Home Abroad (Production)

Home Abroad is the last part in a triptych of essay films about division, the sequel to My own private war (IKON 2015) and My Friends (IKON/ZDF ARTE 2007). In these films, Lidija Zelovic tells her life story about the war in ex-Yugoslavia. It is her way of understanding and processing the past. By putting herself in the center, she dared to penetrate deeper into the core of the theme of division. And how divisions gripped Lidija’s compatriots, colleagues, friends, family, and ultimately herself. On a small scale, she told the big story of a country that was falling apart.

The common thread in the film is the renovation of Lidija’s house. While she tries to make a bedroom for her son in a small apartment in Amsterdam, she learns from friends who came to help with the renovation, when and if one feels at home. Most of her immigrant friends appear, each in their own way, to be estranged from the Netherlands. Is that a problem? Was it always like this? Lidija tries to put her finger on the sore spot and find out through her personal film archive whether she herself has become alienated after twenty-eight years of adaptation.

Home Abroad is an essay film with a circular narrative. The circular shows that the division we now see around us resembles what Lidija experienced in Bosnia just before the war. The film follows the stream of thoughts of the love and fears of a refugee migrant. 

Lidija Zelovic (1970) is the creative producer at Zelovic Film. She worked for years as an executive producer and researcher for BBC and Channel 4. Her last own documentary ‘My Own Private War’ (2015) won many international awards. Now Zelovic is working on the documentary Home Abroad in collaboration with Conijn Film.

The documentary Home Abroad in collaboration with Conijn film is now in production.

 

Original title                               Home Abroad

Genre                                            Documentary 

Running time                            –  minutes

Format                                         HD video

Screen Ratio                              16:9

Language                                     Dutch and Yugoslavian

Dutch broadcaster                  MAX 

Year of release                          2023

Director                                       Lidija Zelovic

Producer                                     Wout Conijn

Subtitles                                      English/Dutch 

Director of Photography     Lola Mooij

Editor                                            Patrick Janssens 

Sound recording                      Jeroen Les

Sound design                             Phil Zacharias

Realized with support from           Film Fonds, FilmFonds incentive, Cinema Delicatessen.