The festival kicked off at the Sava Centar on February 26 and will last until March 6, with a total of 110 film screenings. This year’s special guest is Spanish actress Victoria Abril, known for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! by director Pedro Almodóvar.

It is a long time since the world’s top movie stars graced the Yugoslav film festival, FEST. Back in the days, since it was founded in 1971, it was a must-be-seen-in event, where star-hunters could catch sight of such big name directors as Milos Forman, Bernardo Bertolucci and Francis Coppola, and actors like Robert De Niro, Catherine Deneuve and Gina Lollobrigida. These glory days faded in the Nineties, as Yugoslavia imploded into the civil war, but FEST continued the fight to obtain quality films and attract a diminishing number of foreign stars.

In 2014, the main prize went to Iram Haq’s “I am Yours“, about a Pakistani woman living in Norway who gets caught up in a culture clash. This year, we recommend these two movies:

Out of Nature on February 29 and March 1

This is an original, funny and tender film about how to take part in your own life as a husband, father and son. It depicts a family father in his 30s living in a small town where he feels alienated. He decides to spend a weekend alone on a hiking trip and to confront the way he lives his life.

A good wife on March 1 and 2

As the only movie from the Balkans, “A good wife” had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January 2016. The idea for the film “A good wife” came from a true story about the “Scorpions” case from 1995, when members of this special Serbian police unit executed six captured Bosnians (three of the victims were minors), and filmed everything on a VHS tape that leaked many years after. The film follows a 50-year-old Milena who finds out about the terrible past of her seemingly ideal husband, while simultaneously learning of her own cancer diagnosis. This is when she begins an awakening from the suburban paradise she has been living in.

This film was financially supported by the Embassy.

Tickets are sold at the Sava Centar, so hurry up and secure your seat!