Second AJB DOC Film Festival Officially Opened

Audience was addressed by Edhem Fočo, Director of AJB DOC FIlm Festival, Tarik Đođić, Al Jazeera Balkans Managing Director, and Ahmed Mahfouz Nouh, Al Jazeera Documentary Channel Managing Director.

The second edition of the AJB DOC Film Festival was officially opened tonight at 7pm. “For Sama” by Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts was the first documentary film from the competition program, which was screened after the welcoming speeches of the organizers. It is an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. The film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life during five years of uprising in Aleppo, Syria, as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all the while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice – whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life. 

The second film screened at the opening night, and the first from The Last Minute Cinema non-competition selection, was “Cleaners” by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck. The film tells the story about the hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn’t like. We meet five “digital scavengers”, among thousands of people outsourced from Silicon Valley, whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content of the net. Yet underneath their work lie profound questions around what makes an image art of propaganda, and what defines journalism. Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology. 

After the opening night at the AJB DOC Film Festival, the audience will have the opportunity to watch twenty-one documentary films of outstanding production quality. All films that will be screened show a tendency for change, which is also a motto of this year’s festival. The Change is evident in individuals, in society, in technology and in the country, but the most important change is the individual fight which occurs as a result of the change in one’s environment. 

AJB DOC Film Festival is organized by the Al Jazeera Balkans, in cooperation with Al Jazeera Media Network and Al Jazeera Media Institute in Doha. The Festival will take place in Sarajevo from the 20 th to 24th September 2019. 

Click here to see the screening schedule.