This winter, more precisely, January 25th – 28th, as part of the upcoming, 32nd edition of the Trieste Film Festival, the co-production market WEMW (When the East Meets the West – When East Meets West) will be held; and for this edition, several Serbian projects have been selected in different categories, which are currently in an advanced stage of post-production.
In the segment called Last Stop Trieste, for documentaries in the advanced editing phase, the project of the feature-length documentary Museum of the Revolution by Srdjan Keca. In two sentences, the synopsis reads: In the remnants of an abandoned utopian project, an unusual friendship grows between a girl and an old woman. When the city begins to erase the spaces in which they live, the end of childhood and dreams is in sight.
The film is produced by the film company UZROK, and co-produced by Restart from Zagreb and nutprodukce from Prague. The producers are Vanja Jambrović and Srđan Keča. The film project was presented and awarded at a number of pitching forums: IDFA Forum, DOK Leipzig Co-production Market, Beldocs In Progress (where it won the post-production award), Zagreb Dox Pro (where it won the HBO Europe Award), East Doc Forum (where it won the main prize of the East Doc Platform) and CineLink Industry Days (where it won the post-production Digital Cube award), and it also received the support of the famous Sundance Fund. Museum of the Revolution was previously supported by Film Center Serbia, HAVC and the Czech Film Fund, MEDIA Fund of the European Commission, as well as by Al Jazeera Documentary Channel and RTL GEO. The premiere of the film is expected in 2021. Srdjan Keca is the author of the notable and award-winning documentaries Mirage (2011) and A Letter to Dad (2011).
The same segment of this co-production market also includes a project of a minority Serbian co-production – a feature-length documentary Reconciliation (formerly working title Blood Vengeance) by Marija Zidar, which is a co-production between Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo *. This co-production is being done by the production companies Vertigo (Slovenia), Film House Baš Čelik (Serbia), Seagull Entertainment (Montenegro) and Dera Film (Kosovo *). This project has previously won the support of the Slovenian Film Center, Film Center Serbia,Montenegro Film Center and Kosovo Film Center (QKK) *.
The film, made by director Marija Zidar and cameraman Latif Hasolli in Albania over five years, is about a complex reconciliation attempt between two families in the Albanian mountains – the family of a 19-year-old girl and the family of her killer, mediated by a mediator from the capital, pressuring her father to forgive not only as a Christian, but according to the canon, the ancient Albanian law.
In the category This is IT, a segment focused on feature film projects in the production and post-production phase, the project of the Serbian film Darkness by screenwriter and director Dušan Milić was chosen. It is a film co-production betwen Serbia, Denmark, Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, with a story inspired by a true family drama of a Serbian family in Kosovo and Metohija. The action of this psychological horror takes place during the March pogrom in Kosovo and Metohija after Easter 2004. The film deals with the topic of life in the constant fear: Milica is a Serbian girl who, after her father and uncle disappeared, is left alone with her mother and grandfather in a spooky house. The family is guarded by friendly members of the Italian KFOR, whose transfer, however, changes everything…
The director of photography is Kiril Prodanov, set designer Mile Jeremić, sound designer Christian Eidnes Andersen (frequent collaborator of Lars von Trier and Nicolas Vinding Refn), music will be composed by Stefano Belon, while the film will be edited by Janis Halkiadakis. Apart from Slavko Štimac (grandfather Milutin), Danica Ćurčić (daughter Vukica) and little debutante Miona Ilov (girls Milica), Nikola Rakočević (priest Dositej), the Macedonian actor Kole Angelovski (monk Živan), Slaviša Čurović (Blagoje) and Bosnian actress Sladjana Bukejlović (teacher Dobrinka) also appear in the film. There is also Flavio Parenti, an Italian actor with a notable artistic biography who plays the Italian KFOR soldier Maurizio.
Serbian producers are Film Deluxe Int and This and That Productions, with producer Snežana van Houwelingen, who produced films Ustanička Street, Withering, Monument to Michael Jackson, Good Wife, Travelator, Occupied Cinema, Asymmetry, and the TV series Morning Will Change Everythinh. The Danish co-producer is Space Rocket Nation (house of Lena Borglum and Nicolas Vinding Refn), Bulgarian RFF, Italian A Lab Debore Desio, and Greek Graal. Dušan Milić is the author of the films Strawberry in the Supermarket, Guča and Travelator.