SERBIA Making the best of a bad situation Belgrade's film school profiled Perhaps boosted by recent successes in Serbian film-making, Belgrade's film school gets over 100 applicants every year but can only take on five students. The number of film debuts in the country is even more depressing. Elke de Wit finds out how the school copes. From the archive Jerzy Stuhr interviewed about his work at the Katowice film school CROATIA I love actors Dalibor Matanić interviewed If his social comedy-cum-romance debut wasn't enough, Matanić's second feature, an acerbic drama about a lesbian couple in Zagreb, marks him as a rising European talent. Igor Pop Trajkov spoke to the director at the Skopje Film Festival. From the archive Igor Pop Trajkov's overview of this year's Skopje Film Festival

Finále Festival of Czech Film CZECH REPUBLIC Unclear boundaries Overview of the 16th Finále Festival of Czech Film This year's Finále blurred the frontiers between documentary and fiction but also contained a rich array of popular works and more films from the festival's sweep through Czech cinema's "most turbulent decade." Peter Hames reviews the selection. From the archive Peter Hames reports from the 14th Finále Festival Peter Hames reports from the 13th Finále Festival CZECH REPUBLIC The way through the bleak city Ivan Vojnár's Lesní chodci (Forest Walkers, 2003) Vojnár's third feature-length film is neither the lush cinematic poetism of his debut nor the essayistic investigation of his second work. Andrew James Horton looks at how the director has synthesized the styles of his previous works and developed their themes in this unusual tale of dispossesion. From the archive Misty melancholia in the Czech mountains Ivan Vojnár's Cesta pustym lesem (The Way through the Bleak Woods, 1997)

GERMAN HORROR Sex, selfhood and the corpse of the German past Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik (1987) and Nekromantik 2 (1991) Arguing for the thematic complexity and technical sophistication of Jörg Buttgereit's controversial "necro-porn-horrors," Linnie Blake argues that they "share a set of artistic and ideological concerns usually associated with the canonical auteurs of the Young German Cinema and the New German Cinema of the 60s and 70s." GERMAN HORROR The origins of violence in a peaceful society Oliver Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment (The Experiment, 2001) In this insightful and theoretically informed essay, Steffen Hantke examines the "specific social and historical situation" in which Oliver Hirschbiegel's recent German film Das Experiment has become such a critical and commercial success. From the archive Germany's secret history: Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomie (Anatomy, 2000) Conspicuous consumption: Ulli Lommel's Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe (Tenderness of the Wolves, 1973) An adaptation with fangs: Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979) More horror film in Kinoeye and on the web

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