Partir, c’est naître à nouveau

Like many young people who are too talented, ambitious or stubborn to accept living where destiny has brought them into the world, filmmaker and artist Mladen Bundalo has left a familiar place of origin to migrate in search of inspiration and opportunity. His umpteenth journey over the years between Prijedor, Bosnia, where his relatives live, and Brussels, where he has over time built a family of his own, becomes the occasion for a frank self-analysis of his experience of voluntary exile and a broader reflection on the Balkan diaspora. The story of his family can be read as a chain of arrivals and departures, but there is a danger of a divide being drawn and widened between those who have chosen or accepted to stay, to be part of a place and a history, and those who, amidst too many comings and goings, will never be home enough. The camera observes once familiar spaces and objects to which the director's voice and memory cling, but in the map they draw, perhaps only previous and future generations will be able to find their place, not those in between who are now forever on the move.

Sergio Fant