A Film a Week - Bekim Fehmiu

 previously published on Cineuropa

Bekim Fehmiu was one of the finest Yugoslav actors of all time and the first one from Kosovo to surpass the language barrier and play in theatres all across the former country. He was also the first and one of the rare Yugoslav actors to have, at least at one point in his career, a shot at stardom both in European art house cinema and in Hollywood. He was also a man of principle who decided when, why and how to end both his career and his life. 

His life and career stand in the centre of Valmir Tertini’s documentary, which was also the filmmaker’s debut in the feature-length format. After five years in production, a premiere in Albania last year, and a tour of regional festivals, Bekim Fehmiu screened in the documentary section but out of competition at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival.

Bekim Fehmiu is a typical biographical documentary in which the interested audience might learn the facts of its subject's early life (Fehmiu was born in Sarajevo, spent his early childhood in Skhodër, Albania, before his family settled in Prizren, Kosovo), his first acting steps (in Pristina's County Popular Theatre), his acting studies in Belgrade, his marriage with his colleague Branka Petrić and his national and international career in cinema, from his breakout roles as Beli Bora in Aleksandar Petrović’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), Odysseus in Franco Rossi’s mini-series The Odyssey and Dax Xenos in Lewis Gilbert’s The Adventurers (1970) onwards. We also get to learn about the status of the national cultural hero and the window to the world that Fehmiu enjoyed in Albania during the dark times of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, as well as the respect he had from his colleagues and filmmakers he collaborated with.

Most of the film’s 67 minutes of runtime goes to interviews (filmed by Endi Hoxha) with different people who knew Fehmiu and played a certain role in his life, such as his wife Branka Petrić, brother Arsim Fehmiu, filmmaker Goran Marković, writer Miljenko Jergović, late film critic Milan Vlajčić, and colleagues Faruk Begolli, Enver Petrovci, Branislav Lečić and Eleonora Giorgi, to name a few. Those interviews, against a completely black background, are constantly accompanied with music (credited to the star actor who managed to walk Fehmiu’s path later, Rade Šerbedžija) that switches genres and registers to fit the topic of the particular passage. Other than that, we can see some archival material from different countries, usually showing Fehmiu's screen successes and public appearances edited into the mix by Afrim Peposhi and Riza Vreko.

In the end, Tertini's documentary is a decent, respectful, but not exactly exceptional biographical documentary that could be a better fit for television than for a theatrical release. Bekim Fehmiu the documentary certainly respects Bekim Fehmiu the actor, the hero and the public figure, but it does not get beyond the surface in presenting his greatness.