Sarajevo Film Festival was at a standstill on Wednesday, holding no screenings, talks and social receptions in accordance with a Day of Mourning declared by the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cultural and entertainment events were not to go ahead in public places, out of respect and solidarity with the victims of a femicide committed in the Bosnian town of Gradacac on Friday.
In the place of scheduled events, a public panel on the topic of “Femicide in Film, Television and New Media” was held on the Festival Square, in which filmmakers Aida Begic, Vanja Juranic, Kumjana Novakova and Ademir Kenovic, and actress Nadine Micic critically discussed the normalisation of gender-based violence, and how it has been tackled on screen.
On Friday, the day the festival opened, Nermin Sulejmanovic live-streamed the murder of his ex-wife, Nizama Hecimovic, on Instagram, shooting her before killing two other people and himself. It was viewed by 12,000 people, and received 126 likes. Meta, Instagram’s owner, has since removed the footage from its platform.
A dimension of the brutal killing that particularly enraged the public was that Hecimovic had already reported Sulejmanovic, who had prior arrests on his record, to the police for harassment and violence, and had not been granted a restraining order.
Demonstrations erupted in several Bosnian cities. Protestors walked through the centre of Sarajevo, drawing attention to a culture of silence around gender-based violence, and failures in the policing and judicial system to adequately protect women. Human Rights Minister Sevlid Hurtic has called for a new law which would see femicide recognized as a specific crime.
Macedonian director Kumjana Novakova was in Sarajevo for Tuesday’s world premiere of her documentary Silence of Reason, which uses Hague war crimes testimony to reckon with violence against women as a systematic weapon of the Bosnian War, and the reclassification of rape and sexual slavery as crimes against humanity after survivors broke their silence.
A participant in Wednesday’s panel, she told The Film Verdict: “I am really moved to see a major industry festival making a decision to simply stop because we have to reflect and articulate on an emergency that requires the strength and solidarity among all of us, and that is far more important than the “everyday” issues of the festival. This sets up an example that a break and change of paradigm is possible. We can and we will mobilize in order to voice a concern of social importance.”
“I also would like to insist on the fact that we who work in film or arts and culture in general cannot replace systemic responsibilities, but we can and will exercise pressure,” Novakova added.
Croatian director Vanja Juranic, another panel participant, was at the festival to show her film Only When I Laugh, inspired by the real-life case of a woman, Ana Magas, sent to jail for killing her husband after she endured years of domestic abuse. Presenting the film, which she called “a universal story about a woman trapped in a patriarchal environment,” she dedicated the screening to the Gradacac victims.
Sarajevo Film Festival initially announced that they would put a halt only to red carpet and social events to mark the Day of Mourning, before expanding the cancellation across almost all its schedule on Wednesday. A number of competition premieres scheduled for today have been pushed back, including the world premiere of Austrian-Iranian director Sudabeh Mortezai’s Europa, and the Bosnian premiere of Romanian documentarian Vlad Petri’s Between Revolutions.
“I think the decision taken today by Sarajevo Film Festival to cancel all the public screenings is an important step to raise awareness regarding the horrific recent murder that happened in Bosnia. It is also a necessary step for a festival that deals with the recent history, a festival that connects the past with the present,” Petri told The Film Verdict.
“I was looking forward for the today’s screening of Between Revolutions since this is a film that deals with the past and with the lives of women and the audiences here are really engaging and keen to question the filmmakers,” said Petri. “But I see the bigger picture, the life of a woman was recently lost and we should all stop today for a minute, an hour or more to reflect on the recent horrific events. Thank you Sarajevo Film Festival for doing this!”
