BOTTLEMEN (Serbia-Slovenia, 2023, 75′)
Wednesday, October 2 , at 7 pm, Cinema Massimo, Screen 3
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Director: Nemanja Vojinovic
Photography: Igor Marovic
Editing: Dragan von Petrovic
Music: Predrag Adamovic
Production: Rt dobre Nade
Vinca is a suburb on the outskirts of Belgrade. Seven thousand years ago, some of the largest settlements in prehistoric Europe were located there. What was once a cradle of European civilization has now turned into one of the largest and most unhealthy dumping areas in Europe. A community, mainly of Romanis, known as the ‘bottlemen’, lives a precarious life collecting plastic bottles as a job and being in daily contact with those mountains of rubbish. A community divided into gangs, like wolves competing to pick up and stack on trucks carrying ‘plastic gold’ of used bottles for recycling.
With western echoes, a gaze as documentary-observation and at the same time of closeness with those people, especially some of them. The film follows the last days of those people as radical changes are taking place in Vinca to reclaim it. Best Documentary at the 2023 Sarajevo Film Festival.
Nemanja Vojinovic (Serbia) studied direction at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where he graduated in 2012. His short documentary Reality, Fuck Off received awards at many film festivals. With Las Distancias, which follows migrants from Cuba to the United States, he directed and produced his first feature documentary. He is a member of DOKSERBIA, the Association of Documentary Filmmakers of Serbia.
Filmography: Road 29 (2010, sf), Reality, Fuck Off (2011, sf doc), Porodica Klasic (2011, film for television), Where is Nadja? (2013), Las Distancias (2017, doc), Bottlemen (2023, doc).