The sales rights to Ivana The Terrible (Ivana cea Groaznica) by Ivana Mladenović will be handled by Toronto-based Syndicado Film Sales. This Romanian-Serbian feature film will soon have its premiere in the official selection of the Concorso Cineasti del presente of this year’s 72nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival. This film was supported by the FCS.
The synopsis: Ivana works as an actress in Romania, but after experiencing health issues, she decides to spend the summer in her small hometown near the Danube, Serbia, surrounded by her family. The Mayor asks her to be the faceof a local music festival and she hesitantly accepts. But when her eccentric friends arrive from Bucharest and her love life, which revolves around a much younger boyfriend, becomes the subject of local gossip, Ivana finds herself on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Other heroes, friends and family, are invited by Ivana to relive these events and to play themselves in front of the camera, in the story of a woman who fails to find her place on either side of the Danube. All the “actors” try out roles of themselves for months by following the written script. The process that began as a form of therapy becomes a movie.
The film stars Ivana Mladenović, Gordana Mladenović, Luka Gramić, Miodrag Mladenović, Kosta Mladenović, Zivka Sorejević, Andrei Dinescu and Anca Pop.
The screenplay was written by Ivana Mladenović and Adrin Schiop. The director of photography is Carmen Tofeni. The film was edited by Patricia Chelaru and Cătălin Cristuțiu. The set designers are Radmila Simić, Rada Dronjak and Gordana Mladenović, and the costume designer is Iulia Popescu.
The film is a Romanian-Serbian co-production. Under the working title Summer Evening, Half Past Ten, it was supported by the Film Center Serbia Competition for co-financing the production of minority Serbian co-productions. The producer is Ada Solomon, and Ivana Mladenović is also the co-producer of this film. the film is a collaboration between Micro FILM and the Danube 84. Distribution in Romania is planned for the first half of 2020.
The film runtime is 86 minutes.
Soldiers. A Feranti Story, the previous film by Ivana Mladenović, a Serbian director working in Romania, was a Romanian-Serbian-Belgian co-production of. It premiered in 2017 at the prestigious San Sebastian Festival. In addition, Ivana Mladenović also directed a feature-length documentary Turn Off the Lights in Romania in 2012, and in the same year we saw her play a significant role in the film Hearts with Scars (Inimi cicatrizate) by famed director Radu Jude.