Centar za pranje filmova/Film-Washing Center by Srdan Knezevic is a crusading work of documentary journalism that takes aim at Film Center Serbia.  Knezevic reveals the layers of duplicity and corruption at the heart of the government-funded center, which he claims has often operated as a place for backroom and sweetheart deals, among other more nefarious deeds.

This is what many would label a “talking head” documentary, in which a majority of it is simply people sitting in front of a camera and giving a lengthy testimony.  No doubt the subject of the film is of importance – but it is not rendered cinematically, which is its chief offense.  As such the director undercuts the effectiveness of his own argument and reveals that his approach and his material, ironically enough, are probably best suited to another medium.

Ramchand Pakistani by Mehreen Jabbar is the story of a father and son who accidentally wander too far across the Indian border from Pakistan and are arrested, forced to spend years in prison as a result.  The mother of the family is left to wonder what has happened to her men, forced to work harvesting crops to pay off family debts and to survive.

The small boy Ramchand (Syed Fazal Hussain) is seen growing into a pre-teenager (Navaid Jabbar) throughout his sentence while he and his father endure under the ongoing stress of prison life.  Jabbar makes her feature-length debut with this film and displays a great deal of talent in blending the personal and political elements of the story.  The result is a film that clues us in to what are superficial political machinations at work and their immediate cost in human suffering.

Gjalle!/Alive! by Albanian director Artan Minarolli is the story of a young man who is forced to answer for a blood debt incurred by his grandfather.  His own life at risk, Koli (Nik Xhelilaj), the young man, is sent to live with relatives in a far-off village in the mountains of Albania.  The film details the conflict of the big city Tirana-bred Koli trying to fit in with a simpler life while at the same time trying to evade death.

Minarolli’s film is a well-made foray into the cultural uniqueness of life in Albania.  Though at the end of the film when a boat that Koli ties to flee Albania in with other illegal immigrants is sunk and everyone on board dies, it becomes a somewhat forced connection to real events, as the final titles note that the film is dedicated to a similar incident that happened in 1997.  Yet and still that final moment does not drown the powerful story told before and the points made about being trapped between a modern life and tradition and the shipwrecking that can occur as a result.