Ruku mojeju

a film by Koštana Banović

The Netherlands, Serbia | 2022 | 72′
Ruku mojeju (eng: Through Hands of Mine)
Producer: Rolf Orthel
Production: artTrace, The Netherlands
Co-production: Frakcija, Serbia
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Synopsis

Ruku mojeju revolves around a sensory understanding of monastic life. In a convent on a small island between Montenegro and Albania, fifteen nuns – mostly young women, one of them blind – live their daily lives in a rhythm of work and prayer, and the endlessly undulating movements of nature. Over a period of nine years, the documentary developed as a result of the filmmaker’s intense involvement in this small community. Rather than questioning the morality of the institution of religion, Ruku mojeju explores religious material practices and sensorial experiences as a choreography in and of itself. In the attempt to understand religion through lived practices, the film hones in on taste, smell, sound, colour, movement and touch. And therefore, the body, or more precisely, the affectivity of the body becomes the subject of the film. The search for an understanding of faith from the outside, leads to the question of how people’s religious convictions shape inside them. This, in turn, leads to wondering about form as the carrier of faith.

Screenings

Beldocs – International Documentary Film Festival Belgrade 2022
FIFEQ-Montreal, International Ethnological Festival 2023
Nancy International Film Festival 2023
German International Ethnographic Film Festival Göttingen 2024