The Sarajevo Film Festival has announced that for the second time, one of today’s most significant film directors, Terry George, a true friend of SFF, whom audiences in Sarajevo met at the 11th edition of our Festival. Also thrilling is the fact that, upon George’s invitation, Sarajevo will have the opportunity to welcome one of the most successful, bur also most controversial authors of documentary films of all time – Michael Moore.
Terry George will attend the Sarajevo Film Festival as one of the lecturers at the 1st Sarajevo Talent Campus. His presence will be an opportunity for us to hear more about his new film, Reservation Road, which, among other actors, also stars Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino. Reservation Road will have its world premier later this year in October, at the Toronto Film Festival.
Audience in Sarajevo will have the chance to meet Michael Moore, cult director of documentaries, who speaks out openly about the problems of contemporary
America, on the final Festival night at the Heineken Open Air Cinema, where he will present us his latest film, Sicko (closing film of the 13th Sarajevo Film Festival). The film had its world premiere at the 60th Cannes Film Festival (out of competition), where it was positively received by audiences and critics alike. This documentary speaks out for the 45 million people in the wealthiest country of the world, who live without medical insurance.
Moore felt the negative sides of corporate America from a very early age, and thus became politically active at the age of 18. From the time of his first achievement in film, Roger & Me (1989), a feature that describes the part that the General Motors Corporation took in the economic demise of his hometown, Moore has stood out in the directing world with his unique style of covering significant topics in a witty and humorous way. Roger & Me went on to become one of the financially most significant documentary films of its time, a film which, interestingly enough, Moore finance with funds collected from a raffle he organised in his home. Moore continues with his criticism of America through the television series The Awful Truth. In 2002, he directed Bowling For Columbine, a film that condemns a gun-obsessed society, for which Moore also received an Oscar award. Furthermore, his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, awarded the Cannes Film Festival Palm d´Or Award, is a direct criticism of the ability of President George W. Bush to lead the country.
The high regard that viewers in Sarajevo have of films directed by both of the above superb filmmakers, is best seen in the fact that their films both received the Festival’s Viewers´ Choice Award for Best Film: it was at the 11th Sarajevo Film Festival that viewers selected Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda as Best Film, while the award went to Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 the preceding year.