Balkan Cinema Surges Into Fall Festivals After Banner Year for Filmmakers From Southeast Europe

It’s been an uncharacteristically strong year for Balkan cinema, with filmmakers from the southeastern corner of Europe fighting — often against all odds — to bring their stories to the screen, despite challenges ranging from civil unrest to moribund support from state-backed funding bodies.

Nevertheless, this year has seen the return of old masters, like Romanian provocateur Radu Jude (“Dracula”), and the emergence of fresh voices, such as Slovenia’s Urška Djukić (“Little Trouble Girls”), alongside triumphs including North Macedonian director Georgi M. Unkovski’s dual Sundance prizewinner “DJ Ahmet” and Croatian director Igor Bezinović’s Rotterdam-winning docu-drama “Fiume O Morte!”

That momentum has carried into the fall festivals, where North Macedonian directors Teona Strugar Mitevska (“The Happiest Man in the World”) and two-time Academy Award nominee Tamara Kotevska (“Honeyland”) both launched their latest works at the Venice Film Festival. They were joined on the Lido by veteran Bulgarian filmmaker Stephan Komandarev…