Depth Two (2016, Ognjen Glavonić) | a film screening and discussion

*** Note change of date to Thursday, April 3, 2025 ***

Kino Nights is a new curated series of themed monthly screenings and conversations hosted by the Melikian Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. The series features present-day groundbreaking documentary and narrative cinema from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, contextualized in timely conversations with scholars and artists. The screenings and conversations are free and open to all to attend.

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Depth Two
"When evidence of war crimes committed between 1998 and 1999 is discovered across sites in war-torn Serbia—including a truck filled with bodies at the bottom of the Danube and mass graves in suburban Belgrade—film director Ognjen Glavonić begins a years-long examination of the unexamined and exploration of the inexplicable. 

The resulting document is at once an accomplished elegy and a powerful inquiry into bearing witness, as testimonies from survivors and perpetrators alike shed light on dark deeds from dark times."  fullframefest.org

View the film's trailer here. 

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The screening will be followed by a conversation featuring: the film's director, Ognjen Glavonić,  and cinematographer, Tatjana Krstevski, both in person; Drena Kusari Berisha, board member of the Kosovo American Education Fund and VP at Microsoft; Victor Peskin, Associate Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies; and Ljubomir Filipović, a doctoral student in the School of Politics and Global Studies. 

The discussion will be facilitated by Melikian Center affiliates Luiza Parvu, Assistant Professor, and Toma Peiu, Faculty Associate in the Poitier Film School.

Ognjen Glavonić was born in 1985 in Pančevo, SFR Yugoslavia. His short films have been selected for more than 50 international film festivals. Zivan Makes a Punk Festival (2014), his first documentary, had its premiere at Cinéma du Réel and has been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, and IndieLisboa, among others. Ognjen’s documentary Depth Two (2016) had its premiere in the Forum section at the Berlinale, and was named best film at Festival dei Popoli, DokuFest, Message to Man, Open City Docs Fest, ZagrebDox, and Kassel Dokfest. He is the founder of the Pančevo Film Festival. The Load is his narrative feature debut.

Tatjana Krstevski is a Local 600 director of photography and a Professor of Cinematography and Head of the Cinematography Department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Studies. She has delved into an array of art forms, graphic design, animation, acting, music and history of arts, honing her craft and pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling on an international scale. Tatjana embarked on a global creative journey, lending her expertise to a spectrum of projects across continents, including Europe, China, and the USA. In 2014 she co-founded international “Pancevo Film Festival” and acted as its Artistic Director, guiding and curating a platform for cinematic excellence. Her feature film The Load made a debut at the 71st Cannes Film Festival in 2018, amassing an array of over 30 international awards. Depth Two premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2016, garnering over 20 international awards, including 8 main prizes.

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In 2025, Kino Nights features bold films that address personal and collective trauma. Our line-up includes documentary and fiction films that touch on historical events that have left scars in the consciousness of the filmmakers, and their audiences. The works we present go beyond the descriptive to evoke the unthinkable and process the shock and horror without exploiting it, by using a distinct cinematic language. They create sensory experiences, spaces of shared imagination and affect that put audiences in fellowship with people, places and events of rupture, punctuated by violence, genocide, or catastrophe that reverberate long after they have unfolded. 

#OgnjenGlavonic #Serbia #Kosovo