USAID-Funded Documentaries Garner Festival Prizes
Two films, produced by TV Cacak and funded by USAID, took honors at the International Golden Beggar TV Festival in Kosice, Slovakia. The films were part of a series of four documentaries about unemployment in the central Serbian town of Cacak.
"Extras", which took second place, examined the impact on Cacak when the leading Serbian film director, Emir Kusturica, chose the town to film his Bosnian war film, "Life is a Miracle". All of the 1,000 extras used in that film were unemployed factory workers from Cacak and its surroundings.
"The Chosen", a film which chronicles the lives of Bulgarian workers taking jobs in Cacak, despite the high unemployment rate among the local population, was awarded the prestigious Austrian Microsoft Prize. USAID partner IREX had conducted journalism training courses at TV Cacak, and TV experts from IREX assisted the station during the filming and post-production phases of the films.
Two years ago, another USAID/IREX-supported TV Cacak film about a village blighted by a nearby quarry won the Grand Prize at the same festival.
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