Andrea Staka: Last News

In Dubrovnik, as everywhere, the wealthy do not live near the airport — so much noise, so much traffic, so many planes overhead stealing sections of cloudless blue sky. Instead, the airport’s depressed, cracked-concrete environs are occupied by blue-collar families like the one at the heart of Andrea Staka’s third feature (after “Cure” and 2008’s Locarno-winning “Fraulein”), which gives “Mare,” as specific and intimate a portrait of female midlife dissatisfaction as you’ll find, its more universal striations of class and social awareness.

Alissa Simon Film Critic On the eve of the world premiere of “Mother Mara,” her second feature as a director, multi-hyphenate Mirjana Karanović, the Balkan region’s most famous star, visited the Variety Lounge presented by the Sarajevo Film Festival and BH Telecom. Just as with her first feature, “The Good Wife,” Karanović stars and takes co-writing credits in “Mother Mara.” She discusses how her roles as director, actor and woman sometimes came in conflict on her second feature, while her first was very easy. Karanović notes that “Mother Mara”, about a grieving woman, who rediscovers her life force through a relationship with a friend of her late son, shows a successful woman defying convention, doing something that might be considered inappropriate for her age.