Tag: Serbia

How I Learned To Fly (Leto kada sam naucila da letim)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TRANSYLVANIA

A pre-teen comedy in the vein of Diary of a Wimpy Teenager (Thor Freudenthal, 2010) or Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (Gurinder Chadha, 2008) that also manages to talk about the Balkan conflict in the 90s, How I Learned To Fly is a perfectly enjoyable film from Serbian director Radivoje Andric that tackles both serious and lightweight themes with ease.

Apart from the rocky beaches (I prefer sand) and the annoying British (myself included) and American tourists, there are hardly any better places to spend a summer holiday than the Croatian island of Hvar. For Serb Sofia (Klara Hrvanovic) however, she’s devastated that she’s not able to go camping with her best friend and her brother, who she has an immense crush on. Instead, she is saddled with her grandmother Marija (Olga Odanovic), who is returning to the island for the first time in 25 years. Odanovic plays the part well, constantly nagging the poor child to put on sun cream and wear appropriate clothing.

Sofia’s dreams and desires — kissing a boy for the first time, finding a crew to hang out with and avoiding her pestering “hitman” grandmother — are represented in an extremely broad style, with endless selfies, wipe cuts and whip pans, dream sequences, dodgy CGI insects and animated text overlays. It’s the kind of hyperactive style that seems in vogue today, with little separating it from the recent Ms Marvel (Bisha K. Ali, 2022) series. It’s fine for kids, and funny at times, but I found it mostly overwhelming.

Hrvanovic plays the part well, mixing voiceover and physical reaction comedy to convey the well-spring of emotions that pre-teen girls can feel, slowly coming to terms with both the world around her and her own intense maelstrom of feelings. Yet she remains more or less oblivious to the real reasons her grandmother moved to Belgrade all those years ago — or why she still refuses to talk to her brother, who remains on the island. From the perspective of a child, the conflict seems absurd; for her grandmother, these are old wounds she finds it intensely painful to re-open. For all the silliness, Andric manages to find a subtle way of navigating the pain of war without making it seem trite in the process. Playing here as part of the EducaTIFF programme, its the perfect introduction to this topic for young children.

Given how broad the comedy was, I’m easily the wrong demographic for the film, which is highly unlikely to play over in the UK. But judging from all the laughs from the children around me, this definitely has the potential to be a breakout hit in the Balkans (it’s already topped the Serbian box office) and other regions of Eastern and Southern Europe.

How I Learned to Fly plays as part of the EducaTIFF programme at TIFF, running from 17th to 26th June.

Ivana the Terrible

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Ivana is perfectly healthy. Multiple trips to the doctor make sure that there’s absolutely nothing physically wrong with her. But she’s convinced of her own sickness. Constantly claiming her hair is falling out while complaining of dizziness, she might be the most memorable hypochondriac since Woody Allen’s Mickey in Hannah and her Sisters. Played with perfect irascibility by director Ivana Mladenovic, she lashes out at friend and family alike, providing a bristly portrait of a returning expat who really doesn’t enjoy being home.

Based on a true summer in 2017 of the Serbian-born, Romania-based director, when she returned to the border town of Kladovo, Ivana the Terrible provides the metafictional director with plenty of space for self-reflection and insight. It comments on the relations between the two Balkan nations with tenderness and acuity.

There’s a lot to absorb that might goes over the head of those not well-versed in inter-Balkan relations. Thankfully Mladenovic’s talent as a director keeps us invested throughout this awkward comedy slash documentary experiment which recalls the best of Abbas Kiarostami in its blending of reality and fantasy as well as the self-absorption of Woody Allen’s most self-reflective work (the seasoned filmmaker receiving a prize in Stardust Memories most readily comes to mind).

This is brave filmmaking, especially for a woman returning to a small, patriarchal-minded town. Unafraid to make herself positively unlikeable — at least in the reflection of her family, remarkably also playing versions of themselves, who constantly ask her when she will either get a real job or become a mother — she moves beyond a conventional portrait to create a bristly, exciting and restless film.

Ivana the TerribleT

Her first mistake — also sharing similarities with many Woody Allen protagonists — is in sleeping with a man 13 years younger than her. Her second is in her lack of deference towards the local politicians of the city, who want to use her as one of the headline acts of a cross-cultural Serbian-Romanian festival.

As a woman, she constantly has to be grateful: grateful to the family who raised her, grateful to the town that now praises her. Yet Mladenovic keeps asking questions as to how much they really participated to her success. In the background is the awkward tension between Romanians and Serbians, sharing a complicated history that grows and grows in significance until a Radu Jude-esque final scene.

Despite the ambition in realising the film, the filmmaking style is grounded in realist traditions. Nonetheless, it still uses a few clever wide shots to produce a sense of alienation, especially coming at odds with otherwise intimate scenes. One moment in particular, framing an awkward conversation streamed on Facebook Live behind men dining in a restaurant, is a masterclass in using depth-of-frame to deepen a comic moment.

For one thing, the fact of its mere creation shows both Mladenovic’s family and the local forces in this Serbian town — who really do have a festival in Kladovo every year — to be far better sports than the movie asserts; able to laugh at themselves in service of strange and compelling art.

Ivana the Terrible is showing during the month of December as part of ArteKino. You can watch it at home and entirely for free – just click here!