Oggi Tomic 

A dream comes true for Oggi

Born into a ‘peaceful’ Sarajevo just after British skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean achieved perfect 10 scores at the city's 1984 Winter Olympics, Oggi Tomic was abandoned by his mother at one of the cities orphanages.

Over the next few years he was moved from orphanage to orphanage - until Bosnia was torn in two by civil war. Oggi then survived years of near starvation, freezing conditions, sniper bullets and mortar attack, sheltering in the bomb battered Ljubice Orphanage.

“Being caught up in gunfire for me wasn’t that scary’, he recalls, ‘I was only a child at the time, everything to me seemed to be all noise and flashing grenades. I couldn’t understand what was happening for most of the time. I remember that the other orphans and I were always playing hide and seek during the siege. Now that I think back to what I went through and how we all managed to survive the war – it scares me just thinking about it.”

Then one day in 1997 an MA student studying on the award winning documentary photography course at Newport arrived at the orphanage, handed out cameras and began to teach the children to photograph their world and their lives. The photographer, Chris Maguire changed the course of Oggi’s life.

“Amongst the hundreds of orphans I was probably the only one who was serious about what I wanted to do and that was to be a photographer in the future…. I then heard from Chris Maguire about the documentary filmmaking course at Newport. He was telling me how fantastic the place was and that I would love studying there. I looked up on the internet what the course does and said to myself ‘I have to be part of this course one way or another’ but I had no money to pay for it”.

The small matter of ‘the money’ would not stop this determined young Bosnian.

“I remember getting an email from Oggi in the summer of 2006, enquiring about studying documentary film-making,” remembers Christopher Morris who runs the course in Newport, “he emailed some photographs to me which were very impressive - he explained his circumstances and it was obvious to me that he must come.”

This was the beginning of the next stage of Oggi’s life. “As soon as I got the reply to my email about University and the possibilities of studying at Newport, things have changed for me”.

Oggi had a few contacts in Britain through the charity ‘Hope & Homes’ which had sent aid to his orphanage in Sarajevo and he had spent a number of summers on an English language course with them in Sussex – within weeks, with their help and a generous bursary from the University of Wales, Newport, Oggi Tomic arrived in Newport.

“Oggi was not daunted by anything!” recalls his lecturer Christopher Morris, “he’d been through so much in his life that nothing really phased him – he tried everything, worked hard, kept learning and growing as a filmmaker. I think his experiences from his childhood give him both ‘armour’ and ‘empathy’ – these are the qualities that will make him an excellent filmmaker.”


Head of Film, Chris Morris with Oggi

Oggi Tomic graduated September 2009 from the BA (hons) Documentary Film & Television course at the University of Wales, Newport with an excellent 2:1 (which included a well written 10,000 word dissertation on the ethical dilemmas raised by ‘foreign’ adoption)

“My future plans are to try to get into TV and work within the news department. At the moment I am freelancing as a camera operator and editor. I would recommend the documentary film course to anyone who has a passion or talent for films. You not only learn how to make documentaries and share stories, but you meet fantastic people and are taught by people from the film and TV industry, which is the most important thing.”

To contact Oggi Tomic – www.oggitomic.com