ROAD OF BROTHERHOOD AND UNITY

– Official nomination for Best video documentary Silver Wolf Award / IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Netherlands), 1999
– Best Documentary Award / Festival of Slovenian Film (Slovenia), 1999
– Darka Bratina Award Poklon viziji / Film Video Monitor (Gorizia, Italy), 1999
– Viktor / Slovenian Media Prize 1999

“It is truly a modern documentary film, a road movie with meaning, which is both personal and socially reflective. In this challenging genre, the director has managed to shape the structure, despite the colorful array of socially and nationally mixed characters, who act spontaneously and directly, as the author did not direct the characters, but rather the film.” – Expert Jury of the 2nd Slovenian Film Festival at the award ceremony for the best documentary work, Portorož, March 1999 –

“An exceptional Cesta bratstva in enotnosti by Maja Weiss, with a distinctly personal approach and entry, brings new air to Slovenian documentary film, as well as a new genre – let’s call it a road home movie… I can only be as much a part of Slovenian film as these images are part of it.” – Vlado Škafar, Program Director of the Slovenian Cinematheque –

“The author has succeeded in capturing the widest range of interlocutors, as her friends, simple individuals, and important figures of the cultural life of former Yugoslavia appeared in front of the camera. The confession of the former highly exploited Yugoslav film diva Sonja Savić was bitter, and we also listened to the commentary of Emir Kusturica’s screenwriter Abdulah Sidran. Maja Weiss’s film narrative seemed completely authentic and truthful. While some believed that the former brotherhood was real and sincere, others argued that it was false from the very first day. The stories were pleasantly spiced with old ‘hit songs.’ The great heterogeneity of viewpoints is certainly one of the essential virtues of Maja’s documentary, as she managed to bring together everything that seemed impossible – at least in the case of former Yugoslavia.” – Jelka Šutej Adamič, Dnevnik, May 1999 –

“The documentary of the month, titled Cesta bratstva in enotnosti, undoubtedly deserved the appropriate attention of viewers, as it reaffirms the high standard of documentary filmmaking in Slovenia. A documentary of the time, clearly created due to Maja Weiss’s strong emotional impulse, who walks with her sister through the eerie landscapes of the devastated region along the famous connecting road between the South Slavic nations, it is also an excellent authorial work and certainly one of the last monuments to the naïve construction endeavor. The documentary contains everything: from poignant testimonies about the collapse of a magnificent idea, surprisingly clear statements about samples of the Balkan apocalypse, smuggled image sequences of destroyed homes, to the sound track as the only authentic proof that we once lived together. It was created at the right time and at the right moment. At the moment when one war had just passed and another had not yet begun. A time when it seemed that brothers might meet again in a few centuries, and the ominous premonition had not yet foretold a meeting that was never meant to happen. In short, Weiss’s travelogue captured the desperate in-between moment and recorded it on film, similar to what she did after the Chernobyl disaster. And this is the invaluable value of her snapshots. Television Slovenia and Bela Film succeeded in producing a striking record of the decline of a generation south of the Kolpa River, a unique diary-like portrayal of the life of ordinary people who were involuntarily turned into ‘room asylum seekers’ just because the brotherhood wanted it so, a brotherhood that is still clinging to power and whose cynicism exploded its own social construct.” – Simon Kardum, Stop, May 1999 –