Serbian filmmaker Milica Tomović, whose second film, “Big Women,” was among the big winners of industry awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Thursday, believes audiences are afraid of women behaving badly. “People are not so interested in watching films with evil female characters doing evil things,” the director said. diversity.
Big Women, produced by Dragana Jovović of Non-Aligned Films and Jelena Radenković for Big Time Production, won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo. The film is conceived as a road trip dramedy that follows two wild women who embark on an unexpected journey to the coast of Montenegro. There they will settle forgotten scores, rediscover their friendship and uncover long-hidden secrets.
Tomović described the film as “a character-driven story,” saying it was “based on the dynamics of this very strong friendship.” “That’s the core of the story, between Mira and Tina,” she said of the best friends and beauticians at the center of “Big Women.” “It’s a journey – of the two of them and their friendship.”
The director’s critically acclaimed first film, “Celts,” centers on a child’s birthday party that spirals out of control and exposes the fractures in her extended family. But Tomović said she is equally drawn to “non-DNA connections” – the families we choose, not the ones we are born into.
“You’ve built a bond since you tried your first cigarette, you’ve exchanged clothes, suffered and given advice,” she said. “And then you gradually become the close friends we see in the film.”
“Celts” premiered at the pandemic edition of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival. In a review of the “lively, promising, one-night debut” at the Sarajevo Festival that same summer, where it won the Best Director award for Tomović, diversityGuy Lodge of The New York Times described the film as “a deftly combined masterpiece of personal and political cinematography, driven equally by a longing for innocence and an ironic sense that the bad times are finally over.”
For “Big Women,” Tomović was inspired by British filmmaker Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a true-life comedy told from the perspective of a free-spirited London teacher. With her protagonist Mira, however, she wanted to “do the opposite,” the Serbian said, by portraying a prickly character that the viewer loves to hate – but later learns to love again.
“I want the audience to connect with her because the closer the film gets to the end, the more similarities we have with her,” she said. “We can see some of her background, why she became the way she is – tough, rough and a bit of a difficult person,” making those around her uncomfortable in her presence.
Big Women is one of several exciting projects on the slate at Jovović’s Belgrade-based Non-Aligned Films. Wind, Talk to Me, Stefan Đorđević’s feature debut, is currently in post-production and is scheduled for release in 2025. It is a three-country co-production with SPOK Films from Slovenia and Restart from Croatia.
The company is also a minority producer on Slovenian director Urška Djukić’s coming-of-age story Little Trouble Girls, which won a prize in the Works in Progress section at Les Arcs last year, and Wondrous is the Silence of My Master, Montenegrin filmmaker Ivan Salatić’s highly anticipated follow-up to his Venice Critics’ Week premiere of You Have the Night.
Ognjen Glavonić is preparing the successor to Directors’ Fortnight player “The Load”.
Tatjana Krstevski/Non Aligned Films
Jovović and her production partners are also financing “In the Shadow of the Horns” by Serbian Ognjen Glavonić, whose debut “The Load” premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. Meanwhile, veteran Portuguese screenwriter and Miguel Gomes collaborator Mariana Ricardo (“Grand Tour”) has come on board to co-write “Forget the Ocean, Why Not Try Surfing These Insane River Waves” with Serbian director Marko Grba Singh, which won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo in 2021.
Radenković, who served as executive producer on Celts, is currently producing Ivan Marković’s feature-length documentary Promised Spaces, a co-production between Serbia, France, Germany and Cambodia. She is also developing the Serbian-German co-production Tale of the Plum Spirit, the documentary debut of Belgrade-born Milica Đenić.
The Sarajevo Film Festival takes place from 16 to 23 August.
