Focus: Roots
How does cultural identity function in fragmented societies, where borders and cultural differences do not necessarily align? This year’s Focus programme explores what happens when people leave familiar surroundings: what memories, stories and traditions do they carry with them, and what do they leave behind?
Across different times and places, these films explore displacement, family history, belonging and the tensions that emerge when people cross borders or return to places they once belonged to. From a father and son confronting a family’s wartime past, to an outsider disrupting an isolated community, and a family documenting their final months in a besieged hometown – each story reveals how deeply identity is shaped by place, memory and the people around us.
Three different stories, connected by one question: where do you belong when borders, communities and generations shift?
Marko Grba Singh and Stefan Malešević, film programmers
- God Will Not Help
A traditional mountain community goes into turmoil when a mysterious foreigner arrives claiming to be the wife of a man who left them many years ago. - Here, Elsewhere
Unable to film in Nagorno-Karabakh himself, the filmmaker asks his friends to document their final months there. Two months later, war breaks out. - How Come It’s All Green Out Here?
A filmmaker accompanies his father to Croatia to rebury his refugee grandmother, on a journey that unsettles his memories of family, home and the past.
