Despite these minor squabbles, the country house is peaceful and the two families seem to genuinely care for each other. When tragedy strikes at the lake, Tomas playfully throws Ernesta’s niece into the lake, only to see her disappear into the water – this breaks the film’s breezy rhythm. From this moment on, the switch to non-linear storytelling turns Drowning Dry into a different, more elusive film.

Whether Ernesta’s niece survived is an open question. And the aftermath of another tragedy also appears in a later timeline. Scenes from the past seem to repeat themselves, with some details changed. In one timeline, for example, Ernesta and Juste dance to Donna Lewis’ “I Will Always Love You,” in another they groove to Lighthouse Family’s High. The jumble of memories, some distorted by grief, adds further facets to two fractured families trying to find a way out of their shared paralysis. It’s a fascinating piece of emotional excavation that could have been a little more relentless earlier in the film. Still, “Drowning Dry” is a compelling and intensely conceived story that poignantly dramatizes the difficulty of overcoming sudden loss.

Normally these reports stop at three films, but since my last report on Radu Jude only contained two titles, I thought I deserved one more. I also couldn’t imagine leaving Locarno without “When the phone rang” his flowers. The third feature film by Serbian writer-director Iva Radivojević is a stunning attempt to convey the pain of forced migration through the eyes of a child. Premiering in the festival’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente competition, the film is guided by the voice of a voice-over narrator (Slavica Bajčeta) and begins in 1992 with a phone call at 10:36 a.m. informing Lana (Natalija Ilinčić) of her grandfather’s death. For young Lana, the tragic call marks a permanent change in her life – it is the beginning of the long war in Yugoslavia.

Subsequent calls over the course of days, weeks and seemingly months herald several other life-changing events and paint a more complete picture of Lana. She becomes obsessed with a local glue-sniffer named Vlada (Vasilije Zečević), finds solace and fun with her neighbor Jova (Anton Augustin), loses friends and learns family secrets about her father and grandfather.

Radivojević has a striking vision for this story, serving as writer, producer, editor, art director and composer. Cinematographer Martin DiCicco supports Radivojević’s storytelling through his plaintive use of 16mm photography, which lends a dreamlike quality to the nightmarish reality. Aside from the film’s controlled visual and aural form, When the Phone Rang lacks a sense of time. That’s intentional. Like leaves dancing across the grass, the drift of a child’s memory reveals much through its apparent randomness. The sense of place is unique, marking what will be lost. The phone that seems to ring at exactly the same time every Friday is the intrusion into her life that has seemingly occurred for no reason.