Looking for Horses

Stefan Pavlović
Netherlands / Bosnia and Herzegovina / France, 2021, 88 min

Visions du Réel

Looking for Horses is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman who lost his hearing during the Bosnian war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. Growing up with different languages, the filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles to communicate as he lost his mother-tongue because of a heavy stutter. Despite their limitations, a strong friendship unfolds between the young man and the veteran, as the fisherman shares his world of the lake, full of large catfish, wild horses, wide silences, and dangerous thunderstorms. Where for the fisherman the lake stands for a withdrawal from a fractured country, a land of war; for the filmmaker it precisely means the return to that broken place, the land of his parents. Together, they look for ways to communicate, while the camera mediates their growing bond. Taking the shape of a gentle western, Looking for Horses is a poetic documentary on trauma, survival, and connection.