Karlovy Vary Film Festival Awards Serbian Filmmaker with the Independent Camera Award

The 47^th annual Karlovy Vary Film Festival came to a close on July 7^th, after 350 film directors and actors presented their films in the world famous spa city in the Czech Republic. Over the past next nine days 10,000 audience members watched 180 films, including 60 debuts.

Only 100 km from Prague and renowned for its healing thermal mineral waters, artists, royalty and composers began frequenting Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) in the 14^th century. Not much has changed since then, as Karlovy Vary has hosted one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world since 1946, offering audiences highly regarded films at a crossroads of both Western and Eastern Europe.  

South Eastern European film fared well at the event, with Serbian filmmaker Miroslav Momčilović’s film Death of a Man in Balkans starring Emir Hadžihafizbegović, Radoslav Milenković, Bojan Žirović, Nataša Ninković, Anita Mančić taking the Independent Camera Award. 

Miroslav Momčilović accepts the Independent Camera Award

Filmed in one continuous shot, Death of a Man in Balkans follows the reactions of neighbors after a lonely composer commits suicide in his apartment. After the authorities are stuck in traffic and late to arrive on the scene, the neighbors slowly make their separate ways up to the apartment. Filmed on a tripod that the composer left stranded in the middle of the room, the neighbors, “weave a subtle mosaic of the ‘Balkan mentality’ and of human nature in general.”