaped them (and her), “Olin juxtaposes jaw-dropping, drone-captured images of the awe-inspiring Norwegian landscape with closeups of her dad’s bald pate, his tender hand on her mother’s back, as the environment and humankind become one” (per that notebook, and my coverage). Thus, it comes as little surprise that Wim Wenders (Olin directed “The Oslo Opera House” segment for Cathedrals of Culture) and Norway’s cinema treasure Liv Ullmann are both credited as EPs. Or that the Toronto International Film Festival will be debuting the stunner on these shores. So to discuss all this and more — including the doc’s big screen soundtrack performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra — Filmmaker reached out to the human rights-focused director (26 honorary awards and counting) just prior to Songs of Earth’s September 13th premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Forgetfulness is Fought with Words”: Lina Soualem on Her TIFF-Premiering Doc, Bye Bye Tiberias

"I wonder if we can find ourselves fully in a world we invented,” the French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actor Lina Soualem eloquently ponders in the role of ever-questioning narrator of Bye Bye Tiberias, her extraordinary, multigenerational, female-focused family portrait. Seen through contemporary footage and 90s home movies — expertly interwoven with material from historical archives — the women include not only Soualem’s conservative, customs-observing grandmother and great-grandmother, who never left the Palestinian village their entire community had been forcibly displaced to, but also her mother, Hiam Abbass, a rebellious dreamer set on becoming an international actress. And now, 30 years on and nearly a hundred roles later (most recently as Marcia Roy in Succession), Abbass returns with her camera-wielding daughter, the only Euro-born-and-raised member of the clan. As the globetrotting thespian offers in one especially poignant scene, “I think we know how to become mothers, but never know how to separate from a mother.” No doubt the same can be said of the attachment one feels to the stories that create home. So to learn all about this personal-political (and emotional) cinematic journey, Filmmaker reached out to Soualem, whose prior doc Their Algeria delved into her paternal history — specifically the divorce of her grandparents (mère et père to the French actor Zinedine Soualem) after 60 years of marriage. Bye Bye Tiberias debuts September 11th at the Toronto International Film Festival.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Heart of Darkness (and Light): The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival

Taking place from August 11-18, this year’s 29th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, the largest film fest in (and focused on) Southeast Europe, unsurprisingly presented a wealth of cinematic gems to choose from. (And in a variety of venues, from the storied National Theater, built during the Austro-Hungarian takeover, to the evening-only Open Air Cinemas.) That is, when one wasn’t scrambling to catch the numerous talks and masterclasses—taught by this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo recipients/hot tickets Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay and Charlie Kaufman—or attending the equally busy CineLink Industry Days (which, like the festival itself, is smartly geared towards filmmakers working in the region). But as a first-time visitor (okay, clueless American) to the festival and surrounding Balkan neighborhood, I first needed to absorb a bit of history to get my bearings. And serendipitously for me, I was able to learn about both in one of the most unexpected ways.

To read the rest of my cinematic travelogue visit Filmmaker magazine.

No justice, no peace: A Day, 365 Hours and The Silence of Reason

TRAUMA / Two Sarajevo Film Festival-premiered films take a justice-seeking women's journey, revealing the resilience of rape survivors. Eylem Kaftan’s A Day, 365 Hours follows Reyhan, Asya and Leyla, a trio of young (pseudonymous) women in Turkey attempting to come to terms with – and to seek justice for – the horrific abuse they suffered growing up, a victimisation made all the more monstrous by the fact that each knew her perpetrator not only intimately but genetically. As Reyhan so eloquently puts it in the third «chapter» of the film (titled «Can You Change Your DNA?»), «You want to tear yourself apart and recreate yourself.» Not an overblown sentiment coming from a brave survivor who’d experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her own father – and thus will never escape the traits of her perpetrator no matter how far she flees. Even a glance in the mirror might read as a threat to this band of sisters.

To read the rest of my paired-film essay visit Modern Times Review.

“We Didn’t Want an Audience Member To Be Able To Say, ‘Oh, That Was Just One Bad Cop’”: Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon on Sound of the Police

Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon’s Sound of the Police is an exhaustive exploration of the oppositional dynamics between African Americans and law enforcement, from slavery right up to today. Through a wealth of archival imagery, interviews with academics, authors and assorted deep thinkers of various backgrounds and colors as well as an ear-catching soundtrack (indeed the doc’s title is a nod to rapper KRS-One’s 1993 anti-police brutality anthem “Sound of da Police,” which serves as a sort of sonic exclamation point throughout the ABC News Studios doc), the veteran filmmakers make a compelling case that any relationship built on the racist foundation of the slave patrol is one systemically doomed from the beginning. Which, of course, demands nothing less than a new start. (Let the reimagining begin!) Just prior to the film’s August 11 Hulu debut, Filmmaker checked in with the busy Oscar-nominated, Emmy Award-winning MacArthur Fellow and his producer-director-FSU professor collaborator (who’s also a former executive at Oprah’s Harpo Films).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Unstill life: Apolonia, Apolonia

IDENTITY / A mesmerising documentary delving into themes of art, love, motherhood, and overcoming societal challenges. Lea Glob’s (2015’s Olmo & the Seagull, co-directed with Petra Costa) Apolonia, Apolonia is an auspicious solo feature debut on multiple levels. Crafted patiently over a span of 13 years, the poignant doc, which took top prize in the international competition at last year’s IDFA, follows Apolonia Sokol, a young and wildly ambitious French figurative painter of Danish and Polish descent, who seems forever to be globetrotting headlong into the future – one that sees her catching up with the great masters of the art world. But perhaps also escaping a rather chaotic past that includes growing up in an underground theatre that her bohemian parents founded on the «wrong» side of the Seine.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.