ZFF and the Filmmakers’ Association of Croatian present the masterclass with director and scriptwriter Stefan Arsenijević whose feature film, As Far As I Can Walk, is screening in ZFF’s main competition. Hosting the talk with the director is producer Tamara Babun.

Belgrade was an important stop on the Balkan migrant route. Thousands of tired, lost people arrived in my city every day. And while a part of our public feared that migrants would destroy our culture and way of life, I thought it would be interesting to make them the heroes in the modern adaptation of the Serbian folk epic Banović Strahinja. What if the people we feared substituted the Serbian national heroes? And what if they embraced our heritage? For me, it seemed to raises a number of interesting questions about identity and tradition. So we merged these two completely disparate worlds, with a desire to try to better understand both. I would say that the strength of cinematic art lies precisely in allowing us to recognize ourselves in others. Stefan Arsenijević