At the Cannes Film Festival, the network of seven leading European documentary film festivals has announced the list of films nominated for the prestigious, annual Doc Alliance Award 2023 during Doc Day.
Every year since 2008, the programmers and artistic directors of the Doc Alliance festival have been nominating one short and one feature-length documentary film for the award. Among the 16 films nominated for this year’s award are two films from Serbia – the feature-length hybrid film Kristina by Nikola Spasić, which was proposed by the FIDMarseille festival, and Adapted by Dejan Petrović, which was nominated for the best short documentary at the suggestion of the artistic director of Dokufest.
The film Kristina portrays an extremely beautiful middle-aged woman who lives comfortably alone, but after three chance encounters with Marko, she wonders if he is a ghost or her soul mate. This film premiered at the FIDMarseille festival where it won the First Film Award, in addition to the award for the best emerging director at the European Film Festival in Seville, the special recognition of the young jury at the Muestra de cinema de Lanzarote, two awards at at the Merlinka festival in Belgrade, for best domestic film and for te best international film and the award for the best director at the March festival in Belgrade. The film was screened at numerous festivals around the world. It was produced by Rezon, and the distributor for the world is the London company Reason8.
Adapted questions hierarchies of power, as well as the relativity of authority that makes us obedient through reward and punishment by focusing on a unique dog shelter and establishing a parallel between a dog shelter and society. This multiple award-winning short documentary, after its world premiere at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam, was screened at more than 40 film festivals (Visions du Réel, Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Dokufest, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Beldocs, etc.). The film was co-produced by the Independent Film Center Filmart and the production company Cinnamon Films, and is distributed by the Austrian company Square Eyes.
Both films were shot with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia and Film Center Serbia.
Films nominated for the award have the opportunity to be shown during the year at some of the Doc Alliance festivals – CPH:DOX, Docslisboa, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava, Millennium Docs Against Gravity, Visions du Réel, and the jury, made up of film critics and representatives of the film industry, awards two awards – for best short film and best feature film.
This year’s winners will be announced in August in Prizren, at Dokufest, which is this year’s guest festival of Doc Alliance.