{{ newsTitle }} {{ newsVisible ? '✦' : '✧'}}
- New Talents Open Call 2025
As the only competitive program at ENFF, the New Talents Competition invites filmmakers or artists with their first, second or third short film, to compete for an Audience Award. Submit your film till 21 August 2025. - On Tour: Chajdas’s Imago at Cavia, Amsterdam
ENFF lands in Cavia, Amsterdam for the first time! On Friday 28 February, we screen the post-punk psychological drama Imago by Polish director Olga Chajdas. - On Tour | My Late Summer | LHC, Utrecht | 07.12.24.
Last night, we took On Tour to Utrecht for a special screening at Louis Hartlooper Complex and mingled. We showed our festival’s closing film, My Late Summer by Danis Tanovic, one more time! Thank you to everyone who joined us for an evening filled with great film and fantastic company. - ENFF Closing Day | Filmhuis Den Haag | 01.12.24.
Photos by Mladen Pikulic
Archive 2006
The 1st edition of ENFF
The first Eastern Neighbours Film Festival was held from 08 September till 29 October 2006 at All Video Cinema Hall in Utrecht. Thirteen Eastern European countries showcased their cultural values in a multimedia presentation organised in the Netherlands. This presentation included: exhibition, profound relations, film festival, theater dance, business-to-business, debates, fashion show and more.
Dark, Self-Ironic and Engaging Cinema From Eastern Europe
The film program brought around thirty works, the decade’s best harvest of Eastern European cinema. Filmmaking in Eastern European countries has become more than just a matter of culture. It is considered to be the most profound manner of expressing a nation’s identity by the way its voice recognisably echoes abroad. Eastern European filmmaking reflects on the passing political events in an attempt to reconcile and consolidate with one another. After the turbulent years, the decades in which most of the Eastern European countries switched from a socialist regime to democracy, the deviation of some countries, economic and political crisis and the experience of a terrible war, Eastern European narratives are often a catalyst for the people.
Film selection
The opening film of the Festival was ”Go West” by A. Imamovic about a gay Muslim and Serbian boy during the last war. Romanian film ”Great Communist Bank Robbery” by A. Solomon, a discovery of disillusionment, resistance and government propaganda. The witty and self-ironic docu-fiction ”Totally Personal” by N. Begovic from Bosnia. Macedonian saga ”Contact” on growing up problematic in today’s province – the humorous though serious love story of a priest in Croatia in ”What Is a Man Without a Moustache?” by H. Hribar. We also showed some remarkable documentaries such as ”The Bridge That Survives” by M. Erdevicki, which is a melancholic story about the tragic fate of the musicians from Mostar, and the documentary ”Imported Crows” by G. Devic in which an innocent document on birds is given as a metaphor for the political climate in Croatia.
Organization
Selector Rada Sesic, a filmmaker and a film critic from Sarajevo based in the Netherlands, who teaches at the University of Amsterdam and cooperates on the program of the IDFA and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. She also works as a selector of Regional Docs at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Trailer concept by Milos Peskir, production VIP Sarajevo. Music by John Bosters. Production & Management: Denis Mujovic – New Ground Productions.