director: farah hasanbegović | animated documentary short | 8 min
country: bosnia&herzegovina/belgium/hungary/portugal
production: doc nomads
Can we be born guilty?
Starting from an account of a medical condition, the author uses animation to search for the origin of the elements of the story we tell ourselves about our lives. The making process both replicates and confronts the rumination and the obsessive qualities of guilt through the slow, tedious work of traditional animation, where each frame is drawn by hand, constantly rewinding and skipping slightly forward - only to go back again. What results is a sensorial meditation on the material weight of feelings. In an uncertain time, the artist mediates the discomfort of an embodied wrongness with the certainty of organic forms in motion, their flowing rhythmic gestures, the imagined solidity of any outline other than one’s own.
Ribs is an exploration of what it means to think that there is something fundamentally broken in you and a speculative proposal for how to live with it.
Winner of the 2024 International Prize at the Cagliari Essay Film Festival
Winner of the 2023 Best Documentary Award at BHNYFF
SELECT FESTIVAL HISTORY
Visions du Reel 2022, Switzerland | World Premiere
28th Sarajevo Film Festival, Bosnia and Herzegovina | Regional Premiere
63rd Festival dei Popoli, Italy | Italian Premiere
18th Passaggi d’Autore: intrecci mediterranei, Italy
19 Dani Zaima Muzaferije, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zagrebdox 2023, Croatia
BH NYFF, USA
14th Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival, Montenegro
Balkans Beyond Borders, Athens