On 28 June 2022, a press conference was organized in the Assembly of City of Belgrade on the occasion of the jubilee 50th edition of the Sopot Film Festival, which takes place from 4 to 10 July under the slogan ‘The First Fifty’.
Živorad Milosavljević, president of the Festival Board, Aleksandar Avramović, artistic director of the Festival, Dragana Čolić, director of the Sopot Cultural Centre and Petar Alempijević, producer of the Festival from the Belgrade Festivals Centre (CEBEF), spoke at the conference.
Živorad Milosavljević, stating that ‘little by little’ the 50th anniversary of the Festival has been reached, said: ‘My role is double at this moment – as the president of the Festival Board and the president of the Sopot city municipality. The Sopot Film Festival is a place where many filmmakers have brought and presented their films in previous years, a festival that created a projection for future festivals in a large country, in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.’
A period of transition followed, and the Sopot Film Festival became an event of interest for the City of Belgrade, which invests significant funds, in his opinion, perhaps not quite enough this year. However, the essence lies in the efforts of CEBEF and the Municipality of Sopot that the event be realized as befits the fiftieth anniversary of its existence. He pointed out that the statue ‘Sloboda’ was a creation of Sopot, and that that miniature statuette of Professor Živković, enlarged to an imposing size, adorned the square in front of the Sopot Cultural Centre.
He announced that this year ‘there will be another story on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Festival’: The award for the best actor is named after Bata Živojinović, and on Monday, when the Festival begins, a monument to this legend of Serbian film will be unveiled in front of the Cultural Centre. According to Milosavljević, Sopot is an environment whose structure is changing significantly, which can be seen in the population that leaves the city and moves to this suburban municipality, and these people form the audience of the Festival. He ended his address with expressions of gratitude to CEBEF for the realization of the Festival, as well as to Aleksandar Avramović, the artistic director, who ‘creates the programme in a recognizable way’.
Aleksandar Avramović said that the Sopot Film Festival had received a gift for its half-century jubilee – 27 feature films in competition, three of which were minority co-productions, and two premieres. The rest of the films had been shown in domestic and regional cinemas, and some had been awarded at international festivals. In Sopot, as he said, the audience would be able to see the ‘champions’ of viewership once again, which had set hard-to-reach records, and had proved that the Serbian audience appreciated domestic film, its makers and protagonists.
Avramović reminded that the idea of the Festival was to see the entire domestic production once a year and said that on the occasion of the jubilee, everyone who was responsible for its creation and development would be honored. Honorary screenings will be organized – of the feature film ‘Girl from the Mountains’, directed by Dragovan Jovanović, one of the founders of Slobodarske filmske svečanosti, and the documentary ‘Mayor’ by Vuk Dapčević, whose main character is Branko Pešić, who was responsible for the construction of the cinema and the new building of the Cultural Centre. On the occasion of the jubilee this year, it was decided to award four Statuettes of Freedom for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema – to actress Tanja Bošković, director and screenwriter Zdravko Šotra, playwright and director Dušan Kovačević and production designer Milenko Jeremic, what will perpetuate the grandiose works of these artists. ‘The monument to the great actor and descendant of Kosmaj, Velimir Bata Živojinović, will complete this mosaic,’ said Avramović.
He added that the Festival expressed its gratitude to filmmakers of all professions who had woven their work into it, workers, journalists, and he gave a special ‘thank you’ to the audience, which is its indispensable link. He announced the screening of five children's films, because, as he pointed out, the programme for the youngest had always been at the top of the Festival list. The artistic director singled out the film ‘Nerazumevalica’ directed by Aleksa Maksimović, in which the main roles are played by children and people with disabilities. He said that that fairy-tale project reminded of the obligations of society and every individual to help create more humane conditions for the life of that population. Avramović announced a video that would accompany the Festival, inspired by the song ‘Odiseja’ by Vojkan Borisavljević, directed by Darko Kamarit, then a concert of ‘Novi stanovnici Kosmaja’ (New residents of Kosmaj) at the opening, presentation of a monograph about the Festival, as well as an exhibition of documents and photos of the Festival.
With particular pleasure, he announced the traditional screening of the award-winning films for the people of Belgrade – SOFEST PLUS in the Belgrade Youth Centre after the Festival, and stated that the awards would be decided by a jury consisting of Snežana Bogdanović, Andrej Šepetkovski and Radenko Ranković.
With thanks to the team involved in the production of the Festival and praise for the creativity of Simona Dašić's visual solution, Avramović concluded that Sopot deserved to be the place of a national festival in Serbia.
Dragana Čolić said that she herself had been born and grown up in Sopot with the Film Festival, which was the most important cultural event there, and that she was honored to speak in front of the Cultural Centre, which was hosting the jubilee 50th Festival. Noting that it was the audience that had kept the Festival alive for 50 years, she pointed out that the film programme was a very important programme part of the Cultural Centre, and that the love for film was carefully nurtured year after year, regardless of the genre. Čolić said that for the citizens of Sopot, the Festival was a special emotional event, which they even planned annual vacations around.
Petar Alempijević expressed his satisfaction that the Belgrade Festivals Centre participated in the organization of the Sopot Film Festival, which that year contained a large selection of films in the competition selection. He said that CEBEF would try to ensure that the audience, in addition to seeing the films, could meet and interact with the artist – actors, directors, crew members, who would attend the screenings, and spend time together in the pleasant atmosphere of the Sopot Cultural Centre.
Alempijević reminded that those who had missed the films of the previous year, now at the Sopot Festival they had the opportunity to see important domestic productions in one place, and even some that had not been in distribution – the co-production Slovenian film ‘The Space Among Us’ (Vesolje med nami) and "Usekovanje’, the debut film of the young Sinisa Cvetić.
He pointed out that the Belgrade Festivals Centre had plenty of work to do in this period, mentioning the concert by Maxim Vengerov and Simon Trpčeski, then CEBEF's participation in open-air theatre projects – Teatrijum and the Garden Sessions series of popular music concerts at the end of July in the ‘Jevremovac’ Botanical Garden.
