This film is screening as part of the Dutch film residency program, supported by Dutch Culture USA of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

In this poetic short film, filmmaker Rada Šešić depicts what it feels like to leave your home behind and start your life over in a distant land. Šešić was born in Croatia, worked in Sarajevo as a film journalist, and fled to the Netherlands after the start of the Bosnian War.

Room Without a View consists of two parts, creating an impressionistic collage that lays bare what it means to have to pick up the tatters of your life again. The first part, shot in Šešić’s own apartment, depicts the isolation of the new arrival and the tedium of daily life. In the more lyrical second part, Šešić presents idyllic memories of her old life, as well as the voices of those she left behind. She wonders whether those who have fled a war can ever really be happy, however well they try to adapt to their new lives.

Rada Šešić is a festival programmer, film lecturer, and film director. Born in Yugoslavia, she lives in The Netherlands. She is the long-time Head of the Documentary Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival. She is currently also the Programmer of the Documentary Competition at Trieste Film Festival. For 20 years, she collaborated on selecting films/film projects at the IDFA Amsterdam, and takes part in the selection of the DOHA film fund. Rada is the Lecturer in the Master of Film studies at the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam and mentor/consultant at various European and Asian documentary workshops. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Eastern Neighbours FF in The Hague (2008-2023). 15 years ago, she started and still co-heads Docu Rough Cut Boutique. In Italy, at the industry part of Trieste Festival- When East Meets West she is the artistic leader of the platform Last Stop Trieste that has been going on for 11 years. She worked as a program advisor for the IFFR Rotterdam from 2000-2020. Directed several doc and short films (Lam Arabi in Sarajevo and in The Netherlands, with Dutch

production-short films Room Without a View which premiered at NFF and IDFA, film and video installation Soske, dance film In Whitest Solitude which premiered at IFFR, and On the Way to School which premiered at De Balie Amsterdam). The films were screened and awarded at some 60 other film festivals in Europe, Asia, Africa and the USA, including MoMA in New York. 

Rada has served on more than 50 juries worldwide. She is a member of NETPAC and European Film Academy, where she was a selector and a juror for three years. She has collaborated on books on cinema a.o. World Documentary Encyclopaedia edited

by Ian Aitken, published by Routledge, Cinema of Flames by Dina Iordanova, and wrote articles for film magazines Skrien and Filmkrant in The Netherlands, magazines in the USA, the UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and India. Rada lived in India in 2008 and 2010 and taught at the Sristi, Bangalore. Her research focus is South Asian cinema.

She is a regular mentor at Vision du Reel – Rough Cut Lab in Nyon, the BDC Discoveries platform Sofia, and Docs to Go / Krakow for over ten years. She is also one of the founders of DOKU Art Bjelovar, where she heads the selection.