BILJANA TUTOROV
Writer/Director
Serbia
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After graduating Art History at the Catholic University in Louvain (Belgium) Biljana Tutorov studied Film Anthropology at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and Drama at Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacque Lecoq in Paris. She is the author of video installations, short, feature and documentary films, video works and performances. She was first director’s assistant to the famous Yugoslavian Black wave film director Želimir Žilnik. From 1998 until 2011, she worked for Swedish production company Long Film, producing and/or directing documentaries and short fiction films. In 2010 she founded in Novi Sad (Serbia) an independent film production, Wake Up Films, with an idea to support the new talents from the region. Biljana established and programmed Regional competition for fiction and docs at FREE ZONE Film Festival in Belgrade until the 2017. In 2018 she created the CIRCLE - Women Doc Accelerator, a new platform for women filmmakers who are developing documentary projects. Biljana Tutorov was a member of the 59. Festival dei Popoli, Florence, international jury. She is alumna of EURODOC and Producers On The Move, a member of EDN, EWA and EFA.
Her recent feature documentary When Pigs Come (2018) won several awards and was screened in Sarajevo Film Festival, Hot Docs, Vision du Reel, Cinemed, DokuFest among many other festivals. Her new feature documentary Paper Boats Floating into the Fragrant Night will be released in 2019.
Biljana lives between Paris and Novi Sad (Serbia).
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AUNTS
Half a century after the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movement, four acclaimed female and feminist directors (Mirjana Karanović, Kim Longinotto, Šejla Kamerić, Andrea Štaka) team up to rethink the actual state of womanhood. Through short stories filmed around the world to be woven into one narrative, on how we women fabricate the image of ourselves and how we communicate it across generations, they are mapping the contemporary female existence. Female body and politics. Female body in war. Transmission between younger and older generations. Why aren’t we able to save the status acquired by our mothers and grandmothers? Didn’t the women’s liberation and equality movement move us forward? The questions of abortion, different working conditions, new taboos of the female body, women's health issues etc. Why do we have to prove the same points over and over again?
As they meet to discuss the work in progress, their creative voices struggle to become one. The recordings of their discussions and work becomes a critical part in the patchwork of topics that AUNTS addresses. The filmmakers’ voices blend with those of their subjects adding to the polyphonic dramaturgy of female identity over generations.