Festival Watch

During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, films continued to be shown in Sarajevo basements despite the fact that the city was under siege, with little food, water or electricity. Shells were exploding all around, and snipers high on the hills continuously aimed at the citizens below.

"If someone came to see one of my films, they had to dodge the snipers to get there, so I knew they were coming because they really wanted to see it," says the Bosnian director Srdjan Vuletic, who himself has two blotches of hollowed-out flesh in the back of his leg where he was caught by sniper-fire while dashing across the road.

Now, the gunmen have left and going to a film is no longer a life or death expedition; but the appetite for film remains in the city, and at the 9th Sarajevo Film Festival this month, the programme of films from Bosnia and other Balkan countries, along with UK and US offerings, was larger than ever. Started as what has been described as a "defiant act of resistance" in the dark days of the war, one of the aims of the festival now is to give film- makers from the region an opportunity for their films to be seen internationally.

Vuletic, 33, is one of the most prominent directors in Bosnia today. Unlike in Yugoslavia's communist era, when film scripts had to be vetted to ensure that they were "glorifying the reality of socialism and the progress of communism", he now has total artistic freedom, and in Summer in Golden Valley, which received its world premiere at the festival, he has made a raw, uncomfortable film about the realities of life, the chaos, poverty and corruption, in post-war Sarajevo.

It is the story of 16-year-old Fikret Varupa, played by Kemal Cebo, who tries to pay off a debt his dead father owes, and gets tangled up with a kidnapped girl in the process of acquiring the large sum of money he needs to settle the debt and to preserve his family's honour.

Neither Kemal Cebo nor his real-life best friend Haris Sijaric, who plays his best friend and sidekick in the film, are professional actors. The relationship between the two boys and between Zana Marjanovic, the kidnapped teenager they both fall for, is beautifully understated. The gentleness of their relationship contrasts strongly with the violence of Sarajevo outside the four walls of the flat where the two boys are holding their quick-witted, fearless hostage.

"This film is saying that our mothers and fathers failed to secure a good life for us, so it is up to us to do it for ourselves," says Vuletic. While he admires well-made big-budget films, he feels that emotion is lacking in too many of them. "I would like to put sensibility back into movies," he says, then laughs, as if aware of how grand this sounds.

While the film is a tender portrait of its three protagonists, its view of Bosnian society is very harsh. Vuletic insists that he is painting a true picture of the post-war life.

"This film is the reality in Bosnia, with no make-up on," he says. "Corruption is everywhere. If a crime is committed, 85 per cent of the time the police will look the other way. Bosnia is a bizarre country. A mix of chaos and harmony. We have a heritage of tolerance that every now and then is stained with blood. I have no clue about how things will move on here. People felt very optimistic when the war ended, but the economic crisis has made them tired of fighting to survive."

Bosnia's other big directing name is Pjer Zalica, 39, who just happens to be a mate of Vuletic's. Zalica, who made documentaries during the war and has made several short films, has just won a Silver Leopard at the Locarno film festival for his first feature film, Fuse, a story of people in a mid-Bosnian town two years after the war who are frantically preparing for a visit from Bill Clinton, a man who, according to Zalica, is adored by Bosnians for putting an end to the fighting.

It is a powerful, moving film of ghosts from the war, of mistrust and betrayal, and of endemic police corruption; but it is leavened with humour and optimism, and explores the resolution of some of war's unfinished business.

Vuletic and Zalica have a production company together in Sarajevo called Refresh, and while both loathed the war and longed for the day when they could make films about peace, they say it is impossible to avoid the subject of war in their work.

"My idea was to make a post-war movie without the word war in it," says Zalica "It was a dream, a mission. But unfortunately, when peace comes the films still talk about war. I had made some student films before the war, but I was actually a musician then. It was the war that formed me as a film-maker, it is the most important part of my life, it made my moral architecture. I never wanted to have a gun in my hand, so I picked up a camera instead."

Although the films of both men deal with the bleakness of life in post-war Bosnia, Zalica remains optimistic.

"We live in a cynical world, but in the end we are all human beings together. I love people and I believe that we should all love each other. If the world wasn't so cynical, that would be the most natural thing in the world to say."