Paskaljevic awarded for humanity in film art

Belgrade, May, 07. 2010 (Serbia today) - The famous Serbian movie-maker Goran Paskaljevic was recently honored at the Film Festival in San Sebastian for films dedicated to human rights. He is the first foreign director to receive this award. His film ‘Honeymoons’ is presently screened at art cinemas in Madrid, Barcelona and a dozen other cities in Spain, and has been given outstanding reviews in the leading Spanish media. The media in that country view Paskaljevic as one of the most important European directors in the last three decades. Paskaljevic received the largest number of the highest award in the history of the Film Festival in Valladolid (‘Someone Else’s America’, ‘Optimists’ and ‘Honeymoons’). He is seen by the Spanish film critics as a determined fighter for human rights who, ‘apart from making great films (‘Midwinter Night’s Dream’, ‘Powder Barrel’) has been always fighting against nationalism in his country by modern dialectic’. On the occasion of the six awards he received worldwide for the ‘Honeymoons’ and award for humanity, the famous director told ‘Blic’: ‘The award for humanity is certainly a special recognition. The important thing is that this film, as many of other of my films is being screened at cinemas in Frances, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and now in Spain. The film attracted huge media attention and journalists mainly asked me how the Kosovo issue should be solved since they see Serbia in the EU and Kosovo as an obstacle to that. Of course, I cannot offer a solution, but this film as many have observed, is a bridge between the two conflicted nations and a hand of reconciliation. I think that the Spaniards understand our problems very well, they experienced the civil war the traces of which are still being felt’.