Serbia and its women filmmakers will take the lead in the ‘Wild Roses’ section of the Trieste Film Festival, which will take place from January 16 to 24, 2025, marking its 36th edition. This showcase, dedicated to women directors from Central and Eastern Europe, will be curated by director Stefan Ivancić, a producer and member of the Locarno Film Festival’s selection committee. This section aims to promote new female perspectives from contemporary Serbia, following previous editions focusing on Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and Germany.
Personal stories, private tales capable of being political, and documents of a constantly changing world. Stories able to recount events, sensations, and memories of a country burdened by a past, still too recent, marked by wars and internal divisions, from which today’s generations are called to build and imagine the country of tomorrow.
The lineup of titles features 11 diverse works, created by as many female directors, some already well-known in the European film scene thanks to their participation in international festivals, and others eager to amaze the audience with their new works. ‘The cinema of Serbian women filmmakers once again tells stories of the 1990s: both those who still live in Serbia and the directors of the diaspora seek to finally come to terms with that period, recalling some crucial events from that time to interpret the present and the collective traumas of a country’, declared Nicoletta Romeo, artistic director of the festival.
Among the section’s protagonists will be Iva Radivojević with her When the Phone Rang (Kada je zazvonio telefon), a feature film that brought her into the international spotlight thanks to a special mention received at the last Locarno Film Festival. It is an exploration of displacement and the nature of memory, capable of erasing the history and identity of an entire country, through an eleven-year-old girl’s phone call. Alongside her, Emilija Gašić with her latest work 78 days (78 dana), which had its world premiere this year at the Rotterdam Film Festival and has already won several awards in European festivals, tells the story of three sisters who film their daily lives, from first kisses to first disappointments, during the 1999 war in Serbia, using it as their only refuge from the bombs.
The section will also feature other renowned figures from international cinema, such as Milica Tomović, with her debut film Celts (Kelti), which won the CEI-Central European Initiative Award at the 33rd Trieste Film Festival, and was selected by the Berlinale in 2021 to compete in the Panorama section, Ivana Mladenović with Ivana the Terrible (Ivana cea Groaznică), presented at Locarno in 2019, and Marta Popivoda with Landscapes of Resistance, which had its world premiere in the main competition, the Tiger Competition of IFFR, in 2021 and then was selected at dozens of other international festivals.
The section continues with two documentaries, directed respectively by Mila Turajlić with The Other Side of Everything (Druga strana svega), which gained great acclaim after its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2017 (including the Best Feature-Length Documentary Award at IDFA that same year), and by Jelena Maksimović with Homelands (Domovine). Completing the list are four short films by the emerging talents Tara Gajović (Shoulders – U ramenima), Jelena Gavrilović (Nobody here – Nikog nema), Maša Šarović (The city – Grad), and Tamara Todorović (Pink – Roze).
The Wild Roses focus is realized thanks to the support of Film Center Serbia.
