A Bosnian Roma couple re-enact their personal struggle to get treatment after their baby died in the womb, in a tiny-budget movie by an Oscar-winning director that’s competing for the top prize at the Berlin film festival.
Director Danis Tanovic discovered the story of the couple, Senada Alimanovic and Nazif Mujic, in a newspaper in late 2011. He says he went to meet the family several times and had the “crazy idea” of having the couple play themselves to avoid a long planning process.
Tanovic made the movie, “An Episode In the Life of an Iron Picker,” with €17,000 ($23,000) from a Bosnian film fund. It has its premiere Wednesday at the Berlin festival, where it’s one of 17 movies competing for the Golden Bear award.
The movie re-creates several days in which Mujic, who tried to make ends meet at the time by collecting scrap metal, fought to get emergency treatment for Alimanovic after her baby died while she was still carrying it.
The couple didn’t have public health insurance, and a hospital denied them the surgery when they were unable to meet its demands to pay €500 — a huge sum for them. Roma, also known as Gypsies, suffer from poverty and discrimination across Europe, particularly in the continent’s east.
“They were reluctant at first” to play themselves in the movie, said Tanovic, whose “No Man’s Land” won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 2002. “They were a little bit afraid to tell the story. They didn’t know me, they didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
He said their story is “deeply disturbing and unfair, (and) I think the best way for me to fight these things is to show them, to talk about them.”
Tanovic worked without a screenplay and the film features no professional actors; two doctors, one who refused to treat Alimanovic and another who did treat her, are played by other doctors who are friends of the director.
Mujic said he still has no regular job or health insurance and is “living from hand to mouth,” though he’s now involved with an organization that seeks to improve Gypsy children’s education — but, with the film project under way, he was able to get gall bladder treatment last year.
He was joined at the Berlin festival by Alimanovic.
“It was painful,” she said of the episode the film depicts. “I don’t want anyone else to experience what I had to experience.”
Utah Leaders and Locals Rally To Keep Sundance Film Festival In The State
With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a final push — one that could include paying millions of dollars — to keep the world-renowned film festival as its directors consider uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read "Keep Sundance in Utah" in a last-ditch effort to convince festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, its home of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw as much money at the festival as other states hoping to lure it away. Now his office is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to pick a home for the next decade.
It could retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and center itself in nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — beginning in 2027.
"Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can't really separate those two," Cox said. "This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever."
Last year's festival generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, according to Sundance's 2024 economic impact report.
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year by early spring.
Colorado is trying to further sweeten its offer. The state is considering legislation giving up to $34 million in tax incentives to film festivals like Sundance through 2036 — on top of the $1.5 million in funds already approved to lure the Utah festival to its neighboring... Read More