Celebrating SEEfest Accomplishments in 2020
A Time to Reflect
As 2020 comes to a close, it seems to be the perfect time to acknowledge and celebrate that we’ve made it through one of the most difficult years of our lives.
We want to share some of SEEfest’s accomplishments this past year, some against all odds.
In February as we were finalizing details for our 15-year anniversary celebration, it became clear it wasn’t going to be happening as we imagined.
SEEfest was among the first film festival to pivot and successfully switch to an online festival, partnering with one of the world’s leading platforms, SHIFT72.
Pushing the Festival back, the 2020 edition with 51 films, most of them North-American or U.S. premieres, ran from July 15 to August 16.
Virtual juried awards were organized with 21 industry professionals from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Oakland, and Canada, Sweden, and Spain.
The popular annual Cultural and Literary Salon exploring the ‘Boundaries of Belonging’ took place on Zoom.
Seven online workshops dedicated to industry Accelerator for new projects engaged filmmakers from Canada, Greece, Romania, Serbia, and L.A.-based Bulgarian-Armenian, Serbian, Filipino-Romanian, Peruvian-American and African American filmmakers.
Plus…
- Four film premieres took place on the Virtual Cinema platform, in partnership with Synergetic Films.
- Two special online events were organized in November and December to highlight prominent Oscar contenders from the S.E. European region.
- Through direct SEEfest advocacy, several festival films were acquired by U.S. distributors, with special legacy programs in pre-production.
- New interns joined SEEfest in 2020 from CSU Long Beach, CSU Northridge, UC Santa Cruz, and Boston University.
- A new partnership was initiated with BEEM, the innovative online platform for film distribution and presentation.
- Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on major technological upgrades in marketing, fundraising, the SEEfest website, and social media.
- A strategic initiative was launched to expand outreach to diverse communities both in Southern California and across the United States.
In a year of uncertainty, we continuously asked ourselves, how can we best serve our audience.
As a nonprofit festival, we bumped up against new and unexpected costs required in order to make the changes we considered important in order to meet our mission.
We are grateful for your support and the partnership of our sponsors who helped us make it through the year.
In order to help us meet our commitment to the 2021 Festival, we hope you will consider making a year-end donation to see us through as we continue to bring you the best film and culture from South East Europe.
Stay tuned for details as SEEfest 2021 takes shape!
Sending you best wishes for a safe and happy 2021,
Vera Mijojlic and the SEEfest Team
50 Binge Worthy Films from South East Europe
3 More Days – SEEfest 2020 Closes on August 16
Get the best deal with all 50 films for $55 before our online festival ends on August 16. Don’t miss the boat! Sail away from the pandemic worries and indulge your inner genre fan in Predrag Ličina’s sci-fi horror spoof The Last Serb in Croatia, or urban crime tale in Slovenia’s The Corporation from director Matej Nahtigal. Hungary’s Pilátus from director Linda Dombrovszky touches the emotional core of an aging mother and her successful but emotionally distant daughter, Serbia’s Common Story from director Gordan Kičić navigates modern marriage with much-needed humor, while Esther Turan and Anna Koltay chart Hungarian youth subculture in BP Underground – Electronic Music.
Get your movie travel pass to South East Europe!
Growing up hard, searching for directions
Renowned Serbian documentarian Ivana Todorović seamlessly transitioned to short fiction in her delicate yet powerfully told tale of surviving domestic abuse, When I’m at Home, while Alexandros Kakaniaris offers his own take on growing up hard in The Dude, a young boy’s attempt to break into the world of adults.
Making sense of politics
Join Romanian grandfather telling his American grandson about his role in the 1989 revolution that overthrew the Communist dictatorship, My Father’s Revolution by Diana Nicolae; and pair it up with a satirical animated short turning the notion of freedom and democracy on its head in Moldovan appropriately titled Freedom from directing duo of Mircea Bobînă & Vadim Țigănaș. While browsing our shorts program, stop by Igor Ćorić’s winning short animation Passage (Serbia), and end on a touching note in Henning Backhaus’s delightful, innovative nod to diversity in Austrian live-action and animation short, The Best Orchestra in the World.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
SEEfest At Home – Spotlight on Short Films, An Inventor and An Acrobat
The clock is ticking…SEEfest 2020 ends it’s run on August 16
With the festival halfway through, make sure you use your passes within the next 14 days! Once we hit Aug 16, our online edition will no longer be available. So get your pass and popcorn, and spend the night with three police units patrolling the capital in Stephan Komandarev’s Rounds (Bulgaria), revisit history in Croatian Schindler’s List-type story, The Diary of Diana B. about the unsung heroine of WWII, follow an orphan’s journey to her long-lost family in Come Find Me (US/Romania) and meet the first-ever indigenous Roma woman to graduate from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in the Bulgarian documentary My Gypsy Road.
Get your movie travel pass to South East Europe!
The flamboyant inventor, and an old-fashioned acrobat
The Century of Dreams protagonist invented the perfume spray bottle, the plastic zipper, the lighter with a side-button and 400 other patents, was also among the first airbag developers and managed to socialize with movie stars in Monte Carlo. A very different man is the subject of Greek documentary Spiros and the Circle of Death, a throwback to an older, dying art of motorcycle death-rides and family tradition of circus acrobats.
Spotlight on short films: nature, politics, techno absurd, sci-fi, and more!
Spend some time with the poetic and powerful ode to nature Then Comes the Evening (Serbia/Bosnia Herzegovina), devastating political satire Zimnicea (Romania), laugh-out-loud Best Game Ever (Hungary), and Two (USA/Turkey) which tips its hat to sci-fi fans. Each of our three program blocks with diverse short vignettes offers plenty to explore.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
Movie Marathon at Your Home
A movie marathon curated for movie lovers: Legacy, Zana, Omar and Us, and Open Door
Fans of genre films will find a lot to be appreciated in Dorian Boguta’s debut feature gem Legacy, an atmospheric psychological thriller from Romania with Teodor Corban in the role of the world-weary detective, crime genre’s iconic character.
Two SEEfest jury award-winners: Kosovo’s Zana, by newcomer Antoneta Kastrati and starring the captivating Adriana Matoshi as the troubled survivor; and Turkey’s refugee saga Omar and Us by the directing duo Maryna Er Gorbach and Mehmet Bahadir Er.
Another strong debut comes from Albania’s Florenc Papas whose women-centric Open Door journeys into a patriarchal society by staying firmly focused on the inner world of its women.
Get your movie travel pass to South East Europe!
The epic wind Bora of Northern Adriatic and Turkey’s Queen Lear
These two films shared SEEfest 2020 Jury award for Best Documentary, and it is easy to see why: Bora, Story about a Wind follows the eponymous gale around the intersection of cultures in Northern Adriatic, while Queen Lear takes us to rural Turkey where local women take part in the production of Shakespeare’s play with their own twist. Both films are blowing much-needed laughter into the cinematic sails and regaling us with entertaining and uplifting stories.
Buy festival PASS to these, and other movies HERE.
Poetry behind SEEfest 2020 film: Pumpkin on the hot roof of the world
Celebrated Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014), ‘a leading figure of postwar neo-avant-garde poetry in Central Europe and internationally acclaimed absurdist,’ is the subject of the documentary film featured at SEEfest 2020 – Pumpkin on the hot roof of the world: Poetry and the Eternal Life of Tomaž Šalamun. He believed passionately in the power of poetry to liberate the human spirit, and so do we.
Nine of Šalamun’s books of poetry have been translated into English. He lived in the U.S. for a while, exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and taught at the University of Pittsburgh.
Watch this entertaining cinematic portrait that bridges Central Europe and America through world-class poetry.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
Get the Festival Pass to all SEEfest 2020 films!
Full-scale SEEfest 2020 program is live!
Are you ready to binge-watch the 2020 selection of new films from South East Europe? Travel with movies to a region where diversity and entangled histories lend rich material to filmmakers of all stripes. From WWII dramas to intense chamber pieces, movies about the wind – or Shakespeare plays starring women from rural Turkey; sci-fi political satire, and comic retelling of a marriage headed for divorce. These films take you to remote villages and the pains of acting auditions, atmospheric police procedural, and corporate takeovers of inner-city neighborhoods.
Movies are indeed a great way to travel, especially to a region with dozens of mostly small countries that are still the least known part of Europe for most Americans. Travel with SEEfest pass and visit South East Europe! Note: Available only to patrons in the U.S. All films with English subtitles.
TAKE THE JOURNEY ONLINE AND BUY FESTIVAL PASS
Book recommendation: An Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman
Discover Armenia from the early 1960s in this wonderful account by Grossman, whose astute observations on human nature are uncannily applicable to our own times. The book is entertaining, a fast read, gripping, philosophical, and intimate, all at the same time. A major 20th-century writer, Grossman wrote about the WWII horrors as well as the horrors of the Stalinist era. His sketchbook on Armenia is a short-form masterpiece and an excellent introduction to Grossman’s other works.
An Armenian Sketchbook is available on Amazon.
Films from Yugoslavia’s storied cinematic past at Cannes Classics 2020:
Two unforgettable films from ex-Yugoslavia are included in this year’s Cannes Classics: Who’s Singing Over There? (1980, Serbia) by Slobodan Šijan; and The Ninth Circle (1960, Croatia) by France Štiglic. Hungarian 1968 Upthrown Stone by Sándor Sára is also featured in the selection, as well as two more Eastern European films: Polish The Hourglass Sanatory (1973) by Wojciech J. Has, and Russian July Rain (1966) by Marlen Khutsiev.
This year’s program will be shown, in whole or in part, by the festival Lumière in Lyon (October 10-18, 2020) and by the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes (November, 23-26, 2020).
Cannes Classics 2020 complete selection can be found HERE.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
Watch “The Son” in SEEfest Virtual Cinema
The Son
Handsome adolescent Arman was adopted as a baby. Soon after his adoption, the parents got a biological son. Arman is constantly fighting the demons of his past, and, at the same time, he tries to protect his younger brother Dado (14) from all the challenges of today’s Sarajevo – drugs, guns, or going to war in the Middle East. The film follows a family struggling with internal tensions while fighting to survive in Bosnia.
THE SON is a second feature for director Ines Tanović. The film is currently playing in the SEEfest virtual cinema.
Full scale 2020 SEEfest program is here!
The full festival program is now online. Our team has worked hard to put together an engaging lineup of features, documentary, and short films. Information about all selected films is available on our website, at seefilmla.org. This year you can binge-watch the entire SEEfest selection of 2020 films. Please note that online viewing will be available for patrons in the U.S. only.
Classic book behind 2020 SEEfest movie: IZA’S BALLAD, by Magda Szabó
We invite you to read the novel that inspired one of this year’s SEEfest films in competition (Pilate). Written by the celebrated Hungarian writer Magda Szabó, the book, titled IZA’S BALLAD in English translation by George Szirtes, is a mother-daughter story that spans the bygone 20th century past and the new utilitarian age of neo-capitalist Hungary. Find the book HERE.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
SEEfest Launches 15th Edition Online July 15 – August 16, 2020
The 15th annual South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles (SEEfest), postponed in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic, announced the official launch of its 2020 edition which will run from July 15 – August 16, at the dedicated online outlet (athome.seefilmla.org).
“After months of incredible work by our very own dream team, the 2020 festival is happening online,” said Vera Mijojlic, Founder and Director of SEEfest. “It was truly a heroic effort. We battled technical issues, filmmakers reluctance, and lots of night time work – but we did it.”
In a joint statement the SEEfest Board of Directors noted, “While many other festivals have completely canceled their 2020 editions, SEEfest has not only kept up its programming, but managed to produce the full festival on one of the top software platforms in the world which serves the likes of Cannes, American Film Market, and Hollywood studios.”
The 2020 festival edition, SEEfest’s 15th annual, features a rigorously curated program of 57 films highlighting the cinematic expressions of South East Europe’s cultural diversity across twenty countries.
North American premieres in the program include, among others, three remarkable debuts: Romania’s Legacy, a rare psychological thriller from the country known for its trailblazing new wave cinema; Kosovo’s haunting story about motherhood and struggles with war times traumas in Zana; and mother-daughter story about aging in the modern world, Pilate, an adaptation of the novel by the celebrated Hungarian writer, Magda Szabó.
Also on the program are Bulgarian My Gypsy Road whose heroine is the first-ever Roma woman to graduate from the Academy of Dramatic Arts; and Bora, Stories of a Wind, a visually magnificent parable about freedom paying a poignant tribute to the multi-ethnic intersection of Slavic, Italian, and Germanic cultures in the Northern Adriatic.
All program information and links are published here.
Festival passes and individual tickets are available at https://athome.seefilmla.org/.
About the South East European Film Festival (SEEfest)
SEEfest presents cinematic and cultural diversity of South East Europe to American audiences and creates cultural connections through films, artistic and social events. SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA Foundation, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Diary of Diana B at SEEfest 2020 Online Cinema
Watch “The Diary of Diana B.”
Austrian-born Diana Budisavljević leads the comfortable life of the Zagreb upper-middle class when in the fall of 1941 she learns that Jewish and Serbian (Christian Orthodox) women and their children are being taken to Ustasha camps where they are left to die of starvation and disease. Since the Jewish Community is only allowed to send provisions to the Jewish prisoners, the equally vulnerable Serbian women and children are left helpless.
This is the untold story of how Diana organized the largest rescue operation, a campaign that, by the end of World War II, will have saved more than 10,000 children from certain death.
Don’t miss this extraordinary historical drama currently playing in SEEfest virtual cinema.
Submissions for the 36th IDA Documentary Awards extended till July 28!
Submissions are open for the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, the world’s most prestigious awards dedicated solely to the documentary genre, celebrating the best nonfiction programs and documentarians of the year!
Entry is open to any non-fiction shorts, features, series, and podcasts completed or publicly released between October 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. Apply by July 7, 2020!
Films from SEE region in Cannes Cinéfondation selection
Congrats to three student films that made the Cannes Cinéfondation selection: Agapé by Márk Beleznai, Budapest Metropolitan University, Hungary; Contraindicatii by Lucia Chicos, UNATC “I. L. Caragiale,” Romania; and Nihče ni rekel, da te moram imeti rad by Matjaž Jamnik, UL AGRFT, Slovenia.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
SEEfest 2020 Extended Dates Plus Virtual Jury Awards
SEEfest extends 2020 festival dates to August
We are pleased to announce the dates of the extended festival run in 2020: From virtual cinema soft launch on June 24 to full program launch on July 15 through Aug 16. During the extended run, a curated program of 57 films will be showcased in our virtual theaters online. Please visit program pages on our website to find out more about the films in this year’s lineup, and start watching early releases.
Jury Awards of the 15th SEEfest
In an exceptionally difficult year our heartfelt thanks go to the members of SEEfest 2020 juries whose awards pay tribute to outstanding films in seven competition categories:
BEST FEATURE FILM, GRAND JURY PRIZE
Zana, by Antoneta Kastrati
Honorable Mention: Omar and Us, by Maryna Er Gorbach & Mehmet Bahadır Er
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Ex-aequo:
Queen Lear, by Pelin Esmer; and Bora, Story About a Wind, by Bernhard Pötscher
Honorable Mention: Come Find Me, by Diana Nicolae & Noriflorentina Vito
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY IN A FEATURE FILM
Dávid Hartung, cinematographer, Pilate
Honorable Mentions – shared:
Virginie Saint-Martin, cinematographer, God Exists Her Name is Petrunya
Sevdije Kastrati, cinematographer, Zana
Jani-Petteri Passi, cinematographer, Corporation
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY IN A DOCUMENTARY FILM
Bernhard Pötscher, cinematographer, Bora, Story About a Wind
BEST SHORT FICTION
The Dude, by Alexandros Kakaniaris
Honorable Mention: When I’m at Home, by Ivana Todorović
BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM
Then Comes the Evening, by Maja Novaković
Honorable Mention: A Cat is Always Female, by Martina Meštrović, Tanja Vujasinović
BEST SHORT ANIMATION
Passage, by Igor Ćorić
Honorable Mention: Two, by Emre Okten
Congratulations to all filmmakers!
Interview with COMMON STORY filmmaker
We continue to profile filmmakers whose new movies are featured in our 2020 edition. This week we invite you to hear from Gordan Kičić, who spoke with SEEfest team member Azra Isaković about his film, and the triple role he played in COMMON STORY as director, producer and lead actor. Make sure to follow SEEfest youtube channel for more interviews and trailers to come. You can watch the interview here.
Submissions Now Open for the 36th IDA Documentary Awards!
Submissions are open for the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, the world’s most prestigious awards dedicated solely to the documentary genre, celebrating the best nonfiction programs and documentarians of the year!
Entry is open to any non-fiction shorts, features, series, and podcasts completed or publicly released between October 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020. Apply by July 7, 2020!
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!
SEEfest Online Edition Launches with COMMON STORY
SEEfest Goes Live with Lighthearted COMMON STORY
Filled with genuine warmth and gentle humor, Common Story (Serbia, 2019, 91 min) takes us through the saga of an actor, Veljko Radisavljević, who believes that the entire universe has conspired against him. He is a walking problem convinced that all the discord in his life is created by people around him, which is why he often gets into comic conflicts with friends, family, colleagues, and even random passersby.
Waiting for the big role that he thinks will solve all his troubles, Veljko slowly begins to come to grips with the real problems in his life.
Directed and produced by the lead actor, Gordan Kičić, this U.S. premiere marks the launch of SEEfest online edition. Don’t miss this rare lighthearted film from South East Europe, and a successful feature debut of a popular actor.
Watch COMMON STORY in the virtual screening room.
Interview with ZANA filmmakers
We begin a series of interviews highlighting filmmakers behind some of the films in the official selection of SEEfest 2020, starting with the L.A.-based team of ZANA. Check out the conversation Hipolito Munoz had with director Antoneta Kastrati, cinematographer Sevdije Kastrati and producer Casey Cooper Johnson. Make sure to follow SEEfest YouTube channel for more interviews and trailers to come, like this interview with ZANA filmmakers.
Summer Festival Jam
Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, usually slated for June, will be held outdoors from July 31-Aug 9, preceded by Pula Film Festival in Croatia taking place July 18-26 in the beautiful outdoor venue Arena, one of only six surviving amphitheaters from Roman times. On the heels of these two festivals, Sarajevo will welcome visitors to its 26th edition taking place Aug 14-21 in several outdoor venues.
SEE filmmakers on the move: Ioana Mischie VR project goes to Cannes
Tangible Utopias, poetically dubbed as ‘noetic science and hope-filled vision’ VR project by Romanian filmmaker Ioana Mischie is one of 23 selected for Cannes XR industry platform. Last year two of her other projects were successfully presented at SEEfest Accelerator.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
If you like our programming orientation and the cultural mission of SEEfest, consider making a donation to support our work. Thank you!
FRIENDS OF SEEFEST
SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; and by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood. Special thanks to ELMA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their continued support of our programs.
Follow SEEfest on Instagram and Facebook where we post SEE news as it happens!