LOOKING FOR HORSES

By Stefan PAVLOVIC

NETHERLANDS FILM FUND / NEDERLANDS FILMFONDS - as FIN

Documentary - Completed 2021

Looking for Horses is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman.
One lost his mother-tongue because of a stutter, the other lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war. They look for ways to communicate, while the camera mediates their growing bond.

Festivals
& Awards

Visions du Réel 2021
Burning Lights competition; Best Film Award
    • Year of production
    • 2021
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • NETHERLANDS, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, FRANCE
    • Languages
    • ENGLISH, BOSNIAN
    • Duration
    • 88 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Stefan PAVLOVIC
    • Writer(s)
    • Stefan PAVLOVIC
    • Producer(s)
    • Kostana BANOVIC (artTrace Foundation)
    • Synopsis
    • 'Looking for Horses' is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother tongue due to a stutter. Despite their speech and hearing limitations, a bond develops between the young man and the veteran, as he shares his world of the lake: full of large catfish, wild horses, wide silences, and dangerous thunderstorms. For the fisherman, the lake stands for a withdrawal from a fractured country, a land of war; for the filmmaker it precisely means the return to that broken place, the land of his parents. They look for ways to communicate, while the camera mediates their growing bond. Through its formal choices, this poetic documentary explores the connection between language, friendship and trauma.