After their father is drafted during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, three sisters begin recording a Hi8 video diary from their rural home. They film themselves putting on make-up, picking cherries, playing games, arguing, and helping their mother in the kitchen. This fragile, intimate world becomes a kind of refuge—a buffer against the outside reality of sirens, bombings, and war. Director Emilija Gašić skillfully weaves together the viewpoints of the three sisters—each at a different stage of adolescence—to build a layered portrait of youth shaped by war. 78 Days not only faithfully captures the aesthetic, texture, and emotional resonance of 1990s home videos, it also reflects on how the camera becomes part of familial relationships. Through its close observation of domestic life and shared authorship, the film doubles as a subtle piece of technological ethnography—tracing how handheld media shapes intimacy and memory.

The film program of SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA Fugitive Traces: Challenging Narratives and Power Structures explores the politics of images, the ethics of filmmaking, and the power dynamics embedded in film history and production. The selected films challenge dominant narratives, offering alternative perspectives that resonate with the 13th Berlin Biennale’s curatorial concept of fugitivity—the capacity of art to establish its own laws in defiance of oppressive structures. In a climate of fear, such structures function seamlessly, compelling the oppressed to develop creative strategies to bypass the systemic obstacles they face. This act of foxing—a subversive play of evasion and resistance—becomes a commitment to artistic autonomy and the defiance of unjust norms. Through humor, subtlety, and critical reflection, the films in this program disrupt conventional storytelling, expose exploitative practices, and reclaim marginalized narratives, turning cinema into a space of resistance and liberation.