For the first time this year, UCO was represented by several of its members at the Braka Manaki Festival (Manaki Brothers) in Bitola, North Macedonia. A week of screenings, masterclasses, various events, and reunions with our colleagues from everywhere, all driven by a love for moving images.
A look back at this event through the eyes of some members present this year.
After several weeks of shooting in Montenegro this year, the prospect of returning to the Balkans and discovering a country I didn’t know felt quite natural. Used to festivals, I always find it interesting to see what makes up a selection and open myself to works that might never get theatrical or streaming distribution. And I’ve been hearing about the Manaki Brothers festival for a few years now!
I discovered several sensitive films there, including two international co-productions—strong yet fragile films.
The Ground Beneath Our Feet, by Yrsa Roca Fannberg, shot by Wojciech Staroń, shares with the viewer a chronicle of a Reykjavik nursing home. At body height, with economical movements matching the rhythm of age, Staroń’s camera accompanies an intimacy of final moments, with respect and attention. Beautiful, touching, moving—because everyone knows the end isn’t far, and we’re privileged to be invited there.
When the phone rang, directed by Iva Radivojević, shot by Martin DiCicco, follows Lana’s daily wanderings as the country where she’s growing up becomes former Yugoslavia. The phone call announcing her grandmother’s death, coinciding with the war’s outbreak, becomes the epicenter of this fictional essay, carried by the teenager’s gaze. A memory we haven’t lived but into which we easily project ourselves thanks to Martin DiCicco’s cinematography, which without unnecessary emphasis accompanies a narrative between real and imaginary.
I’m no medium fetishist, but in these two films, the choice of 16mm seemed to make sense—to render tangible the materiality of skins worn by life in one case, to evoke a historical period and the evanescence of memory in the other.
Thomas Lallier
Manaki Brothers is a truly unique festival. Arriving in Bitola, a rather raw Macedonian town, we quickly grasped the local atmosphere.
After some adventures trying to get our accreditations, we found a light program, with afternoons almost entirely free, and the rest of the day filled with meetings and films that tried to start more or less on time.
The festival is very calm: here, no advance reservations, theaters always have room to welcome the public even at the last minute, no screenings in all directions that we can’t get into, requiring us to run everywhere hoping for the privilege of potentially attending. Just a refreshingly human-scale simplicity.
The eternal Parisian stress quickly left our bodies to match the rhythm of Macedonian life, where we truly take time to talk at length and build connections with people. We also take a moment to gather and discuss the films after leaving the theater, which gives time to let them infuse.
This vacation-like festival combines the best of both worlds, where we discover a good number of regional films while taking time to visit the city and its charming surroundings. In a professional world where we’re asked to go ever faster, more efficiently, often with fewer technical and human resources, this little parenthesis makes us step back from the absolute non-necessity of constantly giving 200%. As we often say, we’re not saving lives, and Manaki Brothers reminds us of that very rightly.
Elie Elfassi
When you leave Bitola and Manaki Brothers, the first feeling that crosses you is that you’ll come back. Past the initial chaos—the direction did change this year, mind you—the second half of the week delivered some beautiful moments of cinema and humanity.
With a selection of shorts and features, documentaries, panels and masterclasses, the festival offers a wide range of appointments. Choice is made easier by a “lightened” program with each time the choice between two simultaneous screenings, no more. In Bitola, at the cinema as at the restaurant, choosing means renouncing, so we take a bit of everything.
If at times the selection irritates—just shoot in 16mm to be selected, then?—the few slaps certain films gave me made me forget the problem. Sirat, Nouvelle Vague, The Ground Beneath Our Feet, DJ Ahmet… to name just those!
Festival regulars might be disappointed because here, very few premieres: most films are at the end of their run. Fortunately, there’s Macedonian cinema, surprisingly prolific, as well as the rest of Eastern European cinema that we unfortunately rarely get to glimpse back home.
But this festival’s great strength ultimately lies in the time given to informal moments, those where we drink and eat, and which Manaki’s organization and its partners handled masterfully. How precious it is to gather with other cinematographers from other cultures, with manufacturers and even with UCO members!
In short, thank you and see you next year, Manaki!
Maxime Sabin
After a period of busy weeks filled with work, shoots and big city chaos, the day to leave for North Macedonia finally arrived. After a long day between planes, delays, buses, detours and hours of waiting (from Rome accompanied by Clem, fortunately), we finally arrived at night in a calm and peaceful Bitola.
Our first contact with the festival was discovering we didn’t have our accreditations. This remains an amusing anecdote today, as the problem was quickly solved by providing us with another equally valid type of accreditation (and our tote bag!). We immediately sensed this was a special festival: Bitola’s serenity reflects in its atmosphere. Familial and international, the festival lives from morning around an “espresso freddo” at the central café, accompanied by passionate discussions, while afternoons give way to screenings of shorts and features, often marked by a slow and contemplative rhythm.
I’d like to highlight the documentary Say Goodbye and the feature El diablo fuma (the original title translates as The Devil Smokes (and keeps the burnt matchsticks in the same box), with cinematography by J. Daniel Zúñiga and Odei Zabaleta respectively. Both share a pronounced taste for aesthetics: the first, very representative of the festival’s spirit, characterized by very rare shots, long, dense and static; the second, on the contrary, by chaotic, moving and dynamic shots.
The Manaki Brothers festival truly establishes itself as an event dedicated to cinematographers: it stands out through a selection of films with strong aesthetic value, both visual and conceptual, and creates spaces and moments conducive to exchanges between industry professionals.
We leave with an excellent impression and are already certain we’ll return.
A big thank you to the entire Manaki Brothers organization, see you very soon!
