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It takes a while in “Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day” to reach Barren Island, a notorious penal colony in the former Yugoslavia where no cells were necessary and armed guards counted on the sea to keep those incarcerated in line. However, a prison without bars reveals itself early on in writer-director Ivona Juka’s stark and occasionally overzealous black-and-white drama. The film is set in 1957, just after the country escaped the threat of fascism of the Nazis, only to fall into the clutches of communist Josef Broz Tito, who was no less shy about casting off dissenting voices, including those of the gay community.

When Tito maintained his hold on the public’s imagination through propaganda, “Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day” unapologetically offers up a much grimmer image of his leadership through following a pair of romantically intertwined filmmakers Lovro (Dado Cosic) and Nenad (Djordje Galic). Having a supporter in the upper...

Oscar season is almost upon us, which means that controversies surrounding the awards will become increasingly more reported on. The latest controversy is tied to an international award contender – ‘Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day’ or ‘Lijepa Večer, Lijep Dan’ in Croatian.

‘Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day’ (2024) is a Croatian drama directed by Ivona Juka, featuring actors like Emir Hadžihafizbegović and Elmir Krivalić. The film, selected as Croatia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards, follows four friends who fought against the Nazi regime and later become famous artists.

Despite their past as war heroes, they face criticism from the government for their films and personal lives, leading to an agent being hired to undermine their work.

In the case of “life imitating art” the producer of Ivona Juka’s movie says that the Croatian governing body neglected its Oscar contender because of the film’s LGBTQ+ themes.

Ivona Juka’s drama Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day, which is Croatia’s Oscar entry this year and is screening in L.A. today as part of a guerilla awards campaign, breaks fresh ground for its exploration of the persecution of Yugoslavia’s LGBT community under Tito in the 1950s.

Croatian actor Dado Ćosić stars as partisan hero Lovro who fought the local fascist forces of the Ustashas and the Nazis as a young man during WWII and then built a career as a film director in peacetime.

Ćosić is joined in the film by actors from across the ex-Yugoslavia in the roles of ex-resistance comrades and cinema collaborators, including Nenad (Djordje Galic), Stevan (Slaven Doslo) and Ivan (Elmir Krivalic).

Some 16 years after their wartime bravery, Lovro and his friends come under the scrutiny of Tito’s Communist Party for their sexual orientation.

Apparatchik Emir, played by veteran actor Emir Hadzihafizbegovic,...

The long shadow of the war and its ravages continue to haunt a group of late middle-aged Sarajevan friends in the low-budget, tonally uneven dramedy “May Labor Day” from Bosnian multi-hyphenate Pjer Žalica. Although the material is both a little thin and a tad familiar, the script ticks off a range of contemporary social problems and issues such as the brain drain to Europe of the educated younger generation, junkie no-hopers who get clean through faith, the orphan kids kept off the street through charitable ventures and the nagging dissatisfaction felt by the ordinary men who fought for their country, but feel that it has lost its way.

Serving as the closing night attraction of this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, “May Labor Day” is a co-production of all the territories of former Yugoslavia and features an ensemble of the region’s best-known actors, who appear to take great pleasure in performing together.

For its first edition the International Migration Film Festival has assembled a diverse lineup of eight titles tackling the plight of refugees and migrants around the world and running the gamut from feelgood comedy to gut-wrenching dramas and docs.

They will vie for a best feature film award worth €15,000 and also a prize for most inspiring script worth €5,000, both to be decided by a prestigious international jury comprising Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who serves as jury president, American actor Danny Glover, Iranian actor Shahab Hosseini, Bosnian actor Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, and British costume designer Sandy Powell.

The selection, which will be visible in Turkey June 14-21 on the FestivalScope platform, serves as a nice primer of recent pics tackling the topic, but also as “a reminder to not let people forget about refugees” during this time when the coronavirus pandemic – which has also greatly added to...

Post Yugoslav War drama is Alen Drljevic’s debut feature.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has submitted Alen Drljevic’s Men Don’t Cry into contention for this year’s best foreign language film Academy Award.

The film premiered at Karlovy Vary - where Picture Tree International boarded international rights - and played at Sarajevo Film Festival this week where it won the Youth Audience Award.

It also won the Special Jury Award and Europa Cinema Award in Karlovy Vary.

Director Drljevic’s debut feature counts an all-star Balkan cast including Leon Lucev, Boris Isakovic and Emir Hadzihafizbegovic.

The film, set two decades after the war ended in Yugoslavia, follows a diverse group of veterans who gather at a remote mountain hotel to undergo group therapy.

Watch the Men Don’t Cry trailer below or on mobile Here.

Exclusive: German seller lands Special Jury Award winner produced by Jasmila Zbanic.

German sales outfit Picture Tree International has boarded international rights to Yugoslav wars drama Men Don’t Cry, which this weekend scored the Special Jury Award and Europa Cinema Award in Karlovy Vary.

Picture Tree acquired the film from producers Damir Ibrahimovic, Jasmila Zbanic and Rebekka Garrido.

Director Alen Drljevic’s debut feature (Drljevic was a first Ad on a trio of Zbanic’s films) features an all-star Balkan male acting team including Leon Lucev, Boris Isakovic and Emir Hadzihafizbegovic.

The film, set two decades after the war ended in Yugoslavia, follows a diverse group of veterans who gather at a remote mountain hotel to undergo group therapy.

Watch the trailer below or on mobile Here.

Emotions are highly charged as old enmities and hostilities emerge, but the participants gradually learn to overcome their deep divisions.

The well-received film is now gearing up for at...

Ines Tanovic’s film, which screened in competition of Sarajevo Film Festival, has been chosen as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Oscar submission

The Association of Filmmakers of Bosnia and Herzegovina has announced that it has selected Our Everyday Life by writer-director Ines Tanovic as the country’s candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Award.

The film received its world premiere yesterday [19] in the feature film competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Interview: Ines Tanovic

Our Everyday Life, a co-production of Bosnia’s Dokument Sarajevo, Croatia’s Spiritus Movens and Slovenia’s Studio Maj, tells the story of a middle-class Sarajevo family struggling with everyday problems, and stars Uliks Fehmiu, Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, Jasna Ornela Bery, Maja Izetbegovic, Nina Violic and Boro Stjepanovic.

The other two films considered by the Association were Thousand by Nenad Djuric, which screened in Sarajevo’s Avant Premieres section, and Sabina K. by Cristobal Kruzen.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only country of the...

Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.

The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.

Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.

Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.

As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...

Dramas which keep the tension tightly under the lid while eschewing a boiling melodramatic outburst can be challenging. On the other hand, de-dramatized dramas with smoother edges are easier to chew on for laid-back, cerebral viewers. Croatian director Ognjen Sviličić demonstrates the mastery of combining both approaches in his fifth feature, These Are the Rules.Bus driver Ivo (Emir Hadzihafizbegovic) and his spouse Maja (Jasna Zalica) are an ordinary middle-aged couple living a routine life in a block of apartments. Their calm and unexcited life peppered by everyday bickering will soon come crashing down as the parents discover their teenage son has been severely beaten. Tomica (Hrvoje Vladisavljevic) comes home one morning, just as his parents are getting up. They let him recuperate the missing...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Russia big winner at FilmFestival Cottbus for second consecutive year.

Russia was the big winner for the second year in a row at the FilmFestival Cottbus with Ivan I. Tverdovsky’s Corrections Class picking up four awards at the weekend.

The feature debut received the International Jury’s main prize ¨for its unsentimental and unpretentious presentation of a powerful social theme presented through the prism of an excellent ensemble performance¨, thereby qualifying for the Connecting Cottbus Special Pitch Award, which will allow Tverdovsky and his producers to pitch a new project at the East-West co-production market in a year’s time.

Tverdovsky’s Russian-German co-production, which won the Best Debut prize at Kinotavr in Sochi and the East of the West Award in Karlovy Vary, also picked up the prizes from the Fipresci and Interfilm juries in Cottbus.

Last year, the main prize at Cottbus went to Russian director Alexander Veledinsky’s The Geographer Drank His Globe...

Update 12:20 Pm Pt: The Venice jury tonight gave its Golden Lion to a bird, but it wasn’t the particular bird many were expecting. Alejandro G Inarritu’s opening night hit Birdman was shut out of the awards. The Golden Lion instead went to Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence. The metaphysical film is the final leg of a trilogy about what it means to be a human being. It carries on from 2000’s Songs From The Second Floor and 2007’s You, The Living. Pigeon was well-received by critics here so it’s not a total surprise – and this was a movie folks had been waiting for since it didn’t turn up on the Cannes roster after Andersson’s previous two debuted there. Jury member Tim Roth said he liked Birdman and told the press corps of its omission amongst the prizes,...

While a Venetian touch (gondolas, art, architecture, margherita pizzas) certainly adds to the charm of the Venice Film Festival experience, for a third year straight, cinephiles can skip the packing their suitcases portion of a trip and bring the Lido into their own screening rooms. Venice Biennale’s Sala Web has reteamed with Festival Scope folks to offer an appetite whetting total of eleven features (8 Orizzonti section & 3 Biennale College – Cinema). Announced yesterday, digital tickets for the Sala Web screenings (4€ each) can be grabbed at www.boxoffice.festivalscope.com – but don’t throw your popcorn into the microwave just yet. The 2014 sampling of world cinema/72nd Venice Film Fest is only available during a period of 5 days beginning at 9 pm (Italian time) on the day of each film’s official presentation.

Among the headliner items we find Kandahar helmer Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President tells a story set in a fictional...

The 71st Venice Film Festival announced its lineup this morning, highlighted by films from American directors, including David Gordon Green, Barry Levinson, Peter Bogdanovich, Lisa Cholodenko, Andrew Niccol, and James Franco. As had been previously announced, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton and many others, will be the opening film when the festival begins on Aug. 27.

Click below for the entire list of 55 films playing in Venice.

Competition

The Cut, directed by Fatih Akin

Starring Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian, George Georgiou

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, directed by Roy Andersson

Starring Holger Andersson,...