The first International Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Film Festival – AJB DOC solemnly opened Friday evening with the screening of Danish documentary Lost Warrior.
Managing Director of Al Jazeera Balkans, Tarik Djodjic said he hoped the festival would have a long tradition.
“As you know, besides the news programme, the documentary film takes a significant segment of our programme. I am glad we will present in the next four days starting from today really great authors and great films. I hope this is a beginning of one long tradition,” said Djodjic.
“We invested in the production of documentaries across the region together with many production companies, and I hope we are going to establish a tradition, because these are the films formatted for television, so we hope that authors, production companies of the documentaries and TV stations across the region, Europe and the world will find themselves here and discuss the new projects and good films,” he added.
AJB DOC Director Edhem Foco pointed out the details that make this festival different from the others.
“The first difference is in the format (…) Many authors adjusted their films to our format to make it more simple for the market. That's the first thing that makes it different. I even think it is one of the kind in Europe because there is no documentary festival of that format. Secondly, this is a truly international festival. This is the first one, we hope we will take it to a much higher level next year,” Foco said, adding that hopefully, this will become one of the leading documentary film festivals in the region.
AJB DOC starts on September 21 and closes down four days later. It is held under auspices of Al Jazeera Balkans in cooperation with Al Jazeera Media Network and Al Jazeera Media Institute.
Of 300 registered films from 30 countries, 15 were selected for the competition programme, five for the out-of-competition programme ‘Last Minute Cinema’ and three more for the Al Jazeera Presents programme.
The international jury will reward three best films, while all participants will compete for the Audience Award.
