Sarajevo on film 2014 France / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bridges of Sarajevo (Les Ponts de Sarajevo)
Thirteen directors, thirteen bridges, one city — the centenary omnibus that reads Sarajevo's history through the structures that span its river.
- Director
- Various (13 directors)
- Year
- 2014
- Language
- French / Bosnian
- Country
- France / Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Genre
- anthology, documentary
Directed by — the anthology's makers
Portrait credits: Aida Begić (CC BY 3.0), Jean-Luc Godard (CC BY 2.0), Sergei Loznitsa (CC BY-SA 3.0), Cristi Puiu (CC BY 3.0), Ursula Meier (CC BY-SA 3.0), Kamen Kalev (CC BY-SA 4.0), Isild Le Besco (CC BY-SA 3.0), Angela Schanelec (CC BY-SA 4.0), Teresa Villaverde (CC BY-SA 4.0), Vladimir Perišić (CC BY-SA 4.0), Marc Recha (CC0).
Bridges of Sarajevo (Les Ponts de Sarajevo) is a centenary commission: for 2014, the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, thirteen directors were each given one bridge over the Miljacka and asked to make a short film about it. The roster reads like a map of contemporary European cinema — Aida Begić, Jean-Luc Godard, Sergei Loznitsa, Cristi Puiu, Ursula Meier and eight more — and the results range from documentary to fiction to pure image.
The conceit is the point: a city’s history can be read through its crossings. The Ottoman stone bridges, the Habsburg spans, and the modern crossings each carry a different Sarajevo, and the film moves between them the way the city itself does. It premiered in the Special Screenings section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
For a visitor, it is the ideal structure for a walking day: pick the film for the bridge you are standing on, then cross it. The river walk and this anthology are made for each other.
Critical reception
The anthology premiered as a Special Screening at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and the reviews were warm but qualified. The Guardian welcomed the project while doubting it would travel beyond the festival circuit; the Hollywood Reporter summed it up as an omnibus of mixed quality. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates a single review, so no consensus score exists.
Public reception and legacy
The anthology premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings strand, then screened in Sarajevo as part of the First World War centenary and at the 20th Sarajevo Film Festival. It was the first production of the Sarajevo City of Film Fund to reach Cannes, a validation, its producers said, of the fund’s strategy. Its IMDb rating stands at 5.9 from a small vote count.
What the critics said
“It would be hard to see this sort of thing appearing outside the festival circuit, although I'm glad it exists.”Read the review →
“As any omnibus film, this is a potpourri of mediocre, good and a couple of great entries.”Read the review →