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

Looking for Horses

a film by Stefan Pavlović

The Netherlands/Bosnia and Herzegovina/France | 2021 | 88′
Production: artTrace
Co-production: KAMEN Artist Residency, Momento Films
Producer: Koštana Banović
Sales and distribution: Lightdox
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Synopsis

Looking for Horses is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman who lost his hearing during the Bosnian war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother-tongue due to a heavy stutter and growing up with many different languages. Despite their hearing and speech limitations, a strong friendship unfolds between the young man and the veteran, as the fisherman shares his world of the lake. The camera mediates their growing bond. Taking the shape of a gentle western, Looking for Horses is a poetic documentary on trauma, survival, and connection.