Followed by a Q&A with director Lidija Zelović.

Length: 98 min
Film Category: Feature Documentary
North American Premiere

Film Synopsis:

Lidija Zelović has been portraying her displaced family in the Netherlands since 1993, ever since they fled their war-torn home in Sarajevo. Zelović's film essay exposes the duality that all migrants live with: what is 'home'? By doing so, the filmmaker draws attention to disruptive social and political developments in the Netherlands, which she recognizes from her native (fallen apart) Yugoslavia. Drawing from her family film archive, Zelović alternates scenes at home—discussions about politics and football on Sundays with her parents and brother, her son growing up, the holidays 'at home' in Bosnia—with political events in the Netherlands, such as political murders, scandals involving government discrimination, growing social polarization, increasing unrest in society, and the acceptance of radical right-wing politics at the center of power. Home Game offers a sometimes funny, often confrontational and always sincere look into Zelović's life, which functions as a mirror for the current political climate in the Netherlands and many other countries around the world.

 

Director's Biography

Lidija Zelović was born in 1970 in Yugoslavia. She studied Yugoslav literature and Serbo-Croatian language at the University of Sarajevo and worked on Bosnian Television starting at the age of 19. In 1993, a year after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina broke out, Lidija moved to the Netherlands and has been living there since. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the Film & Television Science Department at the University of Amsterdam.

Starting in 1997, Lidija has worked as a researcher and subsequently as a director, scriptwriter, and producer at various television channels, including several Dutch television broadcasters (IKON mostly), in the United Kingdom for Channel4 and BBC, as well as at the German/French ARTE channel.

Lidija has had a role in numerous film selection committees at film festivals around the world (fiction and documentary films). She has also been serving on the committee making decisions on which film projects will be financially supported by The Dutch Media Fund (2012/2017). Recently, Lidija signed a contract with Eurimage as an independent external expert.

From 2007 until 2019, Lidija lectured on screenplay writing and research for documentary film to students enrolled in political science majors at the University of Amsterdam.