18th Annual South East European Film Festival

The South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles (SEEfest) pioneered the concept of regional, cross-border programming with issue-driven films that tell a larger story about South East Europe, where borders of all kinds are fluid and porous just as often as poisonous. By presenting multiple points of view from this troubled region, the festival unlocks delicate doors into human existence, highlighting concerns of our time that resonate with American audiences.

The festival annually presents internationally acclaimed films, art installations, a filmmaker conference, accelerator for film and new media projects in development, film retrospectives, literary salons, and other events. SEEfest maintains an extensive network of cultural, artistic, civic and public diplomacy partners and also serves as a resource for film aficionados, educators, young scholars, youth volunteers and the media.

Schedule:
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
7:00pm: Sonne
Opening Gala of the 18th SEEfest
Three teenage girls from Vienna twerk in hijab and sing a pop song. A YouTube video of it makes them famous overnight, especially among Kurdish Muslims. Yesmin, the only one of the friends who is Kurdish herself, begins to distance herself more and more from her culture. Nati and Bella, on the other hand, seem fascinated by a world that is strange to them. When the girls meet two young Kurdish patriots, the situation threatens to escalate. A film about young people caught between social media and self-discovery, a story of rebellious young women.

Doors open at 6:30pm

Followed by reception

Price: $25

Location: Writers Guild Theater - Beverly Hills

Thursday, April 27, 2023
1:00pm: Shorts: Women
Chiatura
Airhostess-737
Do You See Me?
Affricate
Daphne

3:00pm: The Chalice of Sons and Daughters
The film takes the viewer straight into the heart of a traditional Roma community from Transylvania where there is little if any freedom of choice in individual lives. Everyone here is compelled by culture to follow a predictable trajectory, namely to marry and conceive offspring. Marriages are arranged by parents for their children at early ages. Yet marital ties are fragile and made to endure only by the birth of a boy to the new couple. Boys alone inherit the family’s badge, the TAHTAIs (chalices)- silver cups that come from their ancestors. Daughters are not desired because they bring the prospects for their parents to pay big cash dowries to marry them off. Consequently, couples often resort to sex-selective abortions. When a marriage is arranged, the boy’s chalice is given in trust to the bride’s family until the new couple has a son who will inherit it and will secure the couple’s marriage. The documentary follows Peli and Nina, a young couple in their mid-20s, parents to a 5-year daughter who are striving to conceive a son, in order to comply with the local custom. While they are living under tremendous strain as they are taking fertility and ultrasound checks, their respective families are disputing their rights in the chalice pledged when they arranged the couple’s match. The intricacies of this marriage are teased out by Peli’s sister, Bara, who makes a tear-fetching confession about her condition as a female in the community. As we are impatiently waiting for the resolution of the conflict, we are invited to reflect on the strength and resilience of women in a male-dominated society.

5:00pm: Snow and the Bear
In a small, snow-covered, remote town of Turkey winter has always been tough, but this year it doesn’t come to an end – in an almost surreal way. Leaving the roads blocked due to heavy snowfall. Rumor has it that bears have risen early from their winter-sleep and killed some animals around. Though no one has really seen them, people are afraid that they will come to the town soon. Asl? is a young nurse who has been appointed here recently for her obligatory service. One cold night, a man from the town goes missing. In this small town – where the biggest problem for the gendarme prior to the incident has been bats haunting the police station – the sudden disappearance of a man creates all sorts of rumors. Step by step, Asl? finds herself in the middle of a whirlwind of power relationships, secrets and doubts.

7:30pm: The Happiest Man in the World
Asja, a 40-year-old single woman, lives in Sarajevo. In order to meet new people, she ends up spending her Saturday in a speed dating event. She’s matched with Zoran, a 43-year-old banker. However, Zoran is not looking for love but forgiveness.

Location: Laemmle Royal - Los Angeles

Friday, April 28, 2023
1:00pm: Shorts: Apocalyptic
In Vain
Intermission
Remember When I Used To Ride A White Horse
On Xerxes Throne
Amok
Snowdrops At The End Of The Train

3:00pm: The Building
On the tenth anniversary of the introduction of workers’ management, the Sisak Iron Mill, one of the largest industrial plants in former Yugoslavia, built an "ideal" settlement for the workers. Sixty years later the film follows a week in the everyday life of the building’s tenants. They watch the building’s grey façade transformed with a colorful mural, witness longtime residents leaving the neighborhood, and new, unexpected tenants moving in.

5:00pm: May Labor Day
After ten years of absence, Armin comes to Bosnia to surprise his father with good news. But there’s a real surprise waiting for him at home. His father is arrested as a suspect in war crimes. Armin wants to find out the truth, while others find that it’s easier to live in oblivion.

7:30pm: Men of Deeds
Ilie, a village police chief, wants to build a modest and comfortable life for himself but ends up making all the wrong choices. Middle-aged and alienated, he feels the need to be a part of something - to build an orchard, even a home. Although worrisome things happen in the village, Ilie chooses to turn a blind eye and only sees what suits him. As events keep spiraling out of control he is forced to make choices he has been trying to avoid all his life. In this darkly comic and tragic tale of rural life, Ilie emerges as a reluctant hero, at last finding the purpose and courage to mete out justice.

Location: Laemmle Town Center - Encino

Saturday, April 29, 2023
2:15pm: Shorts: Coming of Age
Only The Devil Hates Water
Plima
Liquid Bread
Psychographic
Water Balloons

4:00pm: Where the Road Leads
A stranger arrives in a cut-off village, locals suspect his involvement in constructing a highway nearby. A few misunderstandings and lies are enough for the local's intolerance toward change to turn into an open conflict. Jana falls in love and realizes the danger. She is the only one who can save him.

5:30pm: Lights of Sarajevo
The film Lights of Sarajevo takes us to cold winter nights, through unique, picturesque Sarajevo settlements and neighborhoods, recalling the legends related to the Skenderija concert hall dating back to the socialist period. The camera follows the band members backstage as they prepare for their biggest solo concert in the very place where they got their start. The film is a time capsule, tracing the long and fascinating history of the cult band “Zabranjeno pušenje“ whose trajectory parallels the tumultuous years of a dying country, the subsequent war, and fragile post-war times.

8:00pm: The Island
The Island, a new feature animation film by the celebrated Romanian director Anca Damian, is a surreal, comedic reinterpretation of the Robinson Crusoe tale, speaking of current affairs through visual poetry and symbolism. The film is a colorful, poetic and funny musical fable.

Location: UCLA Bridges Theater - Los Angeles

Sunday, April 30, 2023
2:15pm: Shorts: Relationships
Memoir Of A Veering Storm
Revelation Of John
Salute To The Sun
Steady Flow
The Legend Of Gold Horn

3:30pm: Scenes with my Father
A young woman time travels through the mysterious past of her alienated Yugoslav father. While searching for answers in a forgotten past, an underlying family trauma unravels.

5:00pm: SILENCE 6-9
A man and a woman, Aris and Anna, meet in a dream-like coastal town. The town is full of antennas, which emit the voices of the Vanished Ones, inhabitants of the town that have suddenly and inexplicably disappeared. As we watch the daily life and the bizarre rituals of the inhabitants, rituals devoted to the lost ones, Anna and Aris fall in love. A few days later, Anna suddenly disappears.

7:30pm: The Good Driver
Ivan, a Bulgarian taxi driver living at the Golden Sands tourist resort, is saving money in order to go back to Finland to meet his wife and son, and to make amends for his past mistakes. Money is tight and Ivan is forced to get creative in order to earn faster. This leads him into problems. And if he even gets to another side of Europe, is it possible to fix what has once been broken?

Location: UCLA Bridges Theater - Los Angeles

Monday, May 1, 2023
3:15pm: This is Not for Me
The three main characters of the film, Mustafa, Mehmet, and Yusuf migrated to Istanbul from small towns and come from conservative families. Mehmet and Yusuf, both married to women, act the part of heterosexual males and family men within their own social circles. Privately, however, they are passionately in love with their male lovers and can only live their truth within the parallel lives they have built with them. The driving character of the film, Mustafa, is Mehmet’s lover of 15 years.  During the first couple of years of their relationship, Mehmet violently abused Mustafa because of guilt. In the film we see Mustafa trying to put this very passionate but equally traumatic relationship in the past. Mehmet, however, has no desire to let go of Mustafa.

5:15pm: Bigger than Trauma
If you had survived a war and the past still weighed heavy on you, what would you do to regain the joy of living? Twenty-five years after Croatian War of Independence, the surviving women have not healed. The justice system is slow, the legal process of fact-finding is agonizing and government support largely translates into tranquilizers and silence. Many families still live near the very men who raped and tortured them, and surrounded by trauma, they exist in the past, unable to move forward. Katica, Ana and Marija attend a pioneering program that invites both Serbian and Croatian women to try deep, reformative personal therapy together. Intimate cameras witness them examining photos of themselves before the war and skeptically trying physical touch exercises. Frictions within the group erupt along cultural lines, reinforcing past pain, but this is precisely what is required to cultivate acceptance and peace. For three years, they share their most private, damaging thoughts and by virtue of their own courage transform from the collateral damage of an old war to more empowered women living today.

7:45pm: Inventory
Boris Robic is, as we say, an ordinary kind of bloke. One evening, however, someone tries to shoot him. The investigations reveal nothing. No enemies, no suspects. After the police close the investigation, Boris starts to investigate on his own. To his surprise, he discovers that he could be hated by more people than he could have ever imagined.

Location: Laemmle Noho - North Hollywood

Tuesday, May 2, 2023
10:00am: Shorts at the Wende Museum
Program:
10am
The Box
My Neighbor Wolf
Horticulture
A Moving Target
Balls

12:30 pm
The Eagle's Nest
Am Gang/Stairwell
The Score
Granny's Sexual Life
Živa

3 pm
Retreat
A Message from Future Bosnia
Teatralna Station
1 Kilo - 3 EUR
Money & Happiness

Location: Wende Museum - Culver City

7:00pm: Adamiani
Pankisi valley in Georgia has been labeled a “cradle of terrorists.” This documentary follows people who are now trying to resist terrorism and turn their lives around. "Adamiani", means "a human" in Georgian.

9:30pm: Juvenile
Over a period of one year the adolescent inmates of the Juvenile Correctional Facility in Serbia search for a way to escape their destiny. The annual New Year’s Eve celebration in the facility may be the only visible hope. It is the only few hours in the whole year when boys and girls will be allowed to spend time together and possibly find love.

Location: 2220 Arts+ Archive - Los Angeles

Wednesday, May 3, 2023
7:00pm: King Lear: How We Looked for Love During the War
The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes. The film tells the story of internally displaced people in the small western Ukrainian town of Uzhhorod in Transcarpathia, where they work in canteens, weave camouflage nets, and join an unusual theater troupe.

Local activist Vyacheslav Yehorov decides to realize his long-held dream of staging Shakespeare's King Lear with an entire cast made up of refugees, former teachers, artists, engineers, sales assistants, and housewives. Learning their lines and immersing themselves in the magic of theater gives them a new lease on life and hope for the future.

Location: UCLA Bridges Theater - Los Angeles

Date: April 26 - May 3, 2023

Location:
Writers Guild Theatre, 135 South Doheny Drive Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Laemmle's Royal Theatre, 11523 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90025
Laemmle Town Center, 17200 Ventura Blvd Encino, CA 91316
James Bridges Theater, 235 Charles East Young Drive Los Angeles, CA 90001
Laemmle's Noho 7, 5240 Lankershim Boulevard North Hollywood, CA 91601
Wende Museum, 10808 Culver Boulevard Culver City, CA 90230
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90057

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