Blum – Masters of Their Own Destiny

Through the life of Emerik Blum, a post-WW2 socialist and one of the founders of modern Sarajevo, this film recalls a time when workers shaped their own futures and believed progress belonged to everyone.

Emerik Blum was the visionary engineer and one of the driving forces who transformed Sarajevo into a modern city fit to host the 1984 Winter Olympics. He established Energoinvest, the biggest exporting company in Yugoslavia, with over 40,000 employees. Žbanić portrays Energoinvest as a unique social experiment in addition to a massive business enterprise: employees took part in decision-making through Yugoslavia’s system of worker self-management, lived in apartments constructed by the company and took vacations in the workers’ apartments on the Adriatic coast. Blum emerges as a pragmatic innovator and paternal figure of the workers, negotiating and balancing the world divided between capitalism and socialism, thus creating a unique “Third Way”. Through the interviews with people who worked with him, the film honours his enormous accomplishments while also reflecting on Sarajevo’s terrible decline during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars capturing a lost yet inspiring chapter in Bosnian history. 

Programme section: Docs Open Debates
Original title: Blum – Gospodari svoje budućnosti | Year: 2024 | Duration: 76′
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany | Language: Bosnian, English, German | Subtitles: English
Director: Jasmila Žbanić | Production: Damir Ibrahimović – Deblokada; Produkcija Živa, Razor Film | Screenplay: Jasmila Žbanić, Zoran Solomun | Cinematography: Eldar Emrić | Editing: Vladimir Gojun | Sound: Igor Čamo

FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION) 

MoMA, 2025 – Doc Fortnight (International Premiere) | Bosnian Herzegovinian Film Festival, New York | Zagreb Dox | Beldocs | Jewish Film Festival Berlin Brandenburg | UnderhillFest | Pula Film Festival

DIRECTOR’S BIO 

Jasmila Žbanić (Sarajevo, 1974) is an Oscar and BAFTA-nominated director. In 1997, together with her friends, she founded the Artist’s Association “Deblokada” through which she produced, wrote and directed her feature film “Grbavica”, awarded with Golden Bear at Berlinale 2006, Best film at the American Film Institute. “Quo Vadis, Aida?” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and among others received the Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film, the European Film Academy Award for Best film, director and main actress, as well as nominations for the Oscar of Best International Feature Film, and two BAFTA Awards. She directed one episode of the acclaimed HBO TV show “The Last of Us”. Her TV show “I Know Your Soul” was presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2023.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

From today’s perspective, when a company’s directors earn a thousand times more than their employees, it is interesting to reflect on a time when the director of a globally successful company had a salary only four times higher than his doorman, and the company’s profit was distributed for the development of society, workers’ apartments, health, holidays, and education… At the same time, it is a story about the history of Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia and society at the time of its golden age in a way that has never been seen before. What was fascinating to me was the enthusiasm, love, and incredible energy that the people of that time had who believed in a better future. They made their original vision come true. I hope that the viewer who watches this film will feel this great energy and will ask: What is the vision of OUR better future?