December 18, 2018 - Festival UBRZAJ will continue to educate audiences about the importance of human rights, for this year's edition there is a great interest, during which in five days, 15 films will be shown. This was announced during the closing ceremony of the 9th Festival of Human Rights Film UBRZAJ, by the director of the Festival, Miloš Knežević, stressing that the films provided the public with powerful messages aimed at raising awareness about the importance of human rights.
"I hope that we have managed to show with all of these films the motto of the Festival - that is, we watched movies and that we remember something from them. We will see this when we find ourselves in the situation where our human rights have been violated or to someone close to us," said Knezevic.
He said the audience's response was excellent.
"I am glad that the Podgorica audience continues to wait, with impatience, for the Film Festival on Human Rights UBRZAJ. The situation is the same with Berane and Kotor. This year we had a projection in the Gymnasium “Panto Malisic” in Berane, where we also talked to high school students on topics related to human rights," Knezevic pointed out.
He said that the Festival would continue, in addition to presenting the films premiers to the Montenegrin audience, to retain the education function that needs to be, as he said, nurtured especially among the younger generations.
The festival UBRZAJ, which lasted from 9th to 14th December, was closed with the screening of the movie "Groundson", directed by Aleksandar Reljić, who presented to the Montenegrin audience a story about the former detainee Eva Mozes Kor, who survived the Nazi mortal experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengele, and in 2014 symbolically adopted Rainer Hes, the grandson of Commander in Auschwitz, who is now actively fighting fascism and anti-Semitism.
The film director Aleksandar Reljić and the film's protagonist Reiner Hes, the grandson of the commander of the Auschwitz camp, were guests during the closing of the Festival UBRZAJ, and after the screening of the film, they talked with the audience in Sala Dodest, along with the moderation of the historian Miloš Vukanović.
Talking about the motives of working on this film, Reljić explained that he had previously dealt with the subject of the Holocaust and the crimes committed during the Second World War in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
"I did a special documentary "Auschwitz - the Yugoslav Memory" and I was interested in the fact that today, after the war, the bloody decay and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, what is the relation to this phenomenon in the context of cover-up and relativism, not only for the crimes from the nineties but also from the Second World War," Reljić said.
He recalled that in the past ten years there has been an attempt to rehabilitate war criminals in Serbia, reducing their significance.
"I came across the story of Rainer and Eva, after which I decided to continue to deal with this topic," said Reljić, and speaking of the two realities that were going on in Auschwitz concluded: "The banality of the crime can be seen in the photos shown in the film, on which the Nazis lead a carefree life."
He pointed out that the biggest violation of human rights recorded in our history did not remain behind us, and that the features of that time, as he noted, can still be seen in the modern media.
"You can still see a swastika in everyday life, it's not a secret or something that should be concealed. My task is, just like the grandson of one of the greatest criminals, to try to make things like that never happen again," Hes said.
He said that such a crime can happen anywhere in the world and that the worrying fact is the growth of retrograde movements, such as the fact of the region, that “Ustaha get a legitimacy” and that in many EU countries the right-wing politicians are stronger, saying that the governments are the liable ones for preventing similar events.
He was also interested in the audience's questions about the relationship with other members of the Hes family in which he sees himself as a "waste", and in which his grandfather Rudolf Hes was the right one, and how he even learned about the depth of his family's involvement into crimes, which resulted in his interruption in communication with them. He also spoke about his educational initiatives that are being implemented around the world, as well as the threats he receives from the new Nazis and security measures that he is often subjected.
Text by PR Center, on December 15th 2018, read more at CdM
