Emin Fırat Övür
MARIENHOF
The events surrounding the sale of their family apartment in Sarajevo challenge a mother and daughter who fled to Vienna thirty years ago.
SYNOPSIS
The events surrounding the sale of their family apartment in Sarajevo challenge a mother and daughter, who fled to Vienna thirty years ago, and the granddaughter, who was born in Vienna, to redefine the question of belonging for themselves. Through the eyes of three women, the levels of Austrian-Bosnian history, the history of Sarajevo, today's Europe, and a family history are interwoven.
DIRECTOR
Nina Kusturica
WRITER
Nina Kusturica
PRODUCER
Michael Kitzberger
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH
COUNTRY
Austria
GENRE
Documentary
Nina Kusturica
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Nina Kusturica is a film and theatre director. She also works as a teacher and in the field of artistic research, and as an author, editor, and producer. Her award-winning films, including the fiction feature Ciao Chérie (2017), the documentary Little Alien (2009), and the fiction feature Auswege (2003), along with her other documentaries and short films, have been shown at numerous international film festivals. Kusturica regularly teaches at various universities and accompanies projects as a dramaturgical consultant or mentor. She studied directing and editing at the University of Music and Performing Arts – Film Academy Vienna. Born in Mostar, she grew up in Sarajevo and has lived in Vienna since 1992.
Marienhof starts from a concrete situation: my eighty-year-old mother is selling our family apartment in Sarajevo, in the Marijin Dvor district. We have been living in Vienna since the outbreak of war in 1992. The apartment, which we had to leave abruptly at the time, has remained largely untouched for decades. For me, it is not a neutral place but a condensed space of memory, which I long experienced as a kind of reassurance of origin. As the sale approaches, I begin to accompany this process through film in order to understand what it means for us to let go of this place, and to explore what it does to us to return to a place we believed we had already come to terms with. I am interested in a state of simultaneity: proximity and distance, belonging and detachment. My image of Sarajevo is deeply anchored in the past, while the city has undergone its own transformations. My mother and I move within it as people who were once part of it and who now stand partly outside.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Michael Kitzberger
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY
Michael Kitzberger graduated from studies in history, philosophy, and film theory and has worked as journalist and researcher. In 2003, he founded NGF Geyrhalterfilm together with Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Markus Glaser, and Wolfgang Widerhofer. An EAVE alum of 2006, to date he has produced or co-produced more than thirty feature-length documentaries, thirty television TV docs, five fiction features and three television doc series (with several seasons). NGF documentaries (including Our Daily Bread, Homo Sapiens, Master of the Universe, and The Visit, among others) have competed in festivals all over the world, including the Sundance Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the Berlin International Film Festival, and have won numerous awards, including a European Film Award, a Millennium Award, and a Grimme Award. The company’s feature-length fiction films, like The Robber, Michael, and Mademoiselle Paradis have premiered at the Berlinale, the Festival de Cannes, and the San Sebastián and Toronto International Film Festivals competitions and been sold worldwide. NGF Geyrhalterfilm is based in Vienna and is a member of dok.at and the Austrian, German, and European Film Academies.
Production company profile
NGF Geyrhalterfilm is an award-winning production company from Vienna with over twenty years of experience and one hundred films produced to date, including documentaries, fiction features, and documentary series for cinema, broadcast, and streaming).
The company’s films have received more than two hundred awards, including European Film Awards, and have been screened in competitions at A-list festivals including the Festival de Cannes, the Berlin, San Sebastián, and Toronto International Film Festivals, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the Sundance Film Festival.
Where are we at?
TOTAL ESTIMATED BUDGET
600.000 €
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