2006

The second FREE ZONE film festival at the cinema of the Belgrade Cultural Centre
DISCOVER THE WORLD TO UNDERSTAND IT BETTER

If you've missed FREE ZONE last year, this was your chance to make it up to yourself!!
Although no FREE ZONE is the same, the main ingredients remain unchanged: socially committed films from all over the world, interesting discussions with film directors and a fabulous atmosphere.
At the FREE ZONE film festival (held at the cinema of the Belgrade Cultural Centre from 15 to 19 November - film showings at 5, 7 and 9 pm) you could see 14 feature films and feature-length documentaries about the most topical social and political issues worldwide.
The freshness of the authors' approach, the spontaneousness of the aesthetics of the visual guerrilla and the topical question of social commitment in the contemporary cinematic art are the issues that are nowadays equally important as the themes of the films that were featured at the festival this year.
FREE ZONE promotes the idea that the most successful way to take on the struggle for cultural identity, against poverty, for a life of dignity and a sense of common humanity that has been raging both internationally and locally is to make a clear statement of a committed artistic practice.
That is why The Forsaken Land, the winner of the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) award at this year's Cannes film festival, focusing on the fate of ordinary people caught in the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka opened this FREE ZONE. That is why the 2006 Oscar-nominated film The New World by Terence Malick with Coleen Farell and Christopher Plummer, a story about love between indigenous Indian and a white colonizator, closed it.
Emir Kusturica finds himself in the excellent company of Spike Lee, John Woo, Ridley Scott and other European directors as the author of one of the stories in the omnibus "All the Invisible Children" about the children living on the margins of today's world.
"The Hamburg Cell" is the life story of one of the suicide hijackers that crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York in 2001.
The film "Son of Man" by the authors of "Carmen", shown in this country in 2005, puts the biblical story into the context of racial hatred and the consequences of the apartheid in South Africa.
The documentary "Troubled Water" follows the life of Israeli and Palestinian fishermen caught in the middle of a brutal conflict between their nations. All they want is to set up a village where they can live like people in the Mediterranean.
The director of the censored video for Eminem's song "Mosh", Ian Inaba has made a film that questions the purpose of representative democracy in the U.S.A.
Each film that was shown at the FREE ZONE festival is a link with the world that we are opening to and about which we know very little.
These films will not change that world!
It will be changed by the people watching them!

FREE ZONE Festival had 2 openings:
- the music opening, at the REX Cultural Center, on November 14th at 22h - featuring Sky Vikler & guests. More than 200 people gathered to enjoy their music
- opening ceremony, at the Cinema of the Cultural Center of Belgrade, November 15th at 19h - the opening address by Biljana Srbljanovic, one of the most prominent and prolific Serbian writers today.

More than 5.500 audience visited the Festival, which is almost double than the first edition!! 6 screenings were sold out!

For the best movie of the Festival, audience voted "All the Invisible Children". Just behind it, according to the number of votes, are "Favela Raising", "The Hamburg Cell" and "Children of Beslan"

All the ticket income went to the SAFE HOUSE for the children and women victims of the family violence.