Following last night’s premiere of the film CHILD at the Sarajevo Film Festival, we spoke with Rijad Gvozden, the film’s producer and a former boy who grew up in an SOS Children’s Village, and Malik Garibija, National Director of SOS Children’s Villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The audience gave the film a long round of applause, but what followed after the closing credits may have been even more powerful—silence, emotions, and conversations that confirmed that CHILD is not just a film story. It is a story that changes the way we see children without parental care and foster care.
After tonight’s screening and the audience’s reactions, do you feel that CHILD has achieved what it was created to achieve?
Rijad Gvozden: Tonight, I wasn’t looking at an audience that had come to watch a film. I was looking at people who found a part of themselves in this story. The greatest value of CHILD lies neither in its festival screening nor in the applause. Its value lies in the moment when someone asks themselves how much a single hug, an outstretched hand, or one family can change someone’s life. As I watched the audience, I thought of the boy who once sat in an SOS Children’s Village and could never have imagined that his life story would one day be shown at the Sarajevo Film Festival. That is why tonight I do not feel proud of myself. I feel grateful to all the people who believed that every child deserves a chance.
Mr Garibija, tonight at the Sarajevo Film Festival, it was not only a film that was presented. The mission of SOS Children’s Villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina was also introduced to an audience from across the region and around the world. How important is this moment for the organisation?
Malik Garibija: For us, this is much more than a film premiere. For more than thirty years, we have worked every day to provide children without parental care with what they need most—a family, a sense of belonging, support, and the opportunity to grow up with dignity. Tonight, that mission has taken on a new face. For the first time, SOS Children’s Villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina appears as a co-producer of a film at the Sarajevo Film Festival. This is not a step towards the film industry. It is a step towards society. We believe that art has a unique power to open conversations that facts and statistics often cannot. If CHILD has helped people tonight to look differently at foster care and at children growing up without parental care, then our mission has gained another powerful dimension.
Rijad, tonight you have completed a life journey—from a boy who grew up in an SOS Children’s Village to the producer of a film screened at the region’s largest film festival. What does that feel like?
Rijad Gvozden: I don’t think of it as a completed circle. I prefer to believe that this is only the beginning of a new one. Because tonight, I did not want people to get to know me. I wanted them to get to know the children whose stories are rarely heard. Growing up in an SOS Children’s Village taught me that a family is not defined by blood ties, but by the people who choose you every day, support you, and love you. That is a value I carry with me throughout my life, and that is precisely why CHILD is not a film about the past. It is a film about the possibility for every child to have a future.
The film was screened across Bosnia and Herzegovina before the Sarajevo Film Festival. What did audiences show you during that journey?
Malik Garibija: They showed us that people want to talk about foster care. After every screening, parents, young people, students, foster carers, and members of the public came up to us and, for the first time, spoke openly about this subject. It confirmed what we have believed for years: social change does not happen only through laws and institutions. It begins when someone allows another person’s story to touch them. CHILD has achieved exactly that. It has opened up a space for a conversation that, I believe, will last much longer than a single festival evening.
How important was it to you that the film should not be about pity, but about the dignity of children?
Rijad Gvozden: That was the most important thing to me. Children do not need pity. They need an opportunity. I wanted the audience to leave the cinema not thinking about how difficult someone’s life had been, but about how much one family can change the course of that life. Because that is exactly what I experienced myself. When someone gives you love, support, and believes in you, you stop being a child who is missing something. You become a person capable of changing the world around you.
Is that precisely why SOS Children’s Villages in Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to become a co-producer of this film?
Malik Garibija: Absolutely. Our job is not only to provide support to children. Our job is to build a society that understands why every child matters. Over the years, we have helped thousands of children and families, but at the same time, we have realised that changing public perception is equally important. CHILD was created out of precisely that need—to show that behind every child there is a name, a face, a smile, a talent, and a life that is still waiting for its chance.
When the lights of the Sarajevo Film Festival go out tonight, what would you like to remain as the greatest value of CHILD?
Rijad Gvozden: I would like people to remember that no child chooses the circumstances in which they grow up. But all of us can choose whether we want to be a society that reaches out a helping hand.
Malik Garibija: I would like CHILD not to be remembered only as a film screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival. I would like it to be remembered as a film that inspired someone to become a foster parent. As a film through which one child was given the opportunity to grow up in a family. Because no festival award can be more valuable than a child being given a home, love, and the feeling of belonging somewhere.
The film CHILD concluded its festival screening last night, but its most important story is only just beginning. It will continue in every conversation sparked by this film, in every family that comes to see foster care differently, and in every decision to give one child what they deserve from the very first day of their life—love, a sense of belonging, and a family.
