Serbian director Milica Tomovic, whose second feature, “Big Women,” was one of the big winners of industry awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Thursday, believes audiences are afraid of women behaving badly. “People are not interested in watching films with bad female characters doing bad things,” the director said. diverse.
“Big Women,” produced by Dragana Jovovich of Non-Aligned Films and Jelena Radenkovic of Big Time Production, won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo. The film is a road trip comedy drama that tells the story of two wild women who embark on an unexpected journey to the Montenegrin coast. There, they will pay off forgotten bills, rediscover their friendship, and uncover long-buried secrets.
Describing the film as a “character-driven story,” Tomovic said it's “based on the dynamics of this very strong friendship.” Of the best friends and make-up artist in “Old Women,” she said, “That's the heart of the story, between Mira and Tina. It's a journey — between them and their friendship.”
The director’s critically acclaimed debut, “The Celts,” is about a child’s birthday party that goes out of control and exposes divisions in her extended family. But Tomovic said she’s equally drawn to “non-DNA connections” — the families we choose, not the ones we’re born into.
“I bonded over the first cigarette I tried, swapped clothes, suffered, and gave advice,” she said. “Then gradually, I became [the close-knit friends] “What we see in the movie.”
“Celts” premiered at the pandemic-era Berlin Film Festival in 2021. In a review of the “energetic, auspicious debut in one night” at the Sarajevo Festival that summer, where Tomović won the Best Director award, diverseThe Warner Bros. director, Guy Lodge, called the film “a smart feat of personal and political filmmaking, fueled by a nostalgia for innocence and a wry sense of letting go of bad times.”
For “Big Women,” Tomovic took inspiration from British director Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” a comedy about everyday life through the eyes of a free-spirited London schoolteacher. However, the Serbian said she wanted to “do the opposite” by portraying a prickly character that viewers would love to hate — but love back.
“I want the audience to connect with her, because as the film comes to a close, we find more and more similarities between her and him,” she said. “We get to see a little bit of her background, why she became this way — this tough, rough, kind of difficult person” who makes those around her feel uncomfortable around her.
“Big Women” is one of several projects at the helm of Non-Aligned Films, the Belgrade-based company Jovovich founded. “Wind, Talk to Me,” director Stevan Đorđević’s feature debut, is a three-country co-production with SPOK Films from Slovenia and Restart from Croatia, and is currently in post-production and slated for release in 2025.
The company is also co-producing Slovenian director Urska Djukic’s “Little Trouble Girls,” which won a prize in the works-in-progress section at Les Arcs last year, as well as “Wondrous is the Silence of My Lord,” Montenegrin director Ivan Salatic’s highly anticipated film after its Venice Critics’ Week premiere, “You Have the Night.”
Ognjen Glavonić is preparing for the sequel to Directors' Fortnight, titled “The Load”.
Tatiana Krstevsky/Unbiased Films
Jovovic and her production partners are also financing “In the Shadow of the Horns” by Serbian director Ognjen Glavonić, whose debut feature “The Load” premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes. Meanwhile, veteran Portuguese screenwriter Mariana Ricardo (Grand Tour) has joined forces with Serbian director Marko Grba Sing to write “Forget the Ocean, Why Not Try Surfing These Insane River Waves,” which won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in Sarajevo in 2021.
Radenkovic, who served as executive producer on “Celts,” is currently producing Ivan Markovic’s feature film “Promised Spaces,” a Serbian-French-German-Cambodian co-production. She is also developing “Tale of the Plum Spirit,” a Serbian-German co-production, the first feature documentary by Belgrade-born director Milica Dinčić.
The Sarajevo Film Festival takes place from August 16 to 23.
