The Dokufest film festival’s programme boldly focused on Palestine and Ukraine, defying concerns expressed by some other cultural festival organisers that highlighting the Palestinians’ plight can put funding at risk.
Silence took over the cinema as the lights were turned on, announcing that the film had ended and revealing the shocked faces and teary eyes of the people who had come to Prizren from various places around the world for the annual Dokufest Documentary and Short Film Festival.
The film that was being shown, ‘No Other Land’, a documentary by Palestinian and Israeli film-makers, made over the span of five years, documents the “slow-motion eradication of the village Masafer Yatta on the West Bank” by Israel’s occupation forces, according to its creators.
Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist, together with Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist, filmed Israeli soldiers deployed in his home region implementing government orders to demolish houses and drive out residents who often end up living in caves, in order to create a military training zone.
The film, which won the Berlinale Documentary Award 2024, was in line with this year’s Dokufest theme, ‘New Order’, which aims to highlight the madness of war and importance of peaceful cooperation.
A scene from the film ‘No Other Land’ during the screening at Dokufest on August 3. Photo: BIRN
Unlike most films screened that Saturday afternoon, it took several minutes for the viewers to start to clap after the film ended and another several minutes for the first few to get up and leave the cinema to catch what was next in the schedule.
The reactions were similar at other screenings of the film, BIRN was told by festivalgoers.
“This festival does not shy away from showing political films or films about issues that not that many festivals like” or dare to showcase, Veton Nurkollari, co-founder and artistic director of Dokufest, told BIRN.
This year’s Dokufest has been paying special attention to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Palestine’s occupation by Israel and the repercussions of the war in Gaza.
Nurkollari said that many similar festivals around the world do not have Dokufest’s “privilege”, as he considers it, to be able to bring such important issues forward.
Flags outside Dokufest’s offices, where some of the festival venues are located, in Prizren on August 4. Photo: BIRN
The festival collaborated with the Ukrainian Docudays human rights festival to stage an exhibition of Ukrainian photographers. It also screened contemporary films and documentaries on Palestine as well as older ones covering decades of violations of humanitarian laws, in black and white and colour.
“Living in a country that experienced war, it is understandable to be on the side of the ones that are oppressed because we were oppressed for a long time and we know what it means to be third-class citizens,” Nurkollari said, referencing Serbia’s harsh rule for many decades over Kosovo.
“Being oppressed somehow naturally makes one want to be on the side of the oppressed, wherever they are,” he added.
‘There’s nothing worse than wars’
Photos by Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak in a joint exhibition between Kosovo’s Dokufest and Ukraine’s Docudays, depict Russia’s full-scale invasion. Photo: BIRN
A hand lying above the soil of a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, where hundreds of Ukrainians massacred by Russian soldiers were buried, is depicted in a photographic exhibition that forms part of Dokufest’s Focus on Ukraine programme, which opened on Monday. The image is one of many by Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak documenting the brutal war in his country.
In the front yard of Prizren’s Centre for Art and Culture, many Dokufest attendees went from watching devastating films about Palestine and the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia to looking at photographs of destroyed buildings in Ukraine.
Co-founder and artistic director of Dokufest, Veton Nurkollari (righ) and Yuliia Kovalenko, a film critic and programmer at Ukraine’s Docudays, open Dokufest’s programme on Ukraine on Monday. Photo: BIRN
“There is nothing worse than wars,” Nurkollari said, explaining the pacifist intentions of the festival, which attempts “to promote peace through film and through dialogue”.
“War is madness, people go crazy and you lose the sense of normality quickly. We might be friends today but war starts and the next day we are enemies. It’s difficult to explain but that is what wars do,” observed Nurkollari, who, together with a few others, co-founded Dokufest in 2002 as post-war Kosovo was rebuilding itself.
Fear of losing funding
A Palestinian keffiyeh is held up at Lumbardhi Bahce in Prizren during a performance by Palestinian band 47Soul at one of Dokufest’s concerts, DokuNights, as attendees dance and chant “Free Palestine”, August 3. Photo: BIRN
At least 39,623 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. However, many arts and cultural festivals around the world seem disinclined to get involved with the subject, observers say.
The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the world largest documentary festival, known for its strong stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was hit by a boycott by a group of pro-Palestinian film-makers over the issue.
It’s been reported that other festivals around the world have experienced similar controversies, fearing to address the Palestine situation for fear of losing funds from governments, sponsors or individual donors who support Israel or don’t want to jeopardise their relations with Israel.
However, Dokufest has experienced no pressure from the government or donors for promoting awareness of the Palestinians’ plight, and has managed to maintain its artistic independence without fear of losing funding.
On Saturday at the Lumbardhi Bahce in Prizren, festival-goers support for the Palestinian cause was also evident, as members of the audience at a gig by Palestinian band 47Soul shouted “Free Palestine” as the electronic group played live.
Palestinian band 47Soul performing at DokuNights, August 3. Photo: BIRN
The Palestinian band 47Soul are based in London, but Dokufest was not able to bring any Palestinians from the occupied territories to Kosovo because it is impossible for them to fly from Palestine, where the international airport has been closed since 2001 and flying from Israel was impossible because of the ongoing war in Gaza.
It was even difficult to bring Israeli film-makers because many flights from Tel Aviv were cancelled, the Dokufest organisers said.
The discussion that opened the Focus Ukraine programme on Monday, which involved a panel of organisers of film festivals around the world discussing financial pressures because of issues mainly related to ongoing conflicts, was held behind closed doors because of concerns that expressing strong pro-Palestinian views can have a negative effect on festivals’ future financing.
Nurkollari admitted that like other festivals, Dokufest faced difficulties with organising panels that discuss Palestine, including one the about problems festivals face and why they “refrain from bringing [certain] film-makers” because this can lead to funding problems or negative campaigns that target the festival.
One of the films in the programme Films on Palestine, ‘Man Number 4’ by London-based film-maker Miranda Pennell, focuses on a disturbing photo from social media taken in Gaza in December 2023. Photo: BIRN
Securing funding is not the only problem that some film festivals face. Yuliia Kovalenko, a Ukrainian film critic and programmer at Docudays in Kyiv who was involved in the Focus on Ukraine programme at Dokufest, told BIRN that her annual event was first hit by COVID-19 and then by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
However, by November 2022, they managed to stage a shorter, three-day Docudays event in Kyiv despite air raids and power shortages.
Kovalenko said that despite the ongoing conflict, “people are still working in Ukraine and finding the energy to do something and keep going”.
“Sometimes I feel exhausted,” she added, explaining that the Docudays festival is no longer just a festival, but an organisation that fundraises to save lives, helping to provide “protection gear for film-makers and journalists”.
Kovalenko mused that Ukraine might learn from the experience of Kosovo, “to analyse what we should do together to live in a better world, building a new global and secure” space.
“What happened in Kosovo was a disaster but nobody has borne responsibility. Serbia did not bear responsibility, but the importance of these festivals is to put the question of responsibility on the table,” she said.
Dokufest attendees watch the festival’s opening video at Lumbardhi Bahce in Prizren, August 2. Photo: BIRN
This year’s Dokufest opening ceremony, last Friday, included a short video that combined global and domestic events that on first glance seemed almost surreal.
It included US President Joe Biden mistakenly calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “Putin”, the destruction of Gaza, young people partying, marches against gender-based violence in the streets of Kosovo, and Charlie Chaplin’s speech from the classic movie The Dictator with peace slogans highlighted on screen.
“Give Youth a Future”, “Liberty Will Never Perish” and “Fight for a New World” were some of the slogans, which Nurkollari said were deliberately blurred “because we don’t see” what is coming around the corner – there is always the potential for more wars to erupt.
Dokufest 2024 runs until August 10 at various venues in Prizren.