2021-2023
Želimir Žilnik (Serbia) rose to prominence in the late 1960s as a primary figure of the Yugoslav Black Wave. He is noted for his radical, independent approach to filmmaking, his pioneering use of hybrid nonfiction forms, and his inventive approach to docudrama. Having lost both of his parents to Nazi persecutions during World War II, he later trained as a lawyer at the University of Novi Sad, and was assistant to Dušan Makavejev. The student demonstrations of 1968 and the turmoil that followed the occupation of Czechoslovakia are at the centre of Žilnik’s first feature, Early Works (1969), which was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival that same year. Since his beginnings in the lively amateur film scene of Yugoslavia in the 1960s, Žilnik has made more than fifty films, many of which have anticipated real-world events: the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the economic transition from socialism to a neoliberal order, the annihilation of workers’ rights, and wider social erosion related to labor and migration. Facing censorship, Žilnik left Yugoslavia for Germany in the mid-1970s, returning by the end of the decade to go on to a successful career in film and television. More recently, he has been celebrated with major career retrospectives all over the world, and is recognized as one of the most important politically engaged filmmakers working in Europe today. His films have been screened at the Venice Biennale, Documenta (Kassel), MUMOK (Vienna), Sharjah Biennial, Media City Film Festival, ICA (London), National Gallery of Art (Washington), Slovenian Cinematheque (Ljubljana), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico City), and many others. The book Želimir Žilnik: Shadow Citizens, named after a retrospective exhibition held at the Kunsthalle Wien (2020), explores aspects of Žilnik’s extensive oeuvre, and was released by Sternberg Press in 2021. MCFF’s Chrysalis Fellowship is providing support for a forthcoming Zilnik feature created in collaboration with legendary filmmaker Karpo Godina.
Zilnik’s storied life and filmography is ultimately one not easily defined or summarized, but it is full of determination, energy and appreciation of life. From the very beginning, Zilnik has focused on the relationship between ideology and society, and he came to fashion the clearest mirror of the social system by simply having his protagonists play themselves. —Harvard Film Archive
>JURIJ MEDEN ON ŽELIMIR ŽILNIK (video)
>POMPIDOU INTERVIEW WITH ŽELIMIR ŽILNIK (video)
>PURCHASE SHADOW CITIZEN (book)