The Unemployed

ZELIMIR ZILNIK (born in 1942; living and working in Novi Sad, Serbia) has written and directed numerous feature and documentary films which have reaped many awards at domestic and international film festivals. From the very beginning his films have focussed on contemporary issues, featuring social, political and economic assessments of everyday life, starting with: A Newsreel on Village Youth in Winter (1967), The Unemployed (1968) and June Turmoil (1969), among others. The student demonstrations of 1968 are at the centre of Žilnik’s first feature film Early Works (1969) which was awarded the “Golden Bear” at the Berlin Film Festival. After facing problems with censorship in Yugoslavia while working on his next feature film Freedom or Cartoons (filmed in 1972, never finished), Žilnik spent the mid-seventies in Germany, where he independently produced and made seven documentaries and one feature film, Paradise (1976).

Following his return to Yugoslavia, he directed a substantial series of television films and docudramas (“Brooklyn – Gusinje” ,”Oldtimer” and other). By the end of the eighties Žilnik was making films through a cooperative structure of television and cinema production. All these works foreshadowed the growing tensions and looming political and social changes that were to affect the country. Turning to independent film and media production in the nineties, he went on to make a series of feature and documentary films centring around the cataclysmic events befalling the Balkans (Tito among the Serbs for the Second Time, Marble Ass, Throwing off the Yolks of Bondage, Wanderlust and other).

The breakdown of the system of values in post-transitional Central and Eastern European countries and the problems facing refugees and immigrants within the new circumstances of an extended Europe became the focus of Žilnik’s most recent films: Fortress Europe (2000), Kenedi Goes Back Home (2003), Kenedi, Lost and Found (2005), Europe Next Door (2005), Soap in Danube Opera (2006), Kenedi is Getting Married (2007).

His new feature film The Old School of Capitalism (2009), had it’s international premiere at 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam, in February 2010. —http://www.zelimirzilnik.com