SEEFest Brings South East European Film Screenings to WeHo

The South East European Film Festival (SEEFest), featuring film screenings from 15 countries in the region that sits between West Europe and the Middle East, comes to West Hollywood on Friday and Saturday (May 3 and 4).

Many of the film screenings, which are shown at locations throughout Los Angeles from May 2-6, will play at the West Hollywood City Council Chambers at 625 San Vicente at Melrose. The festival includes an opening night gala, awards show and film discussions and q-and-a sessions. A Business of Film Conference, for independent filmmakers to connect globally, will be held May 5, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles at 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 100 in Los Angeles. The conference is free but requires an RSVP to rsvp@seefilmla.org.

Films that will be shown in West Hollywood include:

• “Mustafa’s Sweet Dreams,” plays Friday, May 3 at noon. The film tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who works as a pastry shop apprentice in Gaziantep, Turkey and dreams of becoming a famous chef in Istanbul.
• “The Other Town” plays Friday at 1:30 p.m. and explores the conflict between the Greek town of Dimitsana and Turkish town of Birgi.
• “Close Up In Total” plays Friday at 2:15 p.m. The documentary is comprised of excerpts from 207 episodes of the TV series “In the Name of the People,” and showcases Bosnian and Herzegovian people.
• “The Foreigner,” a comedy, plays Friday at 3:30 p.m. and follows three young people and a village elder as they travel to France to discover “true love.”
• The Saturday lineup in WeHo kicks off at 1 p.m. with “Not a Carwash,” about the only arthouse theatre in Tirana and the film students who defend it against demolition.
• At 2 p.m., the festival screens “The Living Monument,” a 25-minute documentary about the Srebrenica massacre, which refers to the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniaks during the Bosnian War.
• “Dogs, Cats & Rats,” a film about a love story set during students protests over government privatization of Greek universities, plays at 3 p.m.
• “When I Was a Boy I Was a Girl,” is a 30-minute documentary about a transvestite in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, where participating in a gay pride parade is forbidden.

Other screenings will be held at the Writers Guild Theatre, the Goethe-Institute Los Angeles, the Museum of Tolerance and the UCLA James Bridges Theatre.

Individual tickets, $10-$15, and festival passes, $50-$75, are available here. Films shown in West Hollywood are free to the public. To see the full program, click here.