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- New Talents Open Call
Eastern Neighbours Film Festival (ENFF) began in The Netherlands in 2008 with the idea to offer Dutch and international audiences a unique glimpse into the cinema of their neighbors from Eastern and Southern Europe. This annual event presents the most recent, exciting, and thought‐provoking films, from countries with small, but often powerful film industries, that… Read more: New Talents Open Call - ENFF 2023 On Demand!
Unable To attend the festival in person? No problem! From November 27th to December 3rd, we’re thrilled to bring you a curated selection of this year’s films available for online viewing! Catch our captivating Opening Film Ivan’s Land, or the touching Closing Film Seventh Heaven. Or explore a collection of shorts from the New Talents Competition! Follow along… Read more: ENFF 2023 On Demand! - What’s up in Slovak Cinema? A conversation with Monika Lostakova
We talked with Monika Lošťáková about contemporary Slovak cinema. - ENFF and the Eastern European Film Festival Network!
The Eastern European Film Festival Network brings together five film festivals dedicated to promoting and showcasing Eastern European cinema, alongside one partner organisation. - Masterclasses
Through these masterclasses we approach two memory in film from different angles: memories from a personal or collective recollection through archive material. - Work in Progress
In Work in Progress, emerging filmmakers and artists will present their works in development to the audience and engage in discussions with Dutch experts. - Festival Timetable Available!
- Check out the catalogue for our 2023 edition!
- Music at ENFF
Every year, ENFF brings special musical guests who bring beauty to the program and further represent the rich cultures of their countries to a Dutch audience. - Film Marathon
Join us for the Film Marathon, a new concept in which we merge two components, Short Films, Big Stories, and New Talents Competition into a whole-day screening of short films!
dir. VIKTOR PORTEL
DUTCH PREMIERE
What is the work of a war crime investigator? Vladimír Dzuro, the main character of this documentary, is the only Czech investigator to have worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The film is inspired by Vladimir Dzuro’s book “The Investigator – Demons of the Balkan War”. The protagonist’s task was to collect evidence against war criminals and perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. His two most significant cases were the Ovcara massacre, linked to back then Vukovar’s Mayor Slavko Dokmanovic and committed by the warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, and as well as the ethnic cleansing in northwestern Bosnia. What does the Balkans look like today, 25 years after the conflict? What happened to the people who still live in those places, and what about their memories? And most importantly, does “Hague justice” have any meaning and significance for those who went through the worst?
SHOWTIMES | Special Feature: Q+A with Vladimir Dzuro, moderated by Prof. Petr Kopecky
Thursday, 23 November – 18:30
VYSETROVATEL | 2022 | 74 min | Czech Republic, Croatia
| PRODUCTION | Hana Blaha Silarova – Frame Films; Restart, HRT, CzechTV, Al Jazeera Balkans |
| IDEA | Martina Santava |
| SCREENPLAY | Viktor Portel |
| CINEMATOGRAPHY | Simon Dvoracek |
| EDITING | Vladimir Gojun |
| LANGUAGE | Czech, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, English |
| SUBTITLES | English |
FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION)
Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, 2022 | FIPADOC, 2023 | ZagrebDox, 2023 | Millennium Docs Against Gravity, 2023 | Underhill Fest, 2023 | Dokufest, 2023 | Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Film Festival, 2023 | One World Slovakia, 2023
DIRECTOR`S STATEMENT
I was curious about the intervention of the international community and its belief that it could bring order to the chaos by setting up The Hague Tribunal. I was interested in whether this intervention of justice from outside had, in their minds, helped or harmed the people in these states. I must say, however, that in the early days of the film, I had no idea what level of refusal and disappointment I would encounter.When we started working on the feature five years ago, The Hague Tribunal was coming to a close – and I thought it was the right time to start asking ourselves what it was good for. Not for the past, but for the future. (Cineuropa interview)
DIRECTOR’S BIO
Viktor Portel is the director of documentary films and the head of the documentation department of Post Bellum o.p.s. where he works as the producer and dramaturgist of the audiovisual content called ‘Memory of the Nation’. Recent projects are, for example, the exhibition ‘Memory of the Nation’ (2018) in the basement of the former Stalin’s monument, the installation Trabi (Signal Festival 2019) or the screening ‘Memory of the Nation: 1989 presented on the 30th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution’. As a trainer, he tries to help start documentary projects in places where remembrance is not easy (Russia, Burma, Cuba). He is the author and the director of a large part of the TV series ‘Stories of the 20th Century’. For his film ‘The Heart of Havel’ (2013), he won the 1st Czech Press Photo Awards in the Online News and Reportage category. He graduated from the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU, Prague.