Budva Cinema Art Festival is an artist-made, independent film and video festival located in Budva, Montenegro, in the Western Balkans. This year’s program presents both the local video art community and international artists. It brings together short and feature-length films made within the traditions of art cinema, expanded cinema, and video art. The festival seeks works in which cinema and video become forms of artistic expression and personal voice. Its goal is to present individual visual languages that exist beyond formal boundaries and established genres. This year’s theme, “Time Capsule,” brings together films that explore connections between past and present — recollecting memories and rethinking the medium. An artistic message enclosed within a body of film, in a “Time Capsule,” later to be carefully rediscovered and reviewed by a spectator.
Short art film program
Daria Botova, “Observer”, 2026
Duration: 4 minutes
This video work began with my interest in a general theme - life rhythm. During the process, it shaped into an investigation of how life is observed, interpreted rather than what it actually is. I focused on questions such as: How do we observe life? How do we try to connect with it? And how do we eventually turn this observation back onto ourselves? The work developed as an attempt to understand these processes through ambiguous experience rather than direct narration.
Dmitry Savinov, “Unseen”, 2026
Duration: 4 minutes
“Unseen” is an attempt to observe how tension can emerge within an ordinary space. The film begins with a fixed image and unfolds through a gradual shift in light, moving from day into night. What initially appears to be a simple observation slowly accumulates a sense of unease. The predominantly artificial lighting allows the image to reveal itself in fragments, never fully resolving what is being seen. At a certain point, the camera begins to move, and the act of looking itself becomes an intrusion. The space is no longer distant.
Yasha Vetkine, “Récolter la tempête”, 2026
Duration: 12 minutes
They sow the wind...
Miroslav Churin, “Red Gloves”, 2026
Duration: 12 minutes
Red Gloves is a short experimental film that has its focus on body as a site of tension. At the centre of the film is a simple action: a person holds a bag of flour against its own body and cuts it open with a machete. As the flour spills across the body and the surrounding space, the gesture shifts between destruction, ritual, absurdity, and release.
Jenia Granilshchikov, “The Ghost”, 2016
Duration: 24 minutes
“The Ghost” follows a young couple: a translator and a film director whose work engages with political questions. Their life together takes an unexpected turn when the director suddenly disappears. As his absence begins to reshape their reality, the boundaries between memory, fiction, and political history start to blur. The main character bears an intentional resemblance to Soviet writer Sergei Tretyakov, opening a dialogue between the personal story and and historical legacy.
Alex Djordjevic, “Music Is My Life”, 2019
Duration: 26 minutes
Out of a population of roughly 2,500 Roma people in Vladincin Han (South-eastern Serbia), less than 10 are currently employed. Even with help from several charitable organizations, this culture of unemployment is slow to improve. Many of the youth in this community will face a future of collecting recyclables, working odd jobs, or living off social welfare. While there is a growing emphasis for education among many of the families, music has always played an important role in the community when there was no other way to earn a living. Children are raised to appreciate music and many seem to be born with a natural ability to perform.
Feature art film program
Nadya Zakharova, “Fire”, 2016
Duration: 58 minutes
A poet reads his poem aloud behind the lattice window of a mental asylum; a little Mongolian girl makes a fire in a stove and fans the flames as if it were a wolf's howl in a steppe. Like a fire, this film grows up from itself in a montage rhythm of motion.
Andrey Silvestrov, “Up Down”, 2023
Duration: 70 minutes
In the early 90s, a company of young artists discovered the possibilities of video. Unlike film, which was expensive and required complex development, the video could be viewed immediately. Before that, in the history of mankind, it was impossible to get your copy (media copy) so quickly. They filmed everything in a row: their art events, parties, just life. Sometimes they became the heroes of TV reports, so that their lives and destinies are intertwined in the media space with what is happening in the country and the world, creating an endless meta film. This is the story of the Great Digital Revolution of the 90s, which forever changed our heroes and the whole world.
Yoav Tal, Asa Eitan “Savage The Man”, 2017
Duration: 65 minutes
The gaze sits at the very heart of the film "Savage the man", which attempts to dwell on the complex power dynamics behind the act of voyeurism. The sexual element of this act serves as the central axis of the relationships between the characters. The visual and narrative shift at the film's midpoint is also a shift in the capacity to look—moving from darkness to a harsh, blinding light. These are two extremes of the cinematic and political gaze: black versus white.
The film is an homage to classic Hollywood crime cinema. Its characters are shaped through familiar stereotypes: the prostitute, the jealous husband, the poor immigrant. Through them, the film attempts to examine two extremes of relationships, as the roles between the one being watched and the voyeur are reversed over its course, unraveling for the viewer the power structure at the core of the gaze and the violence inherent within it.