My Father’s Diaries review – haunting home-video excavates trauma of Srebrenica massacre

Ado Hasanović’s moving documentary transforms footage filmed during the Bosnian war into a devastating portrait of memory, survival and inherited grief For years, film-maker Ado Hasanović has wanted to ask his father, Bekir, about his harrowing experiences during the Bosnian war but their conversations usually ended with curt, abrupt answers that obscured rather than illuminated the past. Bekir might be uncommunicative, but his collection of self-taped films and diary entries recorded during the height of the conflict tells a different story. Culled from this powerful personal archive, Hasanović’s poignant documentary forges a dialogue not just with history, but also across generations. In 1993, along with two other friends, Bekir formed a film-making collective called John, Ben & Boys in the small mountain town of Srebrenica. As the war escalated, what began as a playful amateur exercise quickly transformed into intentional documentation, as if Bekir was already aware of the genoc...

Big swings, big misses and big deals: what happened at this year’s Sundance?

The 40th edition of the independent film festival saw some multimillion-dollar deals but also had attendees question if there was a drop in quality

The high bar raised by last year’s Sundance film festival had caused many to feel a little underwhelmed by this year’s edition, a commonly tweeted and spoken concern over just whether this year could truly boast a major breakout movie. Twelve months prior, the workplace thriller Fair Play, erotic drama Passages, nifty horror Talk to Me, romcom Rye Lane, timely documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, mother-son music tale Flora and Son and decade-spanning romance Past Lives caused waves that continued for the next year, an unusually robust lineup, fittingly given that it was Sundance’s big in-person comeback.

It was a slightly more muted affair over in Utah this year, some attributing a weaker lineup to 2023’s dual strikes, which prevented many productions from going ahead, but there were still enough gems amid the murk and a promising raft of major multimillion deals. Because while the strikes may have allegedly affected the roster, they also had a definite impact on the thirst of buyers, in frantic need of films to help repair lighter-than-usual release schedules. There might not have been anything as buzzy as Past Lives but this year’s crop of films continued to edge away from a reliance on A-listers to draw attention, a relief after a period of limp, star-led projects taking slots away from smaller, more deserving fare.

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