Jio MAMI 2023 | ‘Serbia used to be cut-off, now it’s stuck between the East & West, tradition & globalisation’: Nina Ognjanović

Serbian filmmaker Nina Ognjanović (left) and stills from 'Where the Road Leads', screening at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023.

Belgrade-based Nina Ognjanović, 28, whose 2023 Slamdance winner graduation film/debut feature Where the Road Leads (Grand Jury mention and audience award) screens at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, admits she is not familiar with Indian cinema, but she loves Satyajit Ray. This is the Bengali auteur’s legacy to Indian cinema, that a young filmmaker today in any remote corner of the world has watched, even imbibed, his cinema. The World Cinema segment at the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival has been curated by Anu Rangachar, who runs her indie production/distribution company Gratitude Films in New York.

The neo-Western film feels like an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. A time loop structure that first gives the sense of a linear progression, of stillness, a slow village life, so slow that the sylvan stillness feels claustrophobic, and then the circular loop begins to coil and stifle. Lives move in circles. Old men keep shaving, the young keeps running and returning. A Siberian rural landscape cut off from modern life and urban centres, the news of a road being built doesn't amuse. An outsider is seen both as a thorn in their side and a flicker of hope.

In an interview, Ognjanović talks about Serbia, its cinema tradition, and her film. Edited excerpts:

What kind of films you grew up on and want to make?

I grew up watching all sorts of stuff, but maybe my favourite (and completely opposite) are Jacques Tati and Quentin Tarantino. I think my first film draws inspiration from both of them, although I wasn’t specifically using them as references. I also really love magical realism and would love to achieve that atmosphere in the films I make.

Is Jana, the protagonist who keeps running in circles in her small Serbian village, seeking an escape, based on you?

Where the Road Leads and Jana (Jana Bjelica) herself were heavily inspired by a period in my life where I felt like I was going in circles. I wanted to be anywhere else than where I was, but despite my best efforts, it all seemed in vain. I couldn’t move. I tried to convey that feeling the best I could through Jana.

I come from a big city, but at that particular season of my life, the city felt small and suffocating. I thought that a village, small and with clear borders, was the best way to visually communicate that claustrophobia.

Jana in a still from the film.

A kid looks for aeroplanes in the sky, his grandma chides him for the sun might ruin his eyes. Talk about the clash of the two worlds: the old and new/young.

I’d like the film to raise that question in the one who watches it — if a change is good, what it brings, what it takes away. I wanted it to raise a question rather than send a clear message, because I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to that. I still ponder on it.

Tell us about the making of the film.

The village where we decided to shoot was possibly the worst place to do so logistics-wise. It was 45 minutes away from the nearest town, only a dirt road leading up the mountains. Somewhere along the way, cell signal goes out, so we were completely offline when there. People have gotten lost on their way there a few times. If we needed anything, we had to drive all the way down to make a call. The irony is, as we started shooting, the road to the village was being rebuilt and the electricity would go out every day, just like in the script. So, we spent a month there, isolated, with that line between reality and the film we were shooting blurred if not erased.

All the characters, apart from the accordion player, are played by professional actors. Many of them were shooting other commercial projects at the same time, so we had to shuttle them four hours back and forth from one set to the other. It was great fun nonetheless.

A still from the film.

The day shots of the sylvan landscape in this neo-Western film are arresting, we see night/darkness only once the stranger comes. Talk about arriving at the visual grammar?

A stranger showing up unannounced is one of the Western motifs in the script. Throughout the writing process, I really imagined everything to have that same colour scheme. Sun high up in the sky. Now, we don’t have anything resembling the Wild West in Serbia, so we decided to do our take on it.

It was also important to me to convey to the audience that time in the village passes slowly, that it almost stands still. So, the long shots and pans (shot on Arri Alexa Classic in 2.39:1 frame ratio), letting the action play out in those shots for as long as it took. That was my intention.

The dulcet composition melds ambient nature sounds (rustling leaves, birds chirping) with classical notes of the piano, acoustic guitar and violin/cello.

Music composer Ana Krstajic and my idea was to create something simple, kind of hopeless yet beautiful, magical. It was imperative for us that the music built on the visual and what she created elevated the film to a whole new level. Same went for the sound effects. Most of them were recorded on location, which added to the authenticity of the atmosphere.

A still from the film.

Talk about the time loop structure. There’s stillness and linearity in the first half, and the second half’s circular loop is claustrophobic, evocative of a snake eating its own tail. You show the murder and then uncoil the narrative.

There are a couple of aspects to the structure. I wanted the film to feel the same way Jana felt, moving in circles. Then, I wanted to make sure that, even with the murder and the intrigues going on in the story, Jana’s emotional journey of growing up within those 24 hours wasn’t pushed to the background. So, having the film end with the scene that it does, a scene that we have already seen, but having it pause before Jana makes her choice to run away rather than turn around, was done deliberately, to give the audience a moment to hope that she will, maybe, make a different choice this time around. It was a crucial moment in her journey, where she could’ve accomplished what she wanted, but made a poor choice which eventually ended in tragedy.

I wanted to build mystery around the new guy (Novi played by Zlatan Vidovic), so learning about him from everyone else, who either did or didn’t like him, was a good way to build some idea of his character.

What does the new guy symbolise?

For the villagers, he means change. Some see that as a good thing, others oppose it. For Jana, he represents the possibility of the world that lies beyond the mountains surrounding her. He’s also running from himself. He thought his demons would quit once he reaches his roots, but nothing seems enough. His dissatisfaction stems from within, there’s no escaping that.

Pavle and Petar in a still from the film.

And the two drunk, twin-like local goons Pavle and Petar, who are a foil to cop Djura, in-charge of this place.

Petar, Pavle and Djura were quite fun to create. For Petar (Ninoslav Culum) and Pavle (Vladimir Maksimovic), it was important that they were always in sync. Two people, one thought. We framed them that way. They want to be in charge, but can’t get the respect of the village elders who see them as fools.

Djura in a still from the film.

Djura (Igor Filipovic) is a self-appointed town sheriff who takes himself quite seriously. An authority figure. Far from perfect, but the best they’ve got.

It’s important to have trust in someone or something. For the villagers, Djura is that person. The naïve Jana realises that he can’t solve the problem, that moment is part of her growing up, too.

If you could talk about the cinema of Serbia?

The first film was made in 1911 (the silent film The Life and Deeds of the Immortal Vožd Karađorđe). Serbia has quite a long film tradition which peaked during Yugoslavia, with Hollywood stars like Richard Burton acting in some Partisan films. Countering that, there was the Black Wave which produced some Oscar-nominated films. Dušan Makavejev and Aleksandar Petrović are among the biggest names. In the ’90s and early 2000s, the industry stagnated. Only in the last seven-eight years has everything started again. Among recent talked-about films is the Venice-premiered Have You Seen This Woman? Others have won awards in Moscow or had box-office success.

Is Serbia cut-off from Europe and rest of the world in some way, is the film a comment on that?

I wanted to create a world in this film, a world that I could pick up and place anywhere on the map, and it would be plausible. Serbia used to be cut-off, now I would say that it’s stuck somewhere in between the East and the West, between tradition and globalisation.