At the European Film Festival in Paris last night (Festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe), Stefan Arsenijević’s film As Far As I Can Walk won two awards: a special recognition from the main jury and the LUNA award for best film, given by a young jury. The ceremony was attended by the main actor Ibrahim Koma, who received awards on behalf of the team.
In its explanation, the young jury stated: “We especially emphasize the impressive originality of the film. The director never uses the usual means and never falls into pathos, which would be easy, considering the topic. His action, close to naturalism, tries to find the truth between the global events of the migrant crisis and an intimate love drama. The film achieves even greater momentum, modernizing the Serbian medieval epic “”Banović Strahinja, traveling thusly also through time, while Strahinja moves through space. Rooted at the same time in reality and the epic, this is how an honest, tragic and strong love story opens to us, which is rounded off by the main actors so well, that they manage to make us forget that they are actors.”
The film had its world premiere at the 55th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, where it won y as five awards, including the main award, the Grand Prix Crystal Globe for Best Film. This is the first time in this century that Serbian film has triumphed in the main competition program at one of the world’s most important A-category festivals. As Far As I Can Walk has so far participated in over 20 other film festivals, including prestigious festivals in Pinja, Cairo, Seville, Montpellier, Thessaloniki, Haifa, Trieste and other cities around the world, and so far it has won a total of 11 festival awards.
The film was supported by Film Center Serbia, the Council of Europe Eurimages fund, the Luxembourg Film Fund, the French National Film Center, the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Lithuanian Film Center, Creative Europe – MEDIA and the Government of Serbia.