The real challenge in creating this music video was to capture the right mood and atmosphere – the track itself is quite enigmatic as it blends a laid-back regge beat (beat by Croatian hiphop producer Koolade) with socially provocative and explosive lyrics. So we blended two themes in the video, the verses telling a story, with the chorus capturing the energy and emotion of the lyrics. We shot the video over 3 days, using mainly natural light. The story arc of the video follows a worker who has lost his job and is doing whatever he can to survive – collecting junk and selling it at the market. He has watched his livelihood burn, his family burn, his future going up in flames. So we captured the emotion of this in the chorus and used the obvious symbol of fire (the track is called Burn after all!). The video premiered on MTV Adria on Monday night and so far has had a positive response. Stay tuned, there could be more music videos to come, as the Novagenus crew explores this new creative outlet.

And of course the climax to the Festival was the arrival of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Needless to say, the closing night was a very big night in Sarajevo. Angelina is in final post-production of her directoral debut film In the Land of Blood and Honey, starring the lovely Bosnian actress Zana Marjanović. She was awarded the honorary Heart of Sarajevo and she certainly is deserving. I have worked in refugee crisis zones around the world and raising public awareness is always a struggle, so i have always appreciated Angelina efforts. I had the pleasure of chatting with Angelina after the Awards. Not only is she just as gorgeous in person as on screen, she was charming, relaxed and without pretensions. She and Brad were surprisingly laid-back and accessible, chatting with everyone and they genuinely seemed to be enjoying their short time in Sarajevo so we hope to see them back at the Festival in the future.

All in all a great 2011 Festival and we look forward to next year – each year it seems to get better and better. Hope to see you there.

Even the unseasonably rainy weather couldn’t dampen the atmosphere of the 2011 Sarajevo Film Festival. As always, it was a wonderful week of interesting films, talented & fascinating film-makers great parties.  It really is a film festival for lovers of film. So as in previous years, Novagenus was responsible for trying to capture the highlights of the festival through video. We also filmed interviews with film-makers and actors, which is always fun. This year in the Competition Programme there was seemed to be an emphasis placed on first-time film-makers – seven of the eight films in Competition were debut feature films by the Directors, which shows Sarajevo is really trying to walk the talk and support new film-makers from the region.

Winner of the Heart of Sarajevo for best film was the Austrian production called Breathing – a wonderfully mature directorial debut by well known Austrian stage and film actor Karl Markovics. He has made the transition from actor to director look easy. Breathing is a film about an adolescent who was accidentally kills a another young child and thus spends his youth in juvenile detention. Markovics shows a lot of restraint in telling the story, allowing just fragments of the boys past to seep through the audience. Less is more for Markovics and it works. But undoubtedly his brave decision to cast an unknown non-actor to the lead roll paid off in spades, as the young Thomas Schubert owns the screen in a performance of restraint and concealed anguish that perfectly sets the tone for the film. Schubert told me he had never acted before and he only went along to the audition to accompany a friend – but Markovics obviously saw something special in Shubert and asked him to audition. The rest, as they say, is history. He won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Actor and the highlight of the Festival for me was seeing this young guy receive the award on stage from Angelina Jolie. Wow, how does a 17 year old top that?