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The Eclipse, director Nataša Urban

The Eclipse

Formorkelsen / Pomračenje

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Canadian Premiere

In 1961, a solar eclipse brought Yugoslavs out into the streets, peering through handmade visors and screens to wonder at this rare natural phenomenon. There wouldn’t be another one before the year 1999, they were told. Who could know that by then, there would no longer be a Yugoslavia? Nataša Urban (b. 1977) revisits the conflict that tore her country and her childhood apart through the prism of her immediate family and friends’ often reluctant recollections, and pierces their webs of self-protective amnesia and willful ignorance.

Artfully conjured through poetic Super 8 and Super 16mm footage, some of it quite abstract, some metaphorical, the film is a fascinating insight into a side of history that is rarely explored. With intertitles carefully mapping out the course of Serbia’s nationalist, xenophobic campaign, a spare but evocative score, and sometimes rendingly painful interviews, it’s easy to see why Urban’s film won the top prize at the prestigious Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) earlier this year.

 

DOX:Award (Best International Feature), CPH-DOX 2022

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Norway

Year

2022

Language

In Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
Content Warning

Animal Cruelty

18+
109 min
Award Winners Documentary Women Directors

Book Tickets

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Credits

Producer

Ingvil Giske

Cinematography

Ivan Marković

Editor

Jelena Maksimović

Original Music

Bill Gould, Jared Blum

Director

Nataša Urban headshot, The Eclipse director

Nataša Urban

Nataša Urban is a documentary film director and editor working professionally since 2005. Her films, such as Journey of a Red Fridge (2007)—which won the First Appearance Competition Award and was named as one of the Top 25 Audience Favorites at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam—and Big Sister Punam (2009)—which won the UNICEF Award for Children’s Rights—have been screened at film festivals worldwide and have received 40 awards. She holds a Master’s degree in Photography from the University of Arts in Belgrade and lives and works in Oslo.