Section: Spectrum

LOST COUNTRY

LOST COUNTRY

Vladimir Perišić
RS/FR/HR/LU, 2023, 98 Min

Belgrade 1996. Young people and students are protesting on the streets against the Milošević regime, inside Stefan, son of the governing party's press spokeswoman, is protesting on his own terms. A boy caught between teenage rebellion and family ties, bullied by “the good guys”, part of the unloved elite, condemned to quiet rage between chairs.

#feature #coming-of-age #political 

Stefan's grandfather is a serving partisan who still today is convinced of Tito's communism and who named his daughter Marklena, a mixture of Marx and Lenin. His mother and grandfather look after Stefan with care, but it is clear what he should become: loyal. And for this purpose, some intrigues are hatched, election fraud and police violence against demonstrators are glossed over – and no one ever talks about war crimes in the Yugoslavian wars that have just ended. The fact that what the autocrat Slobodan Milošević has done to the country no longer has anything to do with communism remains unsaid. But the mutual affection in the family is real. At school, Stefan is bullied and beaten for his family background, and his best friends turn away from him. Stefan feels just as drawn to the protest movement “Zajedno” (Englisch: “Together”) as he does to a hug from his mother. In his second feature film, Vladimir Perišić revisits his own youth as the son of Milošević's culture minister. A teenager caught between the desperate self-deception of an arrogant elite with its back against the wall and the blind rage of its opponents, to whom he feels drawn without ever belonging. A great, emotionally complex portrait of time from an unusual perspective.

Text: Bernd Buder

Drehbuch
Vladimir Perišić & Alice Winocour
Kamera
Sarah Blum & Louise Botkay Courcier
Ton
Roman Dymny & Olivier Goinard
Schnitt
Martial Salomon & Jelena Maksimović
Ausstattung
Daniela Dimitrovska
Musik
Alen & Nenad Sinkauz
Darsteller
STEFAN - Jovan Ginić
MARKLENA - Jasna Đuričić
MILAN - Miodrag Jovanović
BOGDAN - Lazar Kocić
TILE - Duško Valentić
HANA - Ana Simeunović
PROFESOR - Boris Isaković
MIKI - Pavle Čemerikić
IVANA - Marija Škaričić
VERA - Helena Buljan
Produzent
Omar El Kadi (France), Janja Kralj (France), Nadia Turincev (France), Vladimir Perišić (Serbia)
Produktion
KinoElektron (France), Easy Riders Films (France), Trilema (Serbia)
Co-Produktion
Arte France Cinéma (France), Red Lion (Luxemburg), Kinorama (Croatia), Cosmodigital (France)

Vladimir Perišić - After studying literature at University Paris VII,Vladimir Perišić later graduated from film directing at La Fémis. His graduation film DREMANO OKO, made under the mentorship of Chantal Akerman, screenedas part of the Cinéfondation selection at Cannes in2003. His first feature, Ordinary People (2009), developed in the Cinéfondation residency, premiered at Cannes as part of Critics’ Week. Our Shadow Will, was hiscontribution to the collective film Bridges of Sarajevo,part of the official selection at Cannes 2014. He has been co-director of the Belgrade Auteur Film Festival since 2011. In 2018 and 2019 he was filmmaker-programmer at ACID. Lost Country, co-written with AliceWinocour, is Perišić’s second feature.

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