“Vitić Dances” at the Lund Architecture Film Festival in Sweden

Vitić will dance again  internationally at the Lund Architecture Film Festival in Sweden. To date, this Boris Bakal’s film has participated in numerous festivals and received various accolades, including a Special Recognition at the 2023 Days of Croatian Film, a Special Recognition for preserving memory and cultural heritage at the 18th Balkan New Film Festival in Stockholm, the Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the 2024 Asian Talent International Film Festival in Ahmednagar (India), and awards for Best Documentary, Best Film, Best Production, and Best Director at a festival in London.

“Vitić Dances” premiered in April in Zagreb, where it captivated audiences so much that a repeat screening was scheduled just a week later. Viewers are fascinated by the film’s narrative about the struggle for the restoration of an architectural masterpiece through community unity, revealing, layer by layer, all the social relations, misunderstandings, conflicts, antagonisms, prejudices, and hopes involved. The story of the building evolves into a tale of a planetary human misunderstanding.

Shadow Casters are proud that Boris Bakal’s feature documentary “Vitić Dances” will be shown at this festival. We are particularly honored that it will be featured alongside Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker whose film “Perfect Days” is also part of the Lund Architecture Festival program.

Media Reviews on “Vitić Dances”

“Iva Rosandić writes that Bakal develops the film with the skyscraper as the main protagonist, which turns out to be part of a broader activist engagement and a renewed awareness of infrastructure serving the community. In short, it affirms all the values that are maliciously portrayed in contemporary discussions as remnants of socialist heritage… ‘Vitić Dances’ serves as the best reminder of a corrupt environment and a community violently organized on the basis of the rights of the stronger. Bakal transforms concrete activism into a dynamic film full of twists, documenting a period spanning around fifteen years.” — Iva Rosandić, “Vitić Dances – Dance Against the System,” Dokumentarni.net, 07.04.2023.

“The film’s theme is very important as it shows not only how artists and individuals from culture encourage and strive for the protection and restoration of valuable cultural heritage sites but also how the system, which is tasked with this, fails to do so. It thus becomes a metaphor for many such cases, revealing various interests and interpersonal relationships.” — Marijana Jakovljević, Glas Koncila, “Documentary from Vitić’s Skyscraper – The Individual for the Community,” 27.05.2023.

“Yet, the film’s message is far from bleak. Above all, it is an ode to active coexistence, solidarity, community, and all those ideas Bakal recognized in the dancing façade twenty years ago. The documentary does not mark the end of the story — it merely rounds off one of its chapters — and Vitić will continue to dance.” — Andrea Stanić, “The Social Choreography Behind the Dancing Façade,” Kulturpunkt, 09.05.2023.