Želimir Žilnik

Pirika travels to Berlin to visit her daughter Dobrila and her grandchildren, whom she's never seen. Dobrila, a lesbian, avoids her mother, however, because she doesn't want to tell her the full truth about her children. Everything is resolved at a German film retrospective, where Pirika plays the role of her life. A docudrama about the autumn of life of one of the leading protagonists of Zilnik's film Early Works.

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One Woman, One Century is a documentary film based on statements, interviews, and reconstructions of real-life events. The life story of Dragica Srzentić casts light on a number of events and people relevant to Yugoslav history before and after the Second World War. The film’s look at the century-long life of this woman-hero provides insight into the rarely mentioned segments of the ex-Yugoslav intellectual and ideological maze that traverses all the states in which this Istrian-born woman lived (Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, NDH, FNRJ, SFRJ, Croatia, and Serbia).

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A mixture of documentary and fiction examines the new god of Capitalism offered to the Serbs with the ending of state socialism. We look at a number of strikes in Belgrade during the late 2000s and these introduce us to several characters playing themselves. Employees dressed in American football helmets and pads square up with employers' heavies in their bullet-proof vests, resulting in explosive situations. A visit from the Russian tycoon's representative and vice president Joe Biden's arrival further complicates the proceedings.

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Kenedi is in a huge debt after building a house for his family. He finds himself searching for any kind of work to support himself, for as little as 10 EUR per day, a scarce amount to help him relief his debt. Ultimately, Kenedi decides to look for money in sex business. Initially offering his services to older ladies and widows, he expands his 'business' to offer sex to wealthy men. When he finds out about new liberal European laws on gay marriages, Kenedi sees prospects in looking for a "marriage material", to renew his search for a legal status in EU. The opportunity arises during EXIT Music Festival, when he meets Max, a guy from Munich. But will their promising relationship bring the solution to Kenedi's problems?

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Villagers of Kovilj grow cattle on the Danube islands. Marko, an owner of ten horses, around twenty cows and other cattle is a good friend with a Roma named Kamer, who helps him sell the cattle at local fairs. Željko, a young horse breeder leads the villagers when they try to save the cattle in the spring of 2006 from the big flood. An attractive waitress Ana rivets attention of the young men from Kovilj. Life and work close to the Danube connect the Roma people and the locals, and together they show up at the village gatherings (birthdays, patron saint’s days). After unsuccessful emotional relationships, Ana and a couple of her friends decide to leave the village and seek happiness on the other bank of the Danube.

Open details →

At Roko Babičković’s farm, in the vicinity of the Hungarian border, Anica is hired. The newly established Schengen border has stopped trade and travels to Hungary, which was part of the local populace’s business. Anica decides to get married in Hungary and acquire the working documents that way. Roko helps her find the false groom who will marry her for his own ends.

Open details →

After his participation in filming of “Kenedi Goes Back Home," Kenedi Hasani decided to illegally go to EU countries where his father, mother, brothers and sisters still are. The documentary recounts Kenedi's experience of his two-year refugee status.

Open details →

The first film in what would ultimately become Zilnik’s famed Kenedi trilogy follows street hustler Kenedi Hasani and his friend as they roam the streets of Serbia seeking Kenedi’s parents. Kenedi Goes Back Home is Zilnik’s account of the Roma people who were forced to flee from the war in the Balkans to Germany in the 1990s and who, ten years later, are forced against their will to return to Serbia. Zilnik shows the immigrants' lives in relation to the prevailing ideology shaped today by the borders between rich and poor and by the often-racist selection process that determines who will be accepted into Western Europe. In presenting the dilemmas and identifying the crises these people face, he appeals for a solution.

Open details →

In the first years of the EXIT music festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, for many, it was a trip to a "wonderland", after a decade of isolation, destruction, violent mobilizations, xenophobia and propaganda. This documentary, filmed during the festival in 2002 - every morning, at dawn when the visitors are tired, but also full of impressions after an exciting night - recorded that special mood.

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People of different nationalities from Central Europe attempting to reach the West by crossing the controls and “European” rules.

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A series of portraits of women from different fields of work who give us their views of the relationship between men and women – a Chinese woman who owns a beauty salon and hairdresser’s studio, workers at the first privately owned shoes factory, women who participate at the Erotic Fair in Budapest, a manager of a restaurant, and successful business women.

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After decades of work in Italy and Germany, Giuseppe is retired and returns to his family home in Istria. He is lonely and his mother advises him to get married. She hands him over his father’s uniform from the Austro-Hungarian army. Giuseppe sets off on a quest to find a wife in the “transitional East” hoping to be warmly welcomed. The road takes him to Budapest, Montenegro, Vojvodina. His plan is not so easily realised...

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"Fitzgerald" is Jovica's nickname among his friends. One day Jovica, a film projectionist from the childhood of Zilnik, an old jazz pianist and one of the actors from The Way Steel Was Tempered, hear of Ella Fitzgerald's unexpected death. Jovica is desperate; he plays the piano all night long and cries. His wife threatens him saying that she will throw him out of the house unless he gets rid of the piano.

Open details →

Milošević’s regime has rigged the results of parliamentarian elections in autumn 1996. This was a cause for mass rallies in Belgrade and other cities in Serbia. The film documents the protests during the first four days of their protests, their political and criticising charge but also the carnival spirit. On the seventh day of the protests the film was edited and had a premiere screening in the Rex Cinema.

Open details →

A trans couple from 1990s Belgrade beholds their profession as a pacifistic mission, curbing the urges of rapists, gamblers and horny young men during turbulent periods in war-torn country.

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Tito, lifelong president of Yugoslavia, is coming from his grave to once again talk to Serbs and to check what has changed since he was gone.

Open details →

In Vukovar, during the Croatian War of Independence, after the devastation of the town, hundreds of tons of wheat have leaked out of a destroyed grain elevator. Thousands of ravens descend upon the wheat. Silo Danube, Vukovar was the last film the director shot on 35mm.

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Reuben, an African student at Novi Sad University, returns from his visit to his parents.

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The aged rocker Igor works as a journalist and DJ at the "Radio Student" in Ljubljana. He notices that the janitor Miha works for the police, tapping the walls and observing the journalists who are critical of the regime. After a clash with his editor, Igor decides to leave for Greece by his old bike DKW from 1938, via Bosnia and Serbia. Young Rahela joins him on the trip. Traveling through Yugoslavia, Igor becomes involved in unexpected turmoil: Milosevic's "antibureaucratic revolution" starts in Serbia and Vojvodina.

Open details →

Young seamstress Ivana leaves work in the tailor shops in Novi Pazar and accepts an offer to be a waitress in a private cafe in Gusinje, Montenegrin town on the Yugoslav-Albanian border. She meets a waitress with whom she becomes fast friends. Brothers Skeljzen and Becir come to Gusinje from New York for the holidays and meet with the waitresses, starting a love affair. Young men promise the girls marriage and going to America.

Open details →

A moulder wants to live a happy life, but the circumstances in his factory are such that everyone is looking for an opportunity to grab the money before the ship sinks down to the bottom.

Open details →

The TV series is about a couple of guys, one good and naive, the other a liar and a manipulator, trying to make a living the best way they can. Along the way they meet a guy who eats glass, metal and plates, a couple of strippers, and a lot of ordinary people. Žilnik's dry and realistic approach is filled with humour and documentary parts with some real peasants and working-class people. The original three-part miniseries lasting 220 minutes is lost, only the 102 minute long restored series turned into a film is available.

Open details →

Belgrade in 2041 is a deserted city that looks like a dump yard. A few old men try to bring up a group of young girls in the old, traditional way of their Yugoslav ancestors.

Open details →

In the center of this docudrama are the events and tensions of the shooting of a feature film about Belgrade in the future. The director sets up unrealistic requirements to the producer, who breaks the law by overstepping the budget. During a court trial where the crew members are at the witness stand, we follow up the drama of how a film is made.

Open details →

An aging highlander from the village of Kremna, on Tara mountain, heads for Belgrade accompanied by a ninety-three year old war veteran. He wants to find out what happened to his request for the reconstruction of his water mill, which is 300 years old and was destroyed in a storm a while ago. The two old men wisely and calmly accept their losses.

Open details →

A teenager arrives from Germany to his grandparents in Novi Sad. He can't adjust to Yugoslavian schools, system or slow way of life, so he asks his folks to go back, but his parents insist on him staying. What now?

Open details →

Fifteen-year-old Pavle Hromiš, obeying the will of his parents, leaves Germany and goes to live in Yugoslavia with his grandmother. He has problems with the language and the different curriculum. The only place where he feels fine is the aeronautic club where he practices hang gliding. The film was the basis for a docudrama shot the following year: The Second Generation.

Open details →

A vast power plant is being built on the Drina River. This river has been famous for hundreds of years old tradition of rafting. In this way timber is transported downstream to Belgrade. This is a very dangerous profession where only qualified and experienced workers survive. Work on constructing the dam connects two heroes in this story – Bogdan, one of the last rafting masters on the Drina and Dragoljub, one of the oldest explosive experts who has been building dams all over the world. This is a film story about their long lives, happy days and disappointments, about the friendship that is born in the shadow of an enormous dam.

Open details →

Vera and Erzika have worked at Trudbenik textile factory in Pancevo since they were 13. Now that they are almost retired they face numerous problems and misunderstandings. The film portrays emotional states of the heroines, their families, relationships with their colleagues, a spectrum of moods and thoughts of people who have come to the end of their working age.

Open details →

The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.

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Druga linija aka The Other Line is a product of many years of research of neo-avant-garde cultural and art scene in Novi Sad, Serbia (late 60s and 70s), which has been marginalized until today. This artistic movement was directly connected not only with important art centers of the former Yugoslavia, but also with existing flows of world art during its brief and productive activities (7e Biennale de Paris, 19th Berlinale). The cultural and artistic emancipation of that time had implied individual freedom of expression and strong reaction to established boundaries. This avant-garde movement had become threat to communist establishment, the authors' work were sabotaged, the films were sealed off, five artists were taken to trial, two were sent in prison. How is it that the retrograde mechanism of shutting down and removing the most creative and representative progressive impulses of our surrounding is still so current to this day?

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Documentary about the life and work of Ivan Martinac (1938-2005), avant-garde & experimentalist filmmaker from Split, Croatia.

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Pirika travels to Berlin to visit her daughter Dobrila and her grandchildren, whom she's never seen. Dobrila, a lesbian, avoids her mother, however, because she doesn't want to tell her the full truth about her children. Everything is resolved at a German film retrospective, where Pirika plays the role of her life. A docudrama about the autumn of life of one of the leading protagonists of Zilnik's film Early Works.

Open details →

Zelimir Zilnik has always been discussing the communist's regime taboos , with his early documentaries , but especially with his film about the student's riots in 1968: Lipanjska gibanja (June Turmoil). His featured film Rani radovi (Early Works) got to trial, because it made important politicians, including Tito himself, very angry. However, it was free of all charges, thanks to the really honorable judge. The Golden Bear, the prime award of the Berlin Film Festival, was given to Zelimir and it was interpreted as the biggest provocation for socialist Yugoslavia. Therefore, the film was put away for years and was not available for the audience.

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Through the conversation with Yugoslav film authors and excerpts from their films, this documentary film tells a story of a film phenomenon and censorship, and its focus is, in fact, a painful epoch of Yugoslav film called “a Black Wave”, which was the most important and artistically strongest period of Yugoslav film industry, created in the sixties and buried in the early seventies by means of ideological and political decisions. The film tells a great “thriller” story of the ideological madness which characterised the totalitarian psychology having left multiple consequences felt up to our very days. It stresses similarities between totalitarian regimes defending their taboos on the example of the persecution of the most important Yugoslav film authors. Those film authors have, however, made world careers and inspired many later authors. The film is the beginning of a debt pay-off to the most significant Yugoslav film authors.

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A frustrated and unemployed architect experiences flashbacks of his youth and 1968 protests while the life passes by. Unable to adapt and to accept the reality, he’s constantly getting into conflicts with the people around him.

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Director invites six homeless men to his flat for a few days (surprising his wife). He asks officials and people on the street if someone can help them, this being SFRJ, a state officially without those left on their own.

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Pirika travels to Berlin to visit her daughter Dobrila and her grandchildren, whom she's never seen. Dobrila, a lesbian, avoids her mother, however, because she doesn't want to tell her the full truth about her children. Everything is resolved at a German film retrospective, where Pirika plays the role of her life. A docudrama about the autumn of life of one of the leading protagonists of Zilnik's film Early Works.

Open details →

One Woman, One Century is a documentary film based on statements, interviews, and reconstructions of real-life events. The life story of Dragica Srzentić casts light on a number of events and people relevant to Yugoslav history before and after the Second World War. The film’s look at the century-long life of this woman-hero provides insight into the rarely mentioned segments of the ex-Yugoslav intellectual and ideological maze that traverses all the states in which this Istrian-born woman lived (Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, NDH, FNRJ, SFRJ, Croatia, and Serbia).

Open details →

A mixture of documentary and fiction examines the new god of Capitalism offered to the Serbs with the ending of state socialism. We look at a number of strikes in Belgrade during the late 2000s and these introduce us to several characters playing themselves. Employees dressed in American football helmets and pads square up with employers' heavies in their bullet-proof vests, resulting in explosive situations. A visit from the Russian tycoon's representative and vice president Joe Biden's arrival further complicates the proceedings.

Open details →

Kenedi is in a huge debt after building a house for his family. He finds himself searching for any kind of work to support himself, for as little as 10 EUR per day, a scarce amount to help him relief his debt. Ultimately, Kenedi decides to look for money in sex business. Initially offering his services to older ladies and widows, he expands his 'business' to offer sex to wealthy men. When he finds out about new liberal European laws on gay marriages, Kenedi sees prospects in looking for a "marriage material", to renew his search for a legal status in EU. The opportunity arises during EXIT Music Festival, when he meets Max, a guy from Munich. But will their promising relationship bring the solution to Kenedi's problems?

Open details →

Villagers of Kovilj grow cattle on the Danube islands. Marko, an owner of ten horses, around twenty cows and other cattle is a good friend with a Roma named Kamer, who helps him sell the cattle at local fairs. Željko, a young horse breeder leads the villagers when they try to save the cattle in the spring of 2006 from the big flood. An attractive waitress Ana rivets attention of the young men from Kovilj. Life and work close to the Danube connect the Roma people and the locals, and together they show up at the village gatherings (birthdays, patron saint’s days). After unsuccessful emotional relationships, Ana and a couple of her friends decide to leave the village and seek happiness on the other bank of the Danube.

Open details →

At Roko Babičković’s farm, in the vicinity of the Hungarian border, Anica is hired. The newly established Schengen border has stopped trade and travels to Hungary, which was part of the local populace’s business. Anica decides to get married in Hungary and acquire the working documents that way. Roko helps her find the false groom who will marry her for his own ends.

Open details →

After his participation in filming of “Kenedi Goes Back Home," Kenedi Hasani decided to illegally go to EU countries where his father, mother, brothers and sisters still are. The documentary recounts Kenedi's experience of his two-year refugee status.

Open details →

The first film in what would ultimately become Zilnik’s famed Kenedi trilogy follows street hustler Kenedi Hasani and his friend as they roam the streets of Serbia seeking Kenedi’s parents. Kenedi Goes Back Home is Zilnik’s account of the Roma people who were forced to flee from the war in the Balkans to Germany in the 1990s and who, ten years later, are forced against their will to return to Serbia. Zilnik shows the immigrants' lives in relation to the prevailing ideology shaped today by the borders between rich and poor and by the often-racist selection process that determines who will be accepted into Western Europe. In presenting the dilemmas and identifying the crises these people face, he appeals for a solution.

Open details →

In the first years of the EXIT music festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, for many, it was a trip to a "wonderland", after a decade of isolation, destruction, violent mobilizations, xenophobia and propaganda. This documentary, filmed during the festival in 2002 - every morning, at dawn when the visitors are tired, but also full of impressions after an exciting night - recorded that special mood.

Open details →

A series of portraits of women from different fields of work who give us their views of the relationship between men and women – a Chinese woman who owns a beauty salon and hairdresser’s studio, workers at the first privately owned shoes factory, women who participate at the Erotic Fair in Budapest, a manager of a restaurant, and successful business women.

Open details →

After decades of work in Italy and Germany, Giuseppe is retired and returns to his family home in Istria. He is lonely and his mother advises him to get married. She hands him over his father’s uniform from the Austro-Hungarian army. Giuseppe sets off on a quest to find a wife in the “transitional East” hoping to be warmly welcomed. The road takes him to Budapest, Montenegro, Vojvodina. His plan is not so easily realised...

Open details →

"Fitzgerald" is Jovica's nickname among his friends. One day Jovica, a film projectionist from the childhood of Zilnik, an old jazz pianist and one of the actors from The Way Steel Was Tempered, hear of Ella Fitzgerald's unexpected death. Jovica is desperate; he plays the piano all night long and cries. His wife threatens him saying that she will throw him out of the house unless he gets rid of the piano.

Open details →

Milošević’s regime has rigged the results of parliamentarian elections in autumn 1996. This was a cause for mass rallies in Belgrade and other cities in Serbia. The film documents the protests during the first four days of their protests, their political and criticising charge but also the carnival spirit. On the seventh day of the protests the film was edited and had a premiere screening in the Rex Cinema.

Open details →

A trans couple from 1990s Belgrade beholds their profession as a pacifistic mission, curbing the urges of rapists, gamblers and horny young men during turbulent periods in war-torn country.

Open details →

Tito, lifelong president of Yugoslavia, is coming from his grave to once again talk to Serbs and to check what has changed since he was gone.

Open details →

A Norwegian TV-worker tries to prevent her son, which she has with her former husband, a Serb now living in Jugoslavia, to become a soldier in the starting civil war.

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In Vukovar, during the Croatian War of Independence, after the devastation of the town, hundreds of tons of wheat have leaked out of a destroyed grain elevator. Thousands of ravens descend upon the wheat. Silo Danube, Vukovar was the last film the director shot on 35mm.

Open details →

Reuben, an African student at Novi Sad University, returns from his visit to his parents.

Open details →

The aged rocker Igor works as a journalist and DJ at the "Radio Student" in Ljubljana. He notices that the janitor Miha works for the police, tapping the walls and observing the journalists who are critical of the regime. After a clash with his editor, Igor decides to leave for Greece by his old bike DKW from 1938, via Bosnia and Serbia. Young Rahela joins him on the trip. Traveling through Yugoslavia, Igor becomes involved in unexpected turmoil: Milosevic's "antibureaucratic revolution" starts in Serbia and Vojvodina.

Open details →

Young seamstress Ivana leaves work in the tailor shops in Novi Pazar and accepts an offer to be a waitress in a private cafe in Gusinje, Montenegrin town on the Yugoslav-Albanian border. She meets a waitress with whom she becomes fast friends. Brothers Skeljzen and Becir come to Gusinje from New York for the holidays and meet with the waitresses, starting a love affair. Young men promise the girls marriage and going to America.

Open details →

A moulder wants to live a happy life, but the circumstances in his factory are such that everyone is looking for an opportunity to grab the money before the ship sinks down to the bottom.

Open details →

The TV series is about a couple of guys, one good and naive, the other a liar and a manipulator, trying to make a living the best way they can. Along the way they meet a guy who eats glass, metal and plates, a couple of strippers, and a lot of ordinary people. Žilnik's dry and realistic approach is filled with humour and documentary parts with some real peasants and working-class people. The original three-part miniseries lasting 220 minutes is lost, only the 102 minute long restored series turned into a film is available.

Open details →

Belgrade in 2041 is a deserted city that looks like a dump yard. A few old men try to bring up a group of young girls in the old, traditional way of their Yugoslav ancestors.

Open details →

In the center of this docudrama are the events and tensions of the shooting of a feature film about Belgrade in the future. The director sets up unrealistic requirements to the producer, who breaks the law by overstepping the budget. During a court trial where the crew members are at the witness stand, we follow up the drama of how a film is made.

Open details →

An aging highlander from the village of Kremna, on Tara mountain, heads for Belgrade accompanied by a ninety-three year old war veteran. He wants to find out what happened to his request for the reconstruction of his water mill, which is 300 years old and was destroyed in a storm a while ago. The two old men wisely and calmly accept their losses.

Open details →

A teenager arrives from Germany to his grandparents in Novi Sad. He can't adjust to Yugoslavian schools, system or slow way of life, so he asks his folks to go back, but his parents insist on him staying. What now?

Open details →

Fifteen-year-old Pavle Hromiš, obeying the will of his parents, leaves Germany and goes to live in Yugoslavia with his grandmother. He has problems with the language and the different curriculum. The only place where he feels fine is the aeronautic club where he practices hang gliding. The film was the basis for a docudrama shot the following year: The Second Generation.

Open details →

A vast power plant is being built on the Drina River. This river has been famous for hundreds of years old tradition of rafting. In this way timber is transported downstream to Belgrade. This is a very dangerous profession where only qualified and experienced workers survive. Work on constructing the dam connects two heroes in this story – Bogdan, one of the last rafting masters on the Drina and Dragoljub, one of the oldest explosive experts who has been building dams all over the world. This is a film story about their long lives, happy days and disappointments, about the friendship that is born in the shadow of an enormous dam.

Open details →

Vera and Erzika have worked at Trudbenik textile factory in Pancevo since they were 13. Now that they are almost retired they face numerous problems and misunderstandings. The film portrays emotional states of the heroines, their families, relationships with their colleagues, a spectrum of moods and thoughts of people who have come to the end of their working age.

Open details →

The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.

Open details →

A carnival is in town. Workers start to build the stalls and tents. Players practice their act. Roma, peasants and grifters put up their own boots. After they pay taxes to local officials, they get a muddy ground for their stalls.

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