PRESS RELEASE
20.02.2006
“GOLDEN BEAR” FROM THE BERLIN FESTIVAL FOR GRBAVICA,
Thessaloniki International Film Festival Balkan Fund
Participant and Award Winner
The film Grbavica, whose script treatment participated in and received an award from the Balkan Script Development Fund of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 2003, won the “Golden Bear” of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival Official Competition Section on Saturday, February 18.
Grbavica is an extremely important film for the Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s Balkan Fund, as it is the first film which emerged from this workshop and received a public screening, winning at the same time a prestigious distinction such as the Berlin Festival’s “Golden Bear”. “Grbavica is an example of how valuable professional script development is and what funds such as ours can achieve”, says Christina Kallas, artistic director of the Balkan Fund.
On her part, the Director of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Despina Mouzaki, stated that “ The case of Grbavica provides us with positive reinforcement for this Festival endeavor, while at the same time it opens the way for new initiatives which will further broaden the Festival’s activities through such new institutions as Crossroads for co-productions and Agora for publicity and promotion of films, which we introduced in our last edition, as well as The Balkan Survey which focuses on the same geographical area as the Balkan Fund. Grbavica’s success gives us the opportunity to announce our plans for the next festival, in which the presentation of clips from Balkan films at special screenings will be included, to aid in the search for co-producers and general film promotion.”
Grbavica is Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic’s first feature film. It depicts the daily life of a rape victim in the turmoil following the Balkan war. Mirjana Karnovic (Life is a Miracle, Underground) and Luna Mijovic are cast as mother and daughter. The film’s script treatment participated in the Balkan Fund’s three day workshop in 2003 and its development was supported by the first edition of the Balkan Fund. Besides the monetary award, the Balkan Fund benefited the film in other ways: the Fund functioned as a “stamp” of quality, and as an aid in the search for financing, leading to a co-production agreement involving Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany and Croatia. The scriptwriter and director herself states that without the Balkan Fund she would not have managed to make the film, nor even finish the script and bring it to such a level of quality.
We would like to remind you that the Balkan Fund is a script development fund that was created by and functions within the framework of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in collaboration with the Centre National de Cinematographie (CNC) and the Goethe Institute, for feature films from Balkan countries that offers a platform for the development of cinema in this area. Among the Greek films which have been supported by this scheme up to this point are the upcoming films of Constantine Giannaris, Nikos Grammatikos and Christos Georgiou.
The deadline for the 4th edition of the Balkan Fund is 30 June, 2006.
For more information please contact Angeliki Vergou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , www.filmfestival.gr/balkan_fund/index_uk.html
Tel: +30 210 870 6005, +30 210 870 6000
