Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Filmstill Ciné-Guerillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels
Mila Turajlić
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Serbia,
France
2022
94 minutes
Serbian,
French,
Arabic,
English
Subtitles: 
English

What do the Algerian war of liberation and Yugoslavia have in common? Stevan Labudović. In 1959, Tito himself sent his favourite cinematographer to Algeria. The resistance against the French colonial rule needed the eyes of the world, and the experienced partisan Labudović helped open them: His images gave the lie to the propaganda of the occupiers and their Western allies. This is a portrait of the man, the mission and the age – as film, ideological and personal history.

For three years, until the Democratic Republic of Algeria was proclaimed, Labudović put himself and his camera at the service of the people fighting for independence. Mila Turajlić found the newsreel footage shot at the time in the Filmske Novosti archive in Belgrade, got in touch with the aged pensioner and followed his trail. From a wealth of archive material, diary entries by and interviews with Labudović, with contemporary witnesses from Yugoslavia, Algeria and New York, where the young Maghreb state, like many other former colonies, struggled for admission to the United Nations, she distils the promising origins of an alliance that stood at the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was to oppose the dichotomy of the superpowers. Thus the bow to her compatriot also gains global political topicality.
Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mila Turajlić
Cinematographer
Mila Turajlić
Editor
Sylvie Gadmer, Anne Renardet, Mila Turajlić
Producer
Carine Chichkowsky, Mila Turajlić
Sound
Aleksandar Protić
Score
Troy Herion
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize